The 2nd meeting of the Information Technologies working group of the ENPI-SEIS project

The 2nd meeting of the Information Technologies working group of the ENPI-SEIS project managed by the European Environment Agency (EEA) took place in Skopje September 19-21 with the support of the Ministry of Environment from Macedonia.

It gathered IT experts from statistics institutes and Ministries of Environment from ENPI South and East regions allowing cross regional exchange of experiences, reinforced by presentations from Balkan countries on air and water information systems as well as data flows towards the EEA.

The objective of this working group, that meet twice a year, is to assess progress, discuss problems and make further steps towards making regular indicator-based assessments developed around the reported data.

The Skopje workshop focused on database streamlining and data exchange format. Experts from the South countries agreed on a set of actions for:

i) streamlining the provision of data for indicators validated by the monitoring working group of Horizon 2020 initiative, and
ii) preparing National pilot actions with a medium term perspective.

The development of Shared National Water Information Systems based on SEIS approach in the context of the Union for the Mediterranean was presented to initiate the debate on pilot actions. A practical short term approach using EEA standard reporting facility (reportnet) was decided in order to provide the necessary data for the selected indicators in due time for the 1st Horizon2020 report planned for June 2012. Specifications of the selected indicators and definition of pilot actions should be finalised by content experts during a workshop that will be held in Copenhagen 10-11 September.

The formal validation of proposed activities will take place during the next ENPI-SEIS Steering Committee planned on 21-22 November 2012.