An EPII project has been accepted by the ICT Standards Board as being relevant to the requirements for standardization and technical specification for the information society. An EPII project is one which has real commercial or political interest in terms of the development of the EII.
An EPII project has a defined scope, and, at least in broad terms, a schedule. A "lead organization" is assigned by ICTSB, although most EPII projects may be collaborative amongst more than one ICTSB member organization. Each organization is responsible for the adoption and execution of its own work items.
EPII projects stem from the study of deployment of GII (Global Information Infrastructure) and GIS (Global Information Society) in Europe. An EPII project is created in the context of an area which is viewed as a component of the GII/GIS. The project itself focuses on the understanding of th requirements brought by GII/GIS, and on the standards which need to be developed to meet these requirements. An EPII project usually consists of a first phase definition of the project’s scope, understanding of the GII/GIS requirements and identification of the missing standards, followed by standards-development phases if necessary. A chart explaining the process is at figure 1.
Since industry is seeking to reduce its costs, against the background of diminishing public support, it is important that the projects embody a link to the commercial and industrial realities, and that priority requirements proceed in a far quicker fashion than hitherto; the timescales for the completion of the projects are therefore of crucial importance.
The planning phase shown here is indeed the project definition phase for which guidelines are given in the next section. It is expected to include at least a report including the project work items and timescales. Then the operational phase for a project will depend on its definition. Most of them will consist of an actual programme of pre-standardization or standardization. In Figure 1, standardization programmes refer to SRC6 recommendations and will only apply to EPII projects identified as a follow-up of these SRC6 recommendations. For other projects the milestones for the operatonal phase can be different.
A number of criteria have been identified so far in order to understand EPII project requirements. It is expected that this list will be augmented and refined, especially through the work being carried out in the Architecture projects:
An EPII project is identified and progressed through the process described in Figure 2. EII/GII-related Requirements come from a number of sources : HLSG, European Commission or others (for example ICT-SB members). The ETSI SRC6 report has been an important source of requirements. The ICT-SB receives the requirements and allocate them to its members, as technical body for refinement and understanding of the requirements.
An EPII project is created by ICTSB when:
The approach outlined in the ETSI SRC6 Report, and the use of the Enterprise Model (see project 4.1) to understand how a project is placed in the overall GII/GIS picture could be useful in understanding the overall GII model and how the EPII projects fit into this model.
It goes without saying that the actual execution of the projects is a matter for the organizations to which they have been allocated, entirely in keeping with the ICTSB’s way of working. The required resources should come from the market players, or, of course, from other sources such as the European Commission if there are political or regulatory requirement that are European-specific.
Most of the EPII projects are collaborative, ie they have been defined as a collaborative task between a leader (which is an ICT-SB member) and a number of other bodies that may or may not be ICT-SB members. The first task of the leading body (to take place during the project plan phase) is to ensure that collaboration can indeed take place among all parties involved, by:
The lead organization for each EPII project should appoint a "project co-ordinator", who provides the ICTSB with the information it needs to maintain its overview of progress.
In the first instance, this information should include the scope of the project, approximate timescales, and the identity of the technical working groups carrying it out (including information on the collaboration aspect). In some cases, notably where the project involves the standardization or specification of an information society application, this may start with information on the scope of the technical group concerned, but the project leader is encouraged to progress the specific definition of the EPII project, based on the features given in Section 3, in the best possible timeframe. In the general case, the project will consist of a set of individual work items in one or more technical working groups or organizations, making up the block of work needed to fulfil standardization needs.