Challenges We Face in Creating Internet Resources for Food Safety Risk Analysts
Wrap-up summary | Participants
After hearing the presentations in the morning, and discussing the resources that should be provided on the Internet to help establish the "Internet Community" of food safety risk analysts, meeting participants were divided into four discussion groups to create a list of challenges that we face in providing these resources. The many ideas generated within these groups can be categorized as challenges related to resources, tools or data.
Resources
Resource challenges include funding for both start-up and maintenance. They also include the challenge of hiring and keeping the necessary content-specialist and technical personnel. Technological resource challenges include making the information accessible to disabled users, as well as designing them to accommodate a wide range of computing equipment and connections. Stakeholders can also be considered to be a type of resource; thus related challenges include engaging industry and establishing its support, obtaining user feedback, and improving the coordination of efforts among the various groups making resources available on the Internet.
Tools
Another set of challenges that we face is creating the tools for accessing the information. These include developing a smart search engine, keeping links updated and staying abreast of new technology while balancing the trade-offs between speed and costs of hardware and software.
Data
We also face many challenges in gaining access
to, and establishing the quality of data. Access to data from industry,
government and academia remains difficult. One related set of
challenges
(which are also possible solutions) is providing incentives and
removing disincentives for making data public. These may be achieved
in part by meeting additional challenges, such as adequately acknowledging
the researchers who create the data, resolving legal issues associated
with publicizing information that can draw regulatory attention,
and assuring data security. Finally, meeting the challenge of
reaching
a "critical mass" of posted data, may encourage more groups to submit
their data sets. Once data have been acquired,
we still face the challenges associated with determining their quality.
We must establish criteria for posting data, including evaluating
the need for any peer review. The data then need to be validated
in some way, and supporting documentation must be acquired and posted
to better inform the user about the study's design.
