Importance of the National Committees

CIGRE is a unique organisation with a small Central Office and 60 National Committees. This structure is very efficient and ensures support for Members irrespective of where they reside. It is important to understand the need and importance of the National Committees in the CIGRE context.

The National Committees (NC) are arranged based on country or group of countries where Members per country are limited. A National Committee can be set up if there are 40 equivalent Members or more. The formation of a NC is approved by the Administrative Council. The Administrative Council forms the “Board” of CIGRE and consists of the Chairpersons or designated representatives of the various NC’s.

The NC’s are the representatives of the CIGRE organisation at the local level. As such they are in direct contact with the Members in their area or country. This provides the ability for Members to be served directly at a local level rather than having to revert to the Central Office.

The role of the NC’s is to disseminate technical information to Members, arrange conferences inviting Study Committees or international Working Groups to their country to expose local engineers to international experts. The NC should set up a structure similar to the CIGRE structure in their area covering all the SC’s. The NC Study Committee Member should chair this sub-group (termed a Regional Activity group or panel) and invite Members from academia, industry, utilities, regulators and other stakeholders to take part. The purpose of the panel is to obtain information from the Members to understand their issues and questions, as well as to provide feedback to the panel on the latest work being conducted by the SC. The SC Member should take the questions and issues to the SC to see if there are other countries with the same issue. Should there not be a solution a proposal for a Working Group can be formulated.

It has often been asked as to why have many NC’s when larger countries can support the smaller countries that may not have their own NC. The issue relates to support of Members. If the country has a NC they have the ability to arrange events on their own as well as propose Members to SC’s which would otherwise not have been possible. They also have a seat on the Administrative Council and can raise their particular concerns and issues. The formation of NC’s are therefore encouraged irrespective of whether they are in a Region or are at present being supported by another larger NC.

It is important to note that the NC’s are self-funded to a large extent. The Central Office may compensate the NC for certain expenses related to conferences or colloquia. This needs to be applied for the year before the event. This compensation is relatively small and will not support the costs of the NC. The NC can raise funds in any way possible. Funds are normally raised via arranging conferences, colloquia or symposia. Exhibitions and attendance fees as well as sponsorships are often used as fund raising mechanisms.

The structure of the NC’s vary with some larger NC’s structure being larger than Central Office. This ability and flexibility in the structure of the NC’s allows for CIGRE Members to be optimally served within the NC.

A guide on formation and operation of National Committees has been compiled and is available on the website.

The organisation of CIGRE, with the use of the NC’s, enables Members to have access to the global network via their local NC. A mirror organisation with regional panels or activity group, gives the Member access to the global CIGRE organisation via the SC Members.

The NC’s are a critical component of the CIGRE organisation and enable support of the WG’s and Study Committees via provision of experts. They also support the formation and operation of Women In Engineering (WIE) and Next Generation Networks (NGN).

I would urge Members to approach their NC organisations to examine how to get involved in the regional activity panels as well as the NGN and WIE networks.

I hope to see you at a CIGRE event soon.