PIDC Information Sharing Working Group Meets in Honiara - November 2017

The PIDC Information Sharing Working Group (ISWG) held its third meeting in Honiara, Solomon Islands from 20-21 November 2017. Working Group members including Australia, NZ, Tuvalu (SIS), Palau (Micronesia), French Polynesia (Polynesia), Vanuatu (Melanesia) and Solomon Islands (Host) participated in the meeting.

The ISWG was established to lead and support coordination of PIDCs’ information sharing work programme. The third meeting sought to advance proposed activities and timelines to developing a regional PIDC MoU for information sharing, discuss the establishment of a regional network of accredited contact points, options of hosting a regional workshop to enhance PIDC Members’ capacity to use readily available platforms to collect, store and analyse information sharing, and develop standardised regional Immigration data types that would facilitate seamless information sharing between agencies.

In addition, participants discussed possible avenues for improved collaboration with the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) Regional Fisheries Surveillance Centre in order to support future PIDC activities. Participants acknowledged the work undertaken by the Secretariat to advance these key areas through secured channels of communication that would allow PIDC Members to freely and securely share information. Intelligence information sharing framework was identified as specialist areas of work that was to be addressed at the national levels.

Committee members expressed their satisfaction with the clarity of work undertaken and noted that a significant amount of work undertaken had advanced the activities agreed to by Members at the 2017 RAM.