ILRI Comms project insight 2014:
OCS comms
Ewen Le Borgne
CKM Team Meeting
Addis Ababa, 2-4 February 2015

About this project or activity
1. Why is it important
OCS is anyway coming towards all of us and we need to ensure staff
buy into it contrary to some other centres (IRRI, WFish…)
2. What is it
Supporting the communication side of rolling out OCS to ensure
people are aware, enabled to work with it and in a position to share
some feedback + that the steering committee does its job well
3. What we want to achieve
A smooth launch, with as many people as possible involved in OCS roll
out and using the system with enough satisfaction. That they are in a
position to share critical feedback easily and to be informed about
progress / process and staff-focused activities throughout.

Our activities
What we did:
1. Get involved in the steering committee to guide the implementation
2. Host/support the regular steering committee meetings
3. Set up a comms strategy for OCS
4. Set up the OCS wiki and an email helpdesk + OCS Yammer (& CG-
wide)
5. Support Isaac and the implementing team in getting a hang on OCS
work (through the wiki and embedded Gdocs)
6. Support some important communications re: OCS rollout
What we plan
1. Review the comms strategy
2. Engage staff in Nairobi and Addis
3. Support Isaac, implementation team and P&OD in relation with
staff comms on OCS
4. Contribute to steering committee meetings

What we learned
1. Manage expectations: we kept everything under the radar as we
(rightly) knew we might not be in a position to deliver
2. Learn from other similar projects: getting feedback from ICRAF,
CIP, WorldFish was great to highlight do’s and don’ts
3. Good to have management buy-in and a regular foot in the door
(through steering committees)
4. Work straight from the start with the technical implementers
(Isaac’s team) and P&OD for training and other internal comms
work…

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