Next generation of information systems to support EU external policies

The broad range and the complexity of Common Security and Defence Policy civilians' missions make the management of information and of resources critical to decision-making, planning, optimizing for pre-deployment, and deploying capabilities within such missions, and essential to increase the efficiency, visibility and impact of the missions.

The processes, procedures, information systems, and equipment currently committed to such missions by the Member States need to be brought together and coordinated to constitute a common interoperable platform to enhance the EU capacity to play its role.

This topic is to support the development of a cost-effective common Situational Awareness, Information Exchange and Operation Control Platform.

Cost-effectiveness, and shorter time to implement may result from adapting and exploiting existing approaches and experience in the defence sector, and leveraging from results from relevant projects formerly funded by the EU.

Taking into consideration the findings of the CSA under topic "BES-11-2015: Information management topic 2: Information management, systems and infrastructure for civilian EU External Actions" of the 2014-2015 Secure Societies Work Programme, activities must be structured along the following phases:

Phase 1: Plan the research and the design of the platform, based on common performance levels, requirements and associated specifications for the development of a cost-effective common situational awareness, information exchange and operation control platform for EU civilian external actions developed in BES-11-2015, to be published prior to the opening of the Call in the section "Topic Conditions & Documents" for this topic on the Participant Portal"

Plans must consider integrating existing technologies, data models and methodologies (including pooling and sharing of capabilities) according to design constraints expressed by the buyers, to ensure cost effectiveness and interoperability.

The results of phase 1 should lead to calls for tenders (for the procurement of R&D services) which focus on technologies clearly identified to be part of a unique architecture.

Phase 2: The research and specification work should lead to at least 2 versions of flexible platforms to support, each, several scenarios for EU actions under different framework conditions.

Phase 3: By the end of 2020, the project should have documented, tested, and validated the use of each platform in at least two operational scenarios within actual multinational operations. The participation of relevant and competent authorities in the consortium of buyers is a prerequisite.

Whereas activities will have an exclusive focus on civil applications, coordination with the activities of the European Defence Agency (EDA) may be considered with possible synergies being established with projects funded by the EDA programmes. The complementarity of such synergies should be described comprehensively. On-going cooperation should be taken into account.

For grants awarded under this topic SEC-13–BES–2017, beneficiaries will be subject to the following additional obligations aiming to ensure exploitation of its results:

To ensure that the outcome of the PCP action becomes also available to EU Member State national authorities as well as EU agencies not participating in the PCP for further procurement purposes, the proposal must necessarily state:

(1). Agreement from participating procurement authorities to negotiate, in good faith and on a case-by-case basis, with non-participating procurement authorities that wish to procure a capability or a product fully or partly derived from the PCP action, the use of the information required to run such a procurement process, and solely for that purpose.

(2). Commitment from participating procurement authorities to consult with any legal entity generating information to be released for the purpose set out in paragraph (1), unless contrary to applicable legislation.

(3). Commitment from participating procurement authorities to negotiate the use granted under paragraph (1) on Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

The respective option on additional exploitation obligations of Article 28.1 of the Model Grant Agreement will be applied.

The outcome of the proposal is expected to lead to development up to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 8; please see part G of the General Annexes.

Indicative budget: The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of € 10million would allow for this topic to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Short term:

• At least two prototype platforms deployed and tested in several, different real-life environments.

Medium term:

• Better integration of existing systems and methodologies in situational awareness, information exchange and operation control platform prototypes.
• Solid basis for a full-scale, cost-effective common situational awareness, information exchange and operation control platform for EU civilian external actions.

Long term:

• Improved management of EU resources' allocated to EU civilian external actions.