Overall 3 years programme (December 2003 – November 2006)

The programme planned in the EC contract is structured around the following 9 action lines (see the full work-programme at Phase II 2003-2006):

1. The co-ordination with political structures to maintain a high level of commitment within the Euro-Med countries, including:

a.      Annual meeting of the Steering Committee

b.      Annual meeting of the Coordination Committee (next one in Rabat, in July 2004)

c.      Annual conference to promote EMWIS, to review the progress of MEDA-Water projects (and others) and to present the results of thematic studies 

d.      One conference of the Euro-Med water directors to assess the progress and valid future developments (end 2005).

2. The reinforcement of the NFP to ensure their sustainability through a strong national commitment,

a. Annual training seminar for the IT or content managers of the NFP

b. Analysis of national needs and requirements related to National Water Information Systems (that might be completed with recommendations for funding by international organisations)

c. Examples of NFP good practices

d. Direct financial support to the NFP covering: investment, web site translation and some running costs (promotion, training, technical assistance, etc.) 

3. The expansion and development of EMWIS services:

a. Introduction of the Arabic language

b. Synchronising calendar of events and news

c. Meta-Crawler 

4. The technical upgrade of the existing system, taking into account state of art technologies (e.g. XML) and new water information systems under development in the various partner countries (e.g. reuse of the same content for several web sites)

5. The operation of Euro-Med water information services: completion and updates of EMWIS websites, thematic directory, multilingual water dictionary, electronic flash

6. Promotion of EMWIS to raise awareness among water stake-holders about the benefits of sharing information and know-how

7. Thematic analysis oriented towards the areas and themes of the Turin Action Plan, that will be presented at the annual conferences 

8. Dissemination of the MEDA-Water Programme results in close cooperation with the European Commission, the programme monitoring team and the Water Facilitators (when they will be operational)  

9. Liaison and cooperation with international initiatives to avoid duplication and develop synergies, especially for the definition of international standards to exchange information in the water sector.