The AEIN National Coordinating Office in REMA was respon- sible for managing the administration of the questionnaires. The questionnaires were sent out to 26 institutions. These in- cluded five districts and two umbrella NGO associations, with the rest being public institutions that included research and academia. No institution was coerced to participate as per the premise upon which the AEIN is based. Participating institu- tions must have environmental information and be willing to share it. The institutions that returned the questionnaire were assumed to fulfill this basic premise. It was not possible to survey each and every institution involved in the management of environmental information. Although the sample may be considered small, it still served three main purposes:

a. raising awareness on how environmental information is managed in Rwanda;

b. guiding stakeholders on how to improve environmental information management systems; and

c. establishing the foundation for implementing the REIN.

The responding institutions were taken to be a representa- tive sample, providing relatively precise details on how the organisations working in the environment field in Rwanda manage their information and data holdings. Some of the organisations surveyed are already active in the field of data and information management with collaborating networks of their own from both within and outside Rwanda, while oth- ers were not advanced. The sample therefore provided a good picture with respect to the information resource inventory. In total, questionnaires from 19 organizations were returned. Of these, four were NGOs, 11 government institutions, two re- search/academic and two from local government institutions.

In order to ensure institutional ownership, reliability of the response and the highest political support for this exercise, the questionnaires were forwarded from the office of the Di- rector General of REMA. The respective heads of the receiv- ing institutions then designated an officer(s) to respond to the questionnaires on behalf of their organization. The complet- ed questionnaires were returned to REMA through the same avenue.

Following this introductory background, chapter 2 high- lights the key findings of the overall assessment. It sets the stage by highlighting the main data issues, and this forms the justification for establishing an environment informa- tion network in Rwanda. The ensuing discussion is pre- sented in four sections: availability of data in Rwanda; ap- plication of the data and information; existing networking initiatives; and capacity building.

Chapter 3 is the detailed institutional assessment. It pres- ents the data for each surveyed institution and includes the following parameters: environmental mandate of the institution; type of organisation; environmental data held or managed; available equipment within the institution; in- formation management skills of the staff; methods of data handling and dissemination; and the institution’s contact details. Based on the information highlighted in chapters 2 and 3, chapter 4 presents a SWOT analysis of the envi- ronmental information management situation in Rwanda. The aim of this analysis is to aid the decision-maker in areas requiring improvement while highlighting areas of oppor- tunity and strength. Chapter 5 presents recommendations for action.

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A number of the responding institutions were visited and pertinent areas of the questionnaires reviewed for greater insight and clarification. Personal interviews were also con- ducted to collect additional information on some activities related to the management of environmental information within REMA and other institutions.

Data analysis was kept simple. Conclusions for the data ta- bles were based on arithmetic combinations of the question- naire results, and the results presented as a percentage of the size of the responding samples.

A draft report was presented to a stakeholders’ workshop on 14 July 2010 to validate the findings before the final report was prepared.

Format of the report