By present, the public policy in the sphere of technical regulation proceeds from the need to match regulations with the Federal Law on Technical Regulation. Operation activity, particularly operation of irrigation and drainage systems and structures, is regulated by the following federal laws: Technical Regulations on Safety of Buildings and Structures; on the Safety of Hydraulic Structures; and, on Land Reclamation. However, the regulatory framework in the area of standardization, which ensures implementation of the Russian Federation's laws, is virtually absent. In this context, there is a strong need for development of new documentation in the area of standardization, translation of existing rules and departmental instructions into national standards and set of rules, adoption of technical regulation principles in activities of organizations.  

Work in this direction should be started from elaboration of the baseline standards that determine basic notions, composition and purpose of scientific and technical documentation, classifications and other main positions in irrigation and drainage. 

Building and using single classification for description of irrigation and drainage systems is a particularly urgent issue, which leads to delays with provision of information.  

Abundance and poorly ordered new notions and terms, published and unpublished materials, and various system elements complicate search and utilization of appropriate data, thus causing information deficit, which prevents progress. Therefore, elaboration of the optimal classification becomes both scientific and economically important task.