The OBIS secretariat, hosted at the UNESCO/IOC project office for IODE in Oostende (Belgium), provides training and technical assistance to its data providers, guides new data standards and technical developments, and encourages international cooperation to foster the group benefits of the network.
The OBIS secretariat will be responsible for the overall coordination and implementation of the project, supported by a local project manager hosted at the University of the South Pacific. This will include (i) the organization of regular project meetings (advisory board, composed of scientific experts and government stakeholders), (ii) ensuring the timely delivery of progress reports and post regular news updates via a dedicated project website and social media channels. A systems engineer based at the OBIS secretariat will also coordinate the development of the bioinformatics pipeline and decision-support tool and provide advice to the monitoring plan.