Report of the Workshop regarding the Review of the MAREANO programme (WKMAR)

In February 2016 Norway requested ICES to provide a technical review of the MAREANO Programme.  
It was agreed to set up a process whereby “the review will be addressed as a formal ICES advice provided by the ICES Advisory Committee (ACOM). The review will ad-dress the scientific aspects of MAREANO applying the following process: 

• ICES establish a review group (RGMAREANO), consisting of a chair and up to 10 independent experts that match the expertise required to cover the out-lined scope of the review. The experts will be selected by ICES and presented to MAREANO for check against any issues of conflict of interest. A criterion for selection will be that the expert is not working in an organization in-volved in MAREANO or in other ways is or have been involved in the pro-gramme. Poul Degnbol (Denmark) has been appointed by ICES as chair of the review group.
• The review group will conduct their review during the first half of 2016 with the aim of deliver a preliminary report by July 2016. The review group will conduct their review by correspondence, by reading documentation and by visiting the partners and institutes involved in MAREANO. ICES suggests that the institutes and/or project task leaders involved prepare a self-evalu-ation report prior to the interview/meeting part of the review. The self-eval-uation report should address the questions listed above and include a list of relevant documents. All members of the Mareano Steering Group, Mareano Progam Group ("Programgruppen") and the Mareano Executive Group ("Utøvende gruppe") will be invited to prepare a self-evaluation report.
• This above mentioned preliminary report will form the basis of a 2–day workshop at ICES headquarters 29–30 August 2016 attended by the review team and MAREANO project experts.
• Based on the output from the workshop, the review group will finalize their report (Annex 4) and prepare a first version of the ICES advice including recommendations.
• An advice drafting group (ADGMAREANO) will convene in October 2016. The ADGMAREANO will consist of a chair and experts nominated by ACOM, and the RGMAREANO chair. This meeting is open to ICES observers.
• The advice drafted by the ADGMAREANO will finally be approved by ACOM at a Web-conference. The expected release of the advice will be 31 October 2016 (but no later than 31 December 2016).
• ICES will be available to present and discuss the review and recommenda-tions with MAREANO partners.
• The outputs from the review are a technical review report by the review team and ICES advice including operational recommendations based on the technical review. This information will be publicly available in the ICES website. ICES, will also be available to provide a verbal dissemination and discussion of the outcomes if required by MAREANO.”

The Workshop regarding the Review of the MAREANO programme (WKMAR) was set up by ICES Advisory Committee (ACOM) as one of the steps to implement this process.