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Malaysia's National IT Council's DAGS Initiative and ARBEC
When MIMCED first approached the DAGS committee for the grant, ARBEC
was already almost 8 months into its existence. By the time the grant was
approved, the project was already one year and 4 months old (quite
"aged" in "digital" time). As such, much of the
groundwork and network was already established. The commitment, drive and
motivation of the original team were already firmly entrenched.
With DAGS assistance, the team was able to concentrate on "content
development" and "community building" process. These
components were vital as they formed the "mind" and
"body" of the project. Apart from the availability of the funds,
the DAGS evaluation process also strengthened the project's financial and
budgetary discipline through its meticulous reporting structures.
The DAGS systematic structure for the evaluation process of an
e-community project permitted the ARBEC team to focus its energy and
efforts into developing a sustainable e-community of biodiversity
researchers. With the requisite guidelines of the DAGS programme, i.e. the
enabling of communities to interact among themselves and the electronic
means to capture the information generated, the ARBEC team was able to
adequately adhere to it in developing its online publishing mechanism.
With proper guidance, and through close collaboration with DAGS
officers, members of the ARBEC team were able to fine tune their approach
in community building. Through it all, the final product and service has
made ARBEC into what it is today - a respectable online platform with
participation from biodiversity researchers from all over the world.
Since ARBEC graduated from DAGS in January 2000, it has established
itself as South East Asia's foremost biodiversity e-platform. The post
DAGS ARBEC has now evolved itself into a Virtual Museum of Natural History
(www.arbec.com.my/vm/author.htm) and has on going collaboration with
international institutions (such as Natural History Museum, London,
MacArthur Foundation, USA and ASEAN Regional Centre for Biodiversity
Conservation (ARCBC), Manila. ARBEC's programme has also been continually
sustained through its content subscriptions, research sponsorships, and
R&D grant in new publication fields.
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