DIRECTORATE-GENERAL HOME AFFAIRS
Directorate C : Migration and Borders
Unit C.2: IT projects: Infrastructure and legal issues
Unit C.3: Large scale IT systems and Biometrics
Call for Tender
HOME/2010/SIVI/FW-A/C203
“External assistance for project management, consultancy and quality assurance to European large-scale IT system projects in Home Affairs matters”
Annex 11 – Part 3: Common Glossary and Acronyms
Term / Abbrevi-ation / DescriptionAccess / The ability to interact with a system or to enter a physically secured area.
Acceptance criteria / A set of criteria that a system or a component must satisfy in order to be accepted by a user, a customer, or other authorised entity.
Acceded Countries / AC / A term that refers to the 12 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the SlovakRepublic, and Slovenia, as well as Romania and Bulgaria.
Alert / An individual data entry on a person or an object in the SIS.
Annex / Any of the annexes hereto.
A-Services / Assessment of the Deliverable which a Main Development Contractor has to deliver and verification that the deliverable corresponds to its requirements as laid down in the respective Specific Contract.
B- Services / Performance of a defined service in relation to the development and/or operation of large IT-systems in the field of Home Affairsother than A-Services as laid down in the respective Specific Contract.
Confidentiality Agreement / Signed confirmation of the Support Contractor and its staff that all confidential information are treated strictly confidential.
Alphanumeric data / Data consisting of characters, numbers and symbols as opposed to e.g. multimedia data.
Applicant / The person applying for a visa.
Audit / An independent examination to assess conformity and completeness,according to pre-defined criteria.
Availability / The property that data, information and communications systems are accessible and usable on a timely basis in the required manner.
BCU / BCU / Components of the Central System hosted on a secondary site geographically separated from the CU to ensure high availability.
BNI / BNI / An NI, that might be installed in a geographically separated location because a user has two national systems or two computer centres.
Biometrics / Unique combinations of measurable physical or behavioural characteristics such as fingerprints, iris scans, face and voice recognition etc. with the view to use them for additional information and/or comparison.
Central Domain / CD / A set of elements under the responsibility of the System Management Organization (SMO).
Central System / CS / A set of components (i.e. hardware, software, communication, etc.) to be developed, installed and operated to support the services that have to be dealt with centrally. The Central System is composed of the CU and the BCU.
Consultation / In VIS, the process of checking a Visa or an applicant.
COTS / Commercial off-the-shelf products.
Central Unit / CU / Components of the Central System hosted on the primary site in a separate location from the BCU to ensure high availability.
Central Schengen Information System / C.SIS / In SIS, the central component of SIS is located in Strasbourg.
Data Protection / A group of techniques and measures used to preserve three desirable aspects of data: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability.
Data protection needs to conform with the international instruments (EU Charter of Fundamental Rights; European Convention of human rights; Directive 95/46 CE; Convention n. 108 of the Council of Europe; article 118 of the Schengen Convention).
Deliverable / Any measurable, tangible, verifiable outcome, results, or item that must be produced to complete a project or part of a project.
Each phase of a project results in some outputs. These outputs are clearly defined and described as deliverables, which can be checked and approved as part of the management process before moving on to the next phase. They may be text, diagrams, charts, software, etc.
Documentation / : / Any technical, product and service documentation, tools and manuals i) as described in the TTS and not included in the Deliverables or ii) as otherwise appropriate in connection with the use of the Systems or the Services and to be supplied in English.
End-User / Any individual person authorised to make use of the system. End-Users are managed by the responsible authorities (users).
The term mustnot be confused with User.
Facial Recognition / Use of stable features of the human face -like the upper outlines of the eye sockets, the distance between the eyes, the areas around the cheekbones and the sides of the mouth- to identify individuals. They are extracted either from black-and-white or colour, high-resolution, pictures.
Flexibility / The ease with which a system or component can be modified for use in applications or environments other than those for which it was specifically designed.
Integrity / The property of data or information that has not been modified or altered in an unauthorised manner.
Interface Control Document / ICD / A set of specifications and procedures that will define how the users will communicate with the National Interface.
Identification / The process of determining the identity of a person or object by comparing specific identifiers against identifiers stored in a database. Typical identifiers can be a person’s name, date of birth, biometrics data, vehicle identification number. From a technological perspective, identification is a One-to-Many search.
IT Infrastructure Library / ITIL / The ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) consists of 6 sets: Service Support; Service Delivery; Planning to Implement Service Management; ICT Infrastructure Management; Applications Management; The Business Perspective.
IT Service Management / ITSM / IT Service Management itself is generally divided into two main areas, Service Support and Service Delivery. Together, these two areas consist of 10 disciplines that are responsible for the provision and management of effective IT services.
JLS / Justice, Liberte and Securite, Directorate-General for Justice, Security and Freedom.
HOME / Home Affairs, Diretorate-General Home Affairs.
Logging / A chronological record of system activities and transactions that is sufficient to enable the reconstruction, reviewing, and examination of activities surrounding or leading to an operation, a procedure, or an event in a transaction from its inception to final results.
Matching (biometrics) / The comparison of biometric data through an algorithm.
Member States / MS / Member States of the European Union. The signatories to the EU and EC Treaties; the countries that together form the EU.
National copy of the SIS database / Copy of (some of) the data stored in the SIS II Central System, hosted by the National Systems and regularly updated by the SIS II Central System.
In some other documents this is often referred to as Technical Copy (TC).
National Domain / ND / A set of elements under the responsibility of a National Authority.
National Interface / NI / A NI is a set of hardware and software to be developed centrally and delivered to users. It serves as the entry point to the Central Domain and will enable the exchange of information between the National Systems and the Central System.
National System / NS / A system (or a set of systems) located in the National Domain under the responsibility of the national authorities.
National Schengen Information System / N.SIS / In the SIS environment, the National section of SIS is located in each SchengenMemberState under the national responsibility.
Programme Manager / The overall project manager for SIS II and VIS appointed by the Contractor or his duly authorized representative.For further information please see the document 'Contract' of this tender documentation.
Programme Officer / The overall project representative appointed by the Commission or his duly authorized representative. For further information please see the document 'Contract' of this tender documentation.
Reliability / The ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time.
Response Time / The elapsed time between the end of an inquiry or demand on a computer system and the beginning of a response.
Schengen Acquis / Consists of the 1985 Schengen Agreement, 1990 Schengen Convention and declarations of the Schengen Executive Committee. Now integrated into the EU Treaties and subsequent legal instruments.
Schengen Area / The area covered by the territory of the countries that signed up to the Convention applying the Schengen Agreement of 1985, and which resulted in the right of free travel within that territory without checks at internal borders. At the time of publication of this document these countries are 22 EU Member States (AT, BE, CZ, EE, ES, DE, DK, FI, FR, GR, HU, IT, LT, LU, LV, MT, NL, PL, PT, SE, SI, SK) as well as Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. Ireland and United Kingdom participate only in some aspects of the Schengen acquis but did not abolish checks at internal borders. Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romaniaare in the process of joining the Schengen area.
Schengen Convention / Signed in 1990 and taking effect in 1995, this convention abolished checks at internal borders of the signatory States and introduced flanking measures, including common visa policy and common rules for border management at external frontiers. Inter alia, the set of common rules defines the conditions for entry into the Schengen area, including how controls at external borders have to be carried out, and introduces the Schengen visa for stays not exceeding three months.
Schengen Information System / SIS / A joint database, which gives Member States' authorities access to alerts on persons and property for police checks, border control, visa issuing and administration of legislation on aliens.
Services / A-Services and B-Services.
SIS I+ / SIS I+ / SIS I+ is the current implementation of the SIS.
SISone4all / Intermediate solution to allow the Acceding Countries to join SIS I+ until SIS II is ready.
SIS II / SIS II / The current Schengen Information System will be replaced by a new, second generation system Schengen Information System, which must allow for the integration of new Member States and to make it possible to add new functionalities taking advantage of the latest technologies.
SISNET / SISNET / SISNET is the communication network used by SIS I+, SIRENE and VISION.
SIS II Projr SIS II project officer / The project officer appointed by the Commission specifically for SIS II or his duly authorized representative. S/he is responsible to
Service Level Agreement / SLA / A written agreement concluded between users and the provider of a service, which defines and quantifies the level of service to be delivered by the provider.
Specific Contracts / The service contracts entered into from time to time between the Commission and the Support Contractor for the supply of Services.
Supplementary Information Requests at the National Entries / SIRENE / Summary description of a set ofprocedures for transmitting the supplementary information required by an end-user for further action when the SIS has been consulted and a hit established. Every SchengenMemberState has its own SIRENE Office. Those offices are contact points between the Schengen States in matters relating to the SIS.
System Management Organisation / SMO / The System Management Organisation (SMO) will be responsible for system management of the Central Unit and system management of the NIs.
System Operation Organisation / SOO / The System Operation Organization will be primarily responsible for operational management and control of the Central System's hardware, operating system andDBMS. The SOO could be part of the SMO.
Technical Tender Specifications / TTS / Annex 11 – Technical Tender Specifications, in turn part of the Tender Documents.
Tender Documents / The tender documents issued by the Commission further to the Restricted Call for Tenders published in the Official Journal of the European Communities OJ[…).
Traceability / The ability to trace the history, application or location of an event.
User / A user is an administrative authority (e.g. of a MS or a European Body) connected to SIS II and/or to VIS.
The term mustnot be confused with End-User.
Verification / A comparison to establish the validity of a claimed identity. This is a process of a One-to-One match.
Visa Information System / VIS / Visa Information System is a system for the exchange of visa data between Member States
Visa / An authorisation issued by a MemberState or a decision taken by such State which is required with a view to:
— entry for an intended stay in that MemberState or in several Member States,
— entry for transit through the territory of that MemberState or several MemberStates,.
Visa Inquiry Open Border Network / Vision / Every SchengenMemberState(Foreign Affairs Ministry) has his own Vision Office. These sites exchange messages in order to carry out the consultation procedure for Visa applications laid down in Art. 17.2 of the Schengen Convention in the cases foreseen in the Common consular Instructions.
Visa policy / The Amsterdam Treaty, which took effect in May 1999, brought the common visa policy into the legal and institutional framework of the EU: rules on visas for intended stays of no more than three months, standards on procedures for the issue of long-term visas.
VIS Project VIS Project Officer / The project officer appointed by the Commission specifically for VISor his duly authorized representative.
The following abbreviations have been also used in the tender documents:
BCP / Business Continuity PlanBMS / Biometric Matching System
CM / Committee meeting
CMB / Change Management Board
COM / The (European) Commission
COTS / Commercial of the shelf
CS / Central System
DPM / Depute Programme Manager
DRP / Disaster Recovery Plan
DTS / Detailed Technical Specification
FAT / Factory Acceptance Test
ICD / Interface Control Document
JMS / Java Message Service
MDC / Main Development Contractor
MPP / Master Project Plan
MS / MemberState
NI / National Identity
NPM / National Project Managers
NS / National System
OST / Operational System Test
PMB / Project Management Board
PSAT / Provisional System Acceptance Test
PSG / Project Steering Group
PSO / Project Support Office
QAP / Quality Assurance Plan
SIS / Schengen Information System
SLA / Service Level Agreement
SST / System Solution Test
TAG / Test Advisory Group
TDD / Test Design Description
TESTA / Trans European Services for Telematics between Administrations
TMB / Test Management Board
VIS / Visa information System
WG / Working Group
Call for Tender HOME/2010/SIVI/FW-A/C203, Annex 11 – Part 3: Common Glossary and Acronyms
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