Political and socioeconomic settings for policy decision-making about forests are increasingly complex and characterised by growing user demands, the strong influence of non-state actors and an expanding internationalisation of forest policy issues. In this context, efforts in information provision must produce data that are not only technically reliable and cost-efficient but also relevant to and accessible by stakeholders. Based on the experiences gained in national forest inventory projects as well as national forest programmes and forest policy processes in several countries, this paper proposes a set of principles and their application in key action areas of planning to help guide the process of designing national forest monitoring and inventory projects or programmes from the perspective of users of information in forest-related policy processes.