The IRWS is designed to assist countries in the establishment and strengthening of an information system for water in support of integrated water resources management. In particular, the IRWS (a) supports the collection, compilation and dissemination of internationally comparable water statistics in countries; (b) supports the implementation of the SEEAW; and (c) provides the necessary information for deriving coherent and consistent indicators over time and across countries. As such, the IRWS presents a list of recommended and supplementary data items to be collected and reported that are needed for national water statistics, for populating the standard tables of the SEEAW, for populating international water questionnaires and for deriving water indicators.