Reporting – outcomes & ways forward Ilia Neudecker, Foxgloves Consultancy Make it Work Conference Regulatory Insights, Experiences and Enlightenment - making regulation work for our Environment Edinburgh, December 2015

MiW – Monitoring & Reporting Aim: establishing principles for smart monitoring and reporting Analyse: Why, what, how and who Establish principles for assessing M&R: value, sufficiency, proportionality, etc

Workshop 19&20 November, Brussels Jointly organised by MiW and Commission Stakeholders invited General picture presented Discussion on challenges and possible solutions Breakout groups worked intensively on different issues

Key points – Information needs Look carefully at the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ Address M&R at an early stage, not as an afterthought Less might be more (quality, costs, comparability across MS) Availability

Key points - Legislation Difference between purposes of reporting, e.g. for compliance assurance to Cion, for policy effectiveness (EU and national) So: different legislative approaches – at different level – with different content

Key points - Digital Digital makes things easier and faster (e.g. Irish EPA uses LEMA) Data harvesting: promising, can save costs, without sacrificing content & value (yet don’t overrate) INSPIRE – big opportunity

Key points - Process More / better communication ( ) Better attention to timing Room for flexibility (where possible) Room for learning by doing

Possible ways forward 1 ‘Quick’ wins: aligning timetables, definitions, scrapping redundancies, etc (e.g. WFD revision) Possible to identify core of information needs for EU? (MS can develop further data for their own needs)

Possible ways forward 2 Legislation: key provisions (e.g. for compliance checking) in directives Other details in comitology, and provisions in non-legal setting Checklist as an element of MiW drafting principles

Checklist Checklist to be used: when designing requirements by all institutions at EU level (EC, EP, Council) asking questions rather than giving answers  Putting principles in operation (examples)

Checklist - Value: Which information is needed to assess and verify whether we can achieve what is aimed for; and whether we comply with what we agreed to do? What do we need to monitor to get the knowledge we need? What kind of information is necessary and useful?

Checklist - Sufficiency: When is information sufficient (no more / no less) to assess required purposes? Is information already available elsewhere, for other purposes? Can available data be harvested for additional purposes? What is desired quality level for each specific purpose?

Checklist – Proportionality: Where and how to get (additional) information and at what cost? Do we have the resources to do what we are agreeing on? Are the required data already available, and (at what extra cost) can they be harvested?

Other ways forward INSPIRE: Standardise definitions, vocabularies Communication between ‘data people’ and ‘reporting people’ Prioritise according to needs for reporting Towards data harvesting and away from xml schemas Not all reporting is ‘data’!

Discussion points Which key requirements to be put in directives? Which elsewhere? Is a checklist useful & feasible? Under what conditions? Which actors to involve? How? Process? Timing?

Thank you! | +31 (0)

Principles for developing reporting provisions Value – information collected and reported must have value Sufficiency – the information provided is enough to do the job Proportionality – benefit should be compared to burden Coherence – between objectives/processes across acquis Timeliness – getting information when it is useful Continuity – long term data sets to show trends Consistency – of definitions, timetables across acquis Comparability – of data between Member States Subsidiarity – reporting requirements to inform decisions at appropriate governance levels