The FiTI Standard emphasises the need for national authorities to develop and strengthen their own systems for collecting and publishing information online in a complete, accessible and understandable manner.
However, countries often lack financial and technical resources to provide a suitable online infrastructure to share fisheries information with the general public.
The FiTI supports these countries with the provision of a web-based Fisheries Information System (FIS).
The FIS v1.0 allows countries to enter/upload and display data according to the following 13 thematic areas:
Legal Framework
Sectors
Health of Fish Populations
Vessels and Authorisations
Employment
Catches
Revenues
Trade
Law Enforcement
Labour Standards
Subsidies
Development Finance
Beneficial Ownership
Based on its modular design approach, countries can choose whether to use all thematic areas or whether to activate only certain areas of the FIS.
FiTI countries using the Fisheries Information System:
São Tomé and Príncipe
Live since February 2026
Cabo Verde
Live since February 2026
Madagascar
Scheduled for June 2026
Ghana
Scheduled for June 2026
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the Fisheries Information System
Find answers to the most common questions about the FIS. If you can’t find what you’re looking for here, please contact us.
In very simple terms, the FIS can be described by two major components:
The backend is primarily used for administering the country instance and for entering or uploading data into the FIS.
Each country that opts to utilise the FIS will get its own country instance. An instance refers to a distinct, country-specific deployment on the FIS platform that operates within a shared technical infrastructure but is logically and functionally separated from each country deployment. Each country’s instance provides its own secure backend environment through which the designated national authorities can upload, manage, and curate their fisheries data, while retaining full ownership and control over that information.
The FIS itself – and each country instance – is hosted on a FiTI-owned, secure web server. Therefore, countries do not require any physical installation (e.g. server) in order to utilise the FIS.
Access to the country’s backend requires only access to the internet (web browser). Furthermore, access to the backend is restricted to authorised users from the national authorities.
The frontend is used to display the information from the FIS backend to the general public.
Each country that opts to utilise the FIS must use its own government website to do so (either with a government domain (e.g. .gov) or – if not possible – a website that is clearly labelled or linked as/to a government website). The FiTI does not provide a website to countries to display their data.
The FIS is embedded into a government website through lines of coding, and therefore resilient to future changes to government websites (e.g. changes to the website structure or even domain changes).
The responsibility for providing information in the FIS lies solely with the national authorities of the FiTI country. Initially, and similar to the current FiTI reporting process, countries will be supported by the FiTI International Secretariat to gather information and prepare it for upload/entry into the FIS.
The FIS provides standardised forms for entering data into the system, e.g. through manual data entry masks or upload templates (i.e. spreadsheets). These forms follow the general data requirements of the FiTI Standard and cannot be modified by countries.
No. While the FiTI Standard requires that national authorities of FiTI countries must publish their available fisheries information in a complete and accessible manner on government websites, those countries with a strong reporting infrastructure for fisheries data might not opt to deploy the FIS. In other words, the FIS is a voluntary tool for those countries lacking a suitable online infrastructure.
The FIS is free of charge for FiTI countries. This includes the initial deployment as well as the ongoing hosting, maintenance and enhancement of the FIS.
Only in case where a country seeks to implement significant changes to the FIS (e.g. linking the FIS to an existing data sources, such as a licencing database), such costs will have to be covered by the country.
