Oftel's webmaster recently attended a meeting of IRGIS, the Independent Regulators Group's working group on information sharing. IRGIS was created to facilitate information sharing between NRAs (national regulatory authorities).

The group is chaired by ICP, Oftel's Portuguese equivalent, and has set up a website at http://irgis.icp.pt/site/.

This enables users to visit just one website rather than many different ones when looking for information about telecommunications in more than one European country. Its aim is to become a portal providing an access point to other sites containing relevant information about the communications sector in Europe.

At present, IRGIS gathers together information from the IRG member sites and gives access to it via a search engine. Documents are available in the regulator's own language and English.

Some of the documents produced by IRG relating to the telecommunications sector in Europe are also published on the site, and it is hoped that these will become more readily available as the site is developed. There is also a section for IRG press releases, and a 'useful links' section providing details of other International Telecoms Organisations and relevant parts of the EU.

Oftel has been involved with IRGIS since it was set up in 1999, helping to bring together information generated by the 19 telecommunications regulators which are members of IRG.

The IRG was established in 1997 by a group of European NRAs to pool experience and share information among its members on issues of common interest, including interconnection, prices, universal service, and other important issues relating to the regulation and development of the European telecommunications market.