The Coordinator is responsible for the overall legal, technical, contractual, ethical, financial and administrative management of the project; and the coordination and administration at all levels between the Contractors and the EC, including communication and information flow. The Coordinator is the point of contact between the European Commission and the Consortium.

The project is managed by the steering committee, which consists of a group of four consortium members close to the work to be carried out and representing those organisations having a major participation in OBRA.

In the Governing Board all consortium members are represented and have one vote. The coordinator chairs it. The Governing Board is the highest authority of the Project, and has the responsibility of taking the main decisions concerning the project. Principal decisions of the Governing Board concern:

• The approval of past activities and/or reorientation decisions
• Entering of a new contractor in the Project on a cost free basis.

WORK PROGRAMME

The five Work Packages proposed for the development of OBRA are:

WP1. Setting the baseline (OKO Institute)

This work package will map previous and current activities and programmes on participation and governance, focusing on radioactive waste management. The aim of this task is to provide a synthetic description of different models of governance in radioactive waste management, identifying a provisional set of success factors to aid in the definition of the observatory.

WP2. Strategic elements of OBRA (Posiva)

This work package is designed as a qualitative exploration of the views of all the project participants and other stakeholders regarding the development of mechanisms for knowledge transfer, providing interdisciplinary training and expert support to local and regional communities and contributing to availability of a new generation of experts through multidisciplinary education. The main objective of this Work Package is to develop a shared proposal for the setting up and implementation of the observatory.

WP3. Implementation and testing of a pilot OBRA (ITC)

The pilot model developed in WP2 will be set up and tested in WP3 in order to validate it.
A trial training and communication interactive package will be produced and tested in a workshop.

A possible model of the training package for local community leaders could include the following options:

• Training module on the key scientific, technical, economic, socio-political and legal domains in which local communities need to gain knowledge and competence in order to be able to carry out meaningful initiatives or influence the decision-making processes regarding the management and disposal of radioactive waste;
• Training module providing experience and advice on how to interact with different stakeholders in the decision-making process (implementers, regulators, local interest groups, national NGOs, international bodies, etc);
• Interactive exercises on the most efficient means to access information;
• Interactive discussion forums on a number of specific technical and non-technical issues (e.g. institutional control, monitoring, organising public meetings, etc).

 WP4. Knowledge management and assessment

The main objective of this work package is the dissemination of knowledge at different levels, giving special emphasis to the science-public interface and the dissemination of results outside the project consortium.

This WP includes the following tasks to be delivered:

• Web portal
• Virtual Forum
• Communication activities and final meeting
• Final seminar, assessment and way forward

WP5. Consortium management