Tuesday, March 25, 2014

PBGB-RMQA Reviews Activities Through Planning Workshop



The Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology Division Risk Management and Quality Assurance (PBGB-RMQA) team held a review and planning workshop last March 20-21 at Surga, Majayjay Laguna.  The team was composed of the RMQA officers and representatives from each of the 35 groups/units within the division.  The IRRI RMQA unit facilitated the activities.

With the aim to enhance risk awareness and to continuously imbed the risk management culture in PBGB, the group reviewed the division’s Risk Register and its Business Continuity and Recovery Plan, and devised various strategies and approaches on how to better manage the risks the division is exposed to. The plans will be approved by the Division Head, Eero Nissila, and Deputy Division Head/RMQA IRS, Glenn Gregorio.    Specifically, the proposal to establish an off-site back-up seed storage facility at PhilRice for the elite breeding lines was discussed and will be initiated soon.  The participants also reviewed existing guidelines/policies such as (1) the IRRI review and publications guidelines, (2) the OU internal clearance, (3) the use of the IRRI Research Notebook and, (4) the PBGB Operations Manual and Guidelines.

The RMQA-Research Data Management (RDM) team reported on the status of the divisions’ network repository while the Biosafety Officer gave an overview of its role and functions and updated the group on issues and some policies regarding transgenics.

The PBGB RMQA Officers include: Glenn Gregorio, Vit Lopena, Norman Oliva, Joie Ramos, and Mayee Reveche. RMQA unit is composed of Menchu Bernardo (Senior Manager), Rizza Mendoza (Manager, Biosafety Office), Icoy Mercado and Dec Arreza (Research Data Management).

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

RMQA-RDM Training Team Conducts First RDM 101 for 2014


Thirteen IRRI staff were participants in the recently held Research Data Management (RDM) 101 course—the first batch for 2014.

RDM 101 is regularly offered by IRRI’s Risk Management and Quality Assurance unit and covers data management planning; data collection, validation, and checking; data transformation and retrieval; back-up; and archiving and sharing, with emphasis on documentation and metadata.

Menchu Bernardo, RMQA senior manager, also discussed IRRI’s current IT infrastructure that staff and scholars can use to help them manage their data more efficiently.

IRRI Dataverse, developed by IQSS at Harvard University as a cloud-based research data repository, was as introduced as tool for use in archiving and sharing the Institute's research findings.