The Interdepartmental Commission for Sustainable Development (ICDO/CIDD) was established by the Act of May 5, 1997 which co-ordinates the Belgian federal policy of sustainable development. Its main task concerns the preparation and follow-up of the Federal Plan for Sustainable Development. This Plan, which is published every four years, consists of a battery of objectives and measures aimed at the promotion of sustainable development.

In 2001, the ICDO made a request to the Platform ISD for methodological support concerning the identification of indicators to follow the state of implementation of the different actions outlined in the first Federal Plan for Sustainable Development 2000-2004. The Platform consequently made a methodological note in which a procedure to identify such indicators was proposed. A basic distinction was made between response indicators (assess to what extent an action has been implemented) and performance indicators (assess to what extent an objective set beforehand has been reached).

To start the exercise of identifying the most valuable response indicators, a pilot group made up of several federal government departments, the Task Force Sustainable Development of the Federal Planning Office and the Platform was set up and had meetings between June 2002 and January 2003. Methodological guidelines were provided by the Platform. The exercise resulted in a number of relevant indicators, described in methodological sheets. Parallel to this, the Platform made a preparatory research, studying several existing international lists of ISD, in order to identify those indicators that could be linked to the objectives of the first Plan. This experience was a first step of a global process to involve all federal government departments and public institutions into the follow-up of their sustainable development policies with indicators.

In 2005, the Platform will help the ICDO once more to elaborate all necessary indicators to evaluate the implementation of the different actions outlined in the first (2000-2004) and second (2004-2008) Federal Plan for Sustainable Development.