Modernising Algeria’s meteorological service
The overall objective of this twinning project is to support the modernisation strategy of the National Meteorological Office (ONM), based on three issues:
• Boost productive sectors for which weather and climate are key factors;
• Preserve transport infrastructure;
• Support the national climate change adaptation strategy.
More specifically, ONM wants to build its future on four main areas: the quality and reliability of weather forecasts, the creation of products and services to meet the needs of the national community, the management of climate change monitoring and impacts and, finally, effective support for warnings of severe weather and its management.
Four areas of work between Algerian and European peers
The twinning support project to build the capacities of the National Meteorological Office involves a consortium between Météo France and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, which will provide the European expertise required to achieve the objectives of each area of work:
1) Build ONM’s technical capacities for weather and climate services throughout the value chain: the actions will be organised based on ONM’s main activities and completed with action to integrate, standardise and coordinate the activities.
2) Improve commercial performance: the introduction of cost accounting will be essential to giving a better understanding of the cost structure. The organisation and customer relations will be strengthened.
This renewal is linked to the previous area, as ONM will be able to create the products expected by customers. The actions implemented will aim to carry out a substantial transfer of expertise and methodological tools to allow ONM to achieve its objectives.
3) Support the managerial reorganisation: the actions will be addressed through a process- and objective-based management approach. The changes will be supported through a provisional management of jobs and skills.
4) Strengthen the institutional capacities of ONM and coordination with the other stakeholders: the actions will aim to initiate constructive dialogue with other institutional stakeholders on common objectives, in order to make better use of their respective expertise and resources in terms of principles and on a technical and operational level.
 Twinning, an instrument for rapprochement
Institutional twinning is a long-term administrative cooperation instrument. It was launched by the European Commission in 1998 as a specific pre-accession tool: the objective was to help candidate countries for accession to the European Union strengthen their administrative capacities in order to be able to apply community legislation as future Member States. Twinning has gradually been extended to also become an instrument to provide support in the first years following accession, as well as an instrument for rapprochement between the European Union and Southern and Eastern neighbourhood countries.
This cooperation between administrations involves regular exchanges between officials from the beneficiary administration and officials from a European Union Member State: expert missions, audits, training, seminars, study visits… These exchanges are facilitated by the permanent presence in the recipient country of a Resident Twinning Advisor (RTA) appointed by the European administration.
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