Dear all,

On behalf of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, I am delighted to announce the launch of the new EITI website.

Since its inception in 2002, the EITI has been at the forefront of international efforts to improve governance in the extractive industries. The EITI Secretariat was opened last month in Oslo, providing the initiative with the capacity to continue to support the growing number of implementing countries and stakeholders.

The EITI site presently receives an average of over 5,000 hits a day, clear proof of the great public interest in EITI. Users rely on the website for clear information, guidance and news. We also see it as critical for ensuring the transparency and accountability of our own initiatives. I hope that you find it informative, easy to use, and relevant.

You can view the new EITI home page at www.eitransparency.org.

The vision for the new EITI website

Build a new, simple and easy to use EITI website to engage the EITI community of the latest news, and rich content giving them am ongoing and seamless connection with EITI. Through this new website we hope to drive awareness for the EITI Implementation Process and promote real time transparency within the Implementing Countries.

We would encourage you to visit the Resource Centre site within the website, which we envisage becoming the definitive research and historical library about transparent management of natural resources. We hope that you find this helpful for advocacy, awareness-raising, implementation, learning and reference. The new website has been developed with the technical assistance of Accenture Development Partnership. It reflects the most up-to-date technology, but is flexible enough to be accessible to those in much weaker telecommunications environments. Also many thanks go to the World Bank for hosting the website so excellently for the past three and a half years.

We hope that you find what you are looking for here and join us on the journey to make natural resources the blessing we know that they can and should do.

New Website Features

- Simplified, easy-to-use site navigation, especially for features providing guidance on EITI implementation.

- Dynamic country map, showing the status of individual countries and linked to individual country pages.

- An EITI Blog; up to-date content from invited guests involved with the implementation of the EITI.

We recognise that there is still scope for further enhancing the website. Most pressingly, we need to develop translations of each page, and improve the country pages. This is all work in progress, so we would welcome your feedback.

Peter Eigen
EITI Board Chair