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Information management topic 2: Information management, systems and infrastructure for civilian EU External Actions

 

Specific challenge:

The broad range and the complexity of CSDP missions make the ability to manage information and resources efficiently critical to decision-making, planning, and engaging capabilities within such missions, and essential to increase their efficiency, visibility and impact. The many processes, procedures, information management systems, and equipment currently in use for such missions need to be identified, characterized, and modelled to constitute a coherent and interoperable situational awareness and information exchange capability and operation control centre.

Scope:

Proposals should address the development of a specific and dedicated research agenda (or of a tender package), to eventually deliver the technical specifications of the future common Situational Awareness, Information Exchange and Operation Control Platform.

Research activities covered by such a research agenda (or the technical components of a tender package) are expected to focus on service specifications, interfaces, and modelling and exchange formats and protocols for sharing objects of relevance in the context of the EU external actions, in an interoperable, secure, and resilient manner.

The technical specifications of the future common Situational Awareness, Information Exchange and Operation Control Platform should allow for existing systems to be plugged in.

The EU may contribute to subsequent action to bootstrap the new architecture/solution if the CSA is successful and the new architecture/solution fulfils the conditions for receiving an EU contribution under the applicable rules.

Expected impact:

The technical specifications of the future common Situational Awareness, Information Exchange and Operation Control Platform together with the creation of a strong community of interest for EU civilian external actions is expected to allow all stakeholders to enhance their common understanding of crisis management in EU civilian external actions, and to pave the way to the deployment of such a much-need infrastructure. It should also improve the management of the EU resources' allocated to combatting crisis and help federating the Community of Interest amongst entities involved.

For the impact of the action to be above threshold the proposal must necessarily state:

  1. the participants' commitment to make the standards, specifications, and all other relevant documents generated in the action available at actual cost of reproduction to any law enforcement or first responder organization established in an EU or EEA country.
  2. the participants' agreement to negotiate in good faith and on a case by case basis, licenses to the background necessary for the implementation and use of the contents of the standards, specifications, design, research roadmaps, tender packages or other tender documents generated in the action.
  3. the participants' commitment that all such licenses shall be according to Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (“FRAND”) terms.”

Type of action: Coordination and Support Action (CSA).