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CORA / Common Reference Architecture

Partner’s name:Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (Istat)

WP1 – Project Management

Deliverable 1.1 Preliminary Report

Preliminary Report

Partner in charge / Istat
Version / 1.1
Date / 02/02/2010
Version / Changes / Date
1.0 / Creation / 02/02/2010
1.1 / Modifications / 09/02/2010

This document is distributed under Creative Commons licence

"Attribution-Share Alike - 3.0 ", available at the Internet site:

1.Summary

2.Activities and Milestones of the Period

3.State of Advancement of Work Packages

3.1.WP1: Project Management

3.2.WP2: Requirements and state of the art

3.3.WP3: Definition of the technical architecture

3.4.WP4: Organizational Architecture

3.5.WP5: Dissemination

4.Appendix 1

5.Appendix 2

  1. Summary

The purpose of this documentis to illustrate the state of advancement of the COmmon Reference Architecture (CORA) Essnet at month 3 (M3). First, a brief description of the main activities and milestones of this period will be presented. Then, a detailed state of advancement for each CORA workpackage (WP) will be described.

  1. Activities and Milestones of the Period

The CORA Essnet kick-off meeting was held in Luxembourg on October 19th and 20th 2009. Representatives of all CORA partners were present at the meeting. After a general introduction to the project, each WP leader presented the due outcomes of the WP of his/her responsibility, as well as a proposal for the work organization. The detailed minutes of the meeting are attached as Appendix 1.

A wiki for CORA was set up at the address:

The wiki has general sections and sections specifically dedicated to each WP. Such sections have been organized by each WP leader in order to support the collaborative work among WP participants.

A CORA web site has also been set up, hosted by the OSOR site, at the address:

So far the web site has been populated with general information about the project.

The CORA Essnet WP leaders meeting was held in The Hague, on January 26th and 27th 2010. All CORA WP leaders were present at the meeting. The meeting had the purpose of checking the advancement of the work and of planning the intermediate meeting to be held in month 5 (M5). The detailed minutes of the meeting are attached as Appendix 2, while a description of the status of advancement for each workpackage is presented in Section 3.

  1. State of Advancement of Work Packages

3.1.WP1: Project Management

During the period to which this document is referred, the work by different partners was monitored by both email exchanges and wiki consultation. The degree of participation and reaction of the partners has been very good.

Both meetings held in the period, the kick-off and the WP leaders meeting were very successful in so far as the planned objectives were achieved.

The deliverable due in the reference period, is this preliminary report to which each partner has contributed.

Among the activities that are ongoing for WP1, there are:

1)Intermediate meeting organization to be held in month 5 (M5).

2)Intermediate report to be deliveredin month 5 (M5).

3.2.WP2: Requirements and state of the art

The principal activity of WP2 in the reference period has been the design of the questionnaire.

A first draft of the questionnaire was submitted for evaluation to CORA partners on November 9th 2009, together with a cover letter introducing the purpose and the content of the questionnaire.

On December 10th 2009, a new version of the questionnaire was sent by SN in order to have:

a) a pilot round/field test by all organizations participating in CORA

b) a review and approval round, to be conducted in parallel, by the technical committee.

On February 1st 2010, the questionnaire was sent outto ITDG mailing list plus MSIS mailing list, specifically MSIS countries present at the last meetings, Canada, Australia, Korea, New Zealand and the US.

The scheduled deadline for questionnaire answers is February 22nd 2010.

The on-going activities of WP2 include:

  • Analysis of the results as soon as they start coming in
  • Data entry application, aggregated data, draft tables, text for Set of requirements report due month 6 (M6).
  • Translation, classification and analysis of documents in State of the Art report due month 6 (M6).

3.3.WP3: Definition of the technical architecture

WP3 work organization has been strongly supported by the wiki. Specifically, WP3 leader organized a section of the wiki for the purpose of supporting the discussion on WP3 done so far (mainly from November 2009 to January 2010). This discussion was organized according to the different sections in which a document proposed by CBS people at the kick-off meeting was organized. Inputs by all partners were collected for the first four sections of the document, and the WP3 leader has included all such inputs in a new version of such a document containing the specification of the CORA architecture.

Moreover, a proof-of-concept software prototype has been started to be developed by CBS people. The prototype shows how a process can be structured as a sequence of services with related input/output.

The on-going activities on WP3 regard:

  • How to make operational CORA architecture (orchestration of services to cope with process view; behaviour of services, how to model services composed just by other services).
  • Collaboration between Istat and CBS for the development of “proof of concept” software prototypes with two different technological platforms: .net (CBS) and java-based platform (Istat).

3.4.WP4: Organizational Architecture

WP4 is currently working on all the four tasks in which it is organized.

Two of the planned tasks are in progress, namely:

  • Suitable licensing models for sharing applications
  • Legal Frameworks for the shared development

The two remaining planned tasks need some input from WP2 questionnaire results; more specifically:

  • The task “Business model for the support of shared applications” has started but will be completed and refined according to the questionnaire’s results.
  • The task “Guidelines and best practices for designing, programming and testing of shared applications, including tools to be used” has started but will also be completed and refined on the basis of the results on shared software tools collected by the questionnaire.

3.5.WP5: Dissemination

As far as WP5, the following activities have been done in the reference period:

  • CORA Wiki:As already introduced, the CORA wiki has been made available to all project partners at the address
  • Mailing lists: Two mailing lists have been set up, namely cora-all, including all people working on the project from the different participating countries, and cora-tc consisting of people included in the CORA technical committee (see Appendix 1).
  • CORA web site on OSOR: As decided at the kick-off meeting (see Appendix 1), the CORA web site has been set up and hosted by the OSOR site. There is a planned activity for feeding the site with the contribution of all partners.
  • Definition of a CORA deliverable template. A CORA deliverable template has been defined and is available on the wiki under the section dedicated to WP5.

Moreover, CORA has been presented at the following dissemination event in the reference period:

  • IT Directors Group (ITDG) event, 21 and 22 October 2009, Luxembourg.
  1. Appendix 1

Kick-off Meeting, Luxembourg October 19th-20th 2009

MINUTES

Participants:

Antonio Consoli (Eurostat)

Giulio Barcaroli (Istat)

Monica Scannapieco (Istat),

Giuseppe Sindoni (Istat)

Carlo Vaccari (Istat)

Antonino Virgillito (Istat)

Peder Naes (SSB)

Jenny Linnerud (SSB)

Jean-Pierre Kent (CBS)

Ronald Ossendrijver (CBS)

Marton Vucsan (CBS)

Karsten Bjergkvist (DST)

Helle Stender (DST)

Dieter Profos (SFSO)

Janis Linde (CSB)

Norbert Talers (CSB)

Aiva Irbe (CSB)

OCTOBER 19th

Introduction to ESSnets by Antonio Consoli

AntonioConsoliintroduces himself as the project manager at Eurostat of CORA. He mentions a possible prosecution of this network (COmmon Reference Environment –CORE). About EUROSTAT communication duties, he confirms that three months reports can be sent without a template, while intermediate and final report must be conform to a template to ask to .

CORA: Generalities by Carlo Vaccari

Carlo Vaccari presents an introduction to CORA, an history of how the project was conceived and the relation of CORA with other initiatives. About observers of CORA, two countries are mentioned, namely Australia and Portugal.

WP1 Description by Monica Scannapieco

A possible strategy for quality control of the project artifacts is proposed. It follows a discussion on how the steering committee of CORA (to be composed by both EUROSTAT and CORA partners). A possibility is to have the people of the technical committee representing CORA partners. The technical committee is composed by WP leaders in the persons of:

WP1: Monica Scannapieco

WP2: Rune Gloersen, Jenny Linnerud

WP3: Marton Vucsan

WP4: Dieter Profos

WP5: To be decided by ISTAT

WP2 Description by Jenny Linnerud

Jenny Linnerud presents WP2. Suggestion by Ronald Ossendrijver of a “workshop” to collect requirements. Jenny asks for suggestions on people to contact for the questionnaire: IT, business, methodologists? Giuseppe Sindoni suggests a possible structure of the questionnaire into IT, business, methodology section and to send it to ITDG people.

WP3 Description by Marton Vucsan

Marton Vucsan outlines that he would like that premises and choices present in the document produced by CBS people would be reviewed in a couple of weeks.

WP4 Description by Dieter Profos

Dieter Profos presents WP4. He outlines it’s important to identify people expert in legal aspects within each participating institution. Marton remarks we should consider different kinds of licenses, also “half-closed” licenses. Giuseppe Sindoni will provide contacts with open data foundation initiative.

WP5 Description by Antonino Virgillito

It is decided to have a template for deliverables of CORA in MS WORD 2003. It is outlined the need for notification of publications on the wiki. Jenny suggests the metadata working group on June and Metis Ginevra on March as possible dissemination places.

Presentation the Sharing Advisory Board (SAB) objectives by Marton Vucsan

There is a discussion on how managing the inventory of existing sharing software mentioned in the CORA proposal, with the following outcomes: (i) WP2 produces the list of software products; (ii) SAB publishes and maintains the list; (iii) WP5 organize the OSOR section on statistics on the basis of GSBPM. Consoli (Eurostat) will be considered as a contact for the point (iii).

There is also a discussion about the best way to organize CORA web site. It is decided to investigate OSOR hosting of the site.

It is also discussed how ITDG can provide a support for the survey collection. Jenny proposes to have a support in the “soliciting” phase.

It follows a discussion on initiatives at national level that are related to CORA objectives. Carlo Vaccari outlines the ItalianCNIPA Open Source Observatory. Marton Vucsan remarks they have an internal project in CBS going in a similar direction, Jenny Linnerud mentions SOA architecture under consideration in Norway.

A preliminary discussion on how organizing the questionnaire is carried out. The principal out comes are :

  • what: business, technical, organization
  • who: statistical methodologists, IT
  • Possibility of a case study in free text instead of a questionnaire

Focus on a specific phase of GSBPM, e.g. Run Collection with the following questions:

  • How do you run collection?
  • What tools are you using?
  • Which organization unit deals with it?
  • Future plans?
  • Improvement plans?
  • Which boxes? 20-30 questions
  • Selection criterion?
  • Shared tools: tools you use and you export?
  • Which kind of cooperation is there?
  • Some further considerations regard: respondent level, additional questions (5) on motivations, background of respondents

OCTOBER 20 th

Presentation by Ronald Ossendrijver of the document “A Layered Model for the Production of Statistics”

Some remarks concerning the document are:

  • Defined exchanged formats between tools in the same statistical process (and across processes), e.g. XML +schema
  • Discussion on the complexity of data and their relationship with respect to services
  • SDMX and its usage within our CORA architectures

Discussion led by Dieter Profos on WP4:

Three areas are identified by Dieter:

  • Licensing (IDABC contact A.Wronski);
  • Business Model. PC-AXIS, MSIS/NL, Cloud computing
  • Tooling

Concrete contact to be sent by Istat

The meeting ends with a TO-DO List organized by WP.

  • WP1
  • Send minutes
  • Check notification of upload on the WIKI
  • Start organizing next meeting planned in NL on 26/27 January
  • WP2
  • Send a template of a METIS case study by this week for the questionnaire
  • A first draft of the questionnaire by the end of October
  • Second draft of the questionnaire by the end of November
  • Third draft of the questionnaire by the end of December
  • WP3
  • By next week list of subjects to review, with also general reviews, some topics that need better insight.
  • WP4
  • First draft of 4.1 and 4.2 by end of November
  • WP5
  • Provide a word template for the deliverable
  • OSOR-web site
  • Wiki stuff, upload
  • Check other forums like: Metadata working group on June,Metis Ginevra on March
  • Mailing list management

Further Outcomes

Outcomes of discussion with Eurostat

  • Eurostat will pay the 40% of the overall budget in advance.
  • When we will send the intermediate report (M6), we can also communicate possible modifications to the budget for dissemination and possible need to postpone the final meeting.
  • Eurostat offered to host CORA wiki, so the wiki will be moved from Istat to Eurostat.
  • COmmon Reference Environment (CORE): with the intermediate report outline requirements for the future CORE Essnet

Outcomes from ITDG

CORA project was significantly appreciated by ITDG members.

  • Support for the questionnaire. Possibility of using ITDG members for questionnaire delivery and for solicitations.
  1. Appendix 2

WP Leaders Meeting, The Hague,January26th-27th 2010

MINUTES

Participants:

Monica Scannapieco (Istat),

Carlo Vaccari (Istat)

Jenny Linnerud (SSB)

Jean-Pierre Kent (CBS)

Ronald Ossendrijver (CBS)

Marton Vucsan (CBS)

Dieter Profos (SFSO)

JANUARY 26th

Presentation of the Agenda by Carlo Vaccari

The meeting started on time at 9:30. Carlo Vaccari presented the agenda of the meeting reported below.

FIRST DAY January 26th :

9:30 - 9:45 Presentation of the agenda by Carlo Vaccari

9:45 - 10:45 WP2 Status by Jenny Linnerud

10:45 - 11:00 Coffee Break

11:00 - 11:30 Discussion WP2

11:30 - 12:30 WP3 Status by Jean-PierreKent

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch Break

13:30 - 17:00 Discussion WP3

SECOND DAY January 27th :

9:30 - 10:30 WP4 Status by Dieter Profos

10:30 - 11:00 Discussion WP4

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee Break

11:15 - 11:45 WP1 and WP5 Status by Monica Scannapieco

11:45 – 13:00 Planning Intermediate Meeting and Report

WP2Status by Jenny Linnerud and Discussion

Jenny Linnerud presented the work done on WP2. The questionnaire has been designed with SN leading this task.

A first draft of the questionnaire was submitted for evaluation to CORA partners on November 9th 2009, together with a cover letter introducing the purpose and the content of the questionnaire.

On December 10th2009, a new version of the questionnaire was sent by SN in order to have:

a) a pilot round/field test by all organizations participating in CORA

b) a review and approval round, to be conducted in parallel, by the technical committee.

Jenny outlined that the questionnaire was almost completed with just some specific questions to be discussed together at the meeting, namely:

  • Need to define the target population for the questionnaire. It was decided to send it to ITDG mailing list plus MSIS mailing list, specifically MSIS countries present at the last meetings, Canada, Australia, Korea, New Zealand and the US.
  • How many reminders. Two reminders for the questionnaire answered were scheduled.
  • Anonymity issues. There was a discussion on how to treat anonymity of countries answering the questionnaire. It was decided to keep anonymous the results of the questionnaire analysis, unless exceptions to treat in an ad-hoc way.
  • Sharing of information among respondents. It was decided for share all the results among the respondents, either via the project wiki or via email.
  • Proposal of an online questionnaire. It was decided that it’s better not to have an online questionnaire, due to the limited number of respondents and to the specific structure of the questionnaire (with several attachments).
  • Level of automation. There was a discussion if putting a general question on the level of automation of IT, but it was decided it was better not to have it, due to the limited and not clear information that would have been collected by this question.
  • Missing answers. It was decided to make clear that the questionnaire needs to be filled by different people in order to limit the number of missing answers.
  • Question 5.5: The question is about the open source software used by the organization. It was decided to categorize it into “development of statistical software” and “statistical software” categories, with max 5 answers to be specified for each category.
  • Input to WP4: software questionnaires categorized by the GSBPM structure. The responsibility for the questionnaires thereafter is by WP4.
  • Next scheduled deadlines: February 1st 2010 for sending the questionnaire. April 19th 2010 for deliverables 2.2 and 2.3. However, though the deliverables will be ready by that date, some preliminary results about the analysis of the questionnaires will be ready by the intermediate meeting that will be held before.

WP3Status by Jean-PierreKent

Jean-PierreKent presented the work done on WP3.

Specifically, he first showed the wiki organization that allowed conducting the discussion on WP3 done from November 2009 to January 2010. This discussion was organized according to the different sections in which the document proposed by CBS people at the kick-off meeting was organized. Moreover he proposed to use the wiki also as forum for general comments on the architecture.

A discussion followed on some questions /comments proposed by the CORA partners during the discussion on the wiki, including:

  • Layers and levels: it was decided to remove the level attribute from the element class of the Construction Dimension class model
  • From architecture to view: there was the proposal to call the architecture “view”. Istat disagreed on this.

WP3Technical Issues by Ronald Ossendrijver

Ronald Ossendrijver presented a proof-of-concept software prototype developed by CBS people. The prototype showed how a process can be structured as a sequence of services with related input/output.

Moreover some technical challenges concerning how to make operational CORA architecture were outlined, namely:

  • Orchestration of services to cope with process view
  • Behaviour of services: need to elaborate on construction prescript and transformation model concepts
  • How to model services composed just by other services

SECOND DAY January 27th :