The Activity Plan of the Sub-theme Working Group
Summary description of the SWG-Activity Plan

The project tackles all these subjects through the establishment of workgroups comprised of experts from the different regions. These Workgroups will exchange information, experiences, and best-practice examples in order to enhance the cooperation on some SIS specific application areas. These groups will obtain common conclusions, guidelines, action plans and collaboration ideas that will be further developed in the Pilot projects. The phases in which the action plan is divided are the following:

PHASE I. Situation of the regions in Spatial Information Systems (Month1-Month 6)
In this phase, the regions partners of the SWG will make an internal analysis of the current SIS present in their regions and the cross-border initiatives taken, based on a commonly agreed guidelines and indicators. This diagnostic will have a strong focus on the users view (citizens). As a result from WP1 the best practices that can be highlighted will be extracted. There will be a general diagnostic and a more specific on the selected areas of interest. These best practices will be presented and the experiences exchanges in a workshop (WP2). During this first phase the partners will agree on the specific statistics area and the other selected application area and the WGs of phase II will be defined.

PHASE II. Design of cross-border Spatial Information Systems (Month 6-Month 12)
There will be 2 Workgroups established for two different topics: Statistics and Other Applications. The project will explore the most efficient organisation of the information for each specific area. The analysis for the use of cross-border SIS applications in these areas will be done in two different aspects:

The "technologies for the SIS" aspect will deal with the technical and interoperability issues (SDI concepts and technologies for Spatial Information Systems).
The "Organisation & Management of the SIS" aspect will deal with the necessity of defining an administration model for the system as it includes information and processes from different administration departments.

Each workgroup will produce the following results:
Analysis of the problems to implement cross-border SIS services
Analysis of the standardisation and homogenisation possibilities in the area
Conclusions and plan of action to advance in the area
Definition of an implementation strategy.

The results and outputs of these workgroups will be used in order to specify the testing pilot projects that will be implemented in Phase III.

PHASE III. Spatial Information Systems Pilot Projects (Month 13-Month 19)
In a third phase and based on the results from the analysis workgroups, the partners will establish two specialised workgroups for the pilot projects, chosen from different cross-border SIS specific services. These groups will work in order to implement prototype cross-border SDI-based SIS. The results will be at least two demonstrators of cross-border SIS services and their application for the support in policy decision-making.

PHASE IV. Dissemination And Contribution To The Network (Month 2-Month 20)
The results of the project will be disseminated inside the RFO through the Thematic Workshops and the Annual Conference and also in a final seminar about Geographical Information Systems.

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