The specialized population information needs of several South Asian countries and some potential new members of Asia-Pacific POPIN were addressed in a workshop jointly organized by ESCAP and the Sri Lankan Population Information Centre in collaboration with the South Asia Working Group on Population and Family Planning. Financial support was provided by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Held at Colombo from 27 November to 2 December, the South Asia POPIN Technical Workshop on Population Information Repackaging was held in fulfillment of a recommendation made at the Asia-Pacific POPIN Consultative Workshop held at Bangkok in June this year. That meeting called for the organization of management-cum-technical training workshops to help to develop the information-processing skills of potential new POPIN members. Specifically mentioned in this regard was a workshop focused on repackaging and the utilization of computer technologies for this purpose.
Information repackaging is one of the methods used by population information centres to disseminate useful data and information more widely among various target audiences.
The Population Division of the Sri Lanka Ministry of Health, Highways and Social Affairs, in collaboration with the UNFPA Country Suppport Team for South and West Asia (Kathmandu), initiated the idea of holding the Workshop, in conjunction with the Sri Lanka Population Information Centre, which is one of the leaders in the Asia-Pacific POPIN network in terms of information repackaging.
Attending the Workshop were 18 participants representing Bhutan, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
On the first day of the Workshop, the Chief Guest, Dr. Dudley Dissanayake, Secretary of the Ministry of Health, inaugurated the Workshop with an address emphasizing the importance of information dissemination in the success of family planning programmes. The participants were also addressed by Dr. A.T.P.L. Abeykoon, Director of the Ministry's Population Division and the Sri Lanka Population Information Centre, on behalf of the Centre, and by Ms. Ja Kyung Yoo, on behalf of ESCAP. The address of Dr. Sunneeta Mukherjee, UNFPA Country Director for Sri Lanka, who was unable to attend owing to the need to travel outside the country on an emergency basis, was read by one of her staff members.
Following the opening formalities, the participants gave presentations describing the types of "packages" they currently use to disseminate population data and information to their clientele. A representative of the clientele then described how such information was received and the degree to which it was useful for policy and programme purposes. The purpose of this dialogue was to demonstrate vividly to the participants the necessity for information centres to identify the needs of information users.
During the course of the Workshop, the topic of users' needs assessment was also dealt with, but the major focus was on familiarizing the participants with the terms used in the process of information "repackaging", and explaining the pros and cons of the various packages. Lectures by Dr. Abeykoon, and one of the two ESCAP experts acting as resource persons, explored the many dimensions of information repackaging. The ESCAP expert also showed numerous samples of the different kinds of information packages that are being used by various organizations throughout the world, including the 24 national members of Asia-Pacific POPIN, to inform their audiences about population and development themes and approaches.
The lectures emphasized the flexibility with which such information packages could be produced. If an information centre did not have staff capable of performing all the functions connected with repackaging, it could hire professionals to do the writing and manage the operation so that the final product would meet the information needs of the identified audience.
In this context, the Deputy Director of the Sri Lanka Population Information Centre demonstrated a very effective computerized package which had been conceptualized by the Centre. The Centre also supplied the contents of the RAPID information package, it was explained; the necessary technical support to produce the graphics was provided by an international agency, the cost of which was funded by the United States Agency for International Development.
This approach was emphasized throughout the Workshop, since experience has shown that some information centres feel overwhelmed by the challenge of repackaging when they do not have specialized staff to carry out the task. The approach adopted by the Sri Lankan Population Information Centre demonstrates that it is possible even for a relatively small centre to take a leading role in information repackaging by hiring experts to prepare manuscripts on different topics and in different languages for publication. One of the most important aspects is that the management of the centre concerned must know what type of information it wants to disseminate and in what form it should package it in order to deliver it efficiently and effectively to the various target audiences it serves.
After demonstrating the value of the different types of information packages and styles of writing, the ESCAP expert conducted a group exercise, in which he elicited responses from the participants who transformed numerical data contained in the "1995 ESCAP Population Data Sheet" into an article suitable for publication in a newsletter.
During Ms. Yoo's sessions on the use of computers for information repackaging, she demonstrated how various computer software packages could be used to transform both textual information, such as the article the participants had composed as a group in the previous session, and numerical data into tables and graphs useful for illustrating a newsletter or other form of repackaged information. She also demonstrated how both numerical and textual information could be brought together using desktop-publishing software for rapid typesetting and layout of the text and supporting material in "camera-ready" form.
Participants were given the opportunity to practice working on computers hired especially for the Workshop so that they would be familiar with some of the modern approaches to information repackaging. This "hands-on" exercise demonstrated the power offered by modern technology at relatively low cost.
Before the Workshop was concluded, the participants were taken on a field visit to Galle in the southern part of the country where they met with high-level government officials implementing the country's very successful family planning programme, and saw how some of the information packages produced in the capital were being used closer to the field.