An appropriate place to start the development of an information and data management policy is in the area of monitoring and surveillance. These activities provide a quantitative basis for assessing the state of an ecosystem. Monitoring and surveillance provide clues about the evolution and possible future development of the ecosystem, alert managers to emerging problems, and indicate whether a given program is making progress toward its assigned goals. Most Agreement annexes depend on monitoring programs to track implementation progress. In turn, the analysis and interpretation of these data must meet rigorous statistical and scientific standards.
Monitoring is often an expensive undertaking.
It is always necessary, usually repetitive, and sometimes tedious. The United States and Canada have amassed enough data overall to support the use of indicators in monitoring and surveillance programs. However, data collection, analysis, and reporting need improvement because of the nonuniform quality and the many gaps in existing data sets. The Commission is greatly concerned that the Parties cannot fulfill their goals under the Agreement because they currently lack, and will lack for the foreseeable future, the full breadth and depth of programs to obtain the environmental monitoring information necessary to guide Agreement-related programs. Monitoring and surveillance have historically received low priority from both researchers and managers who decide which projects receive financial and other resources.