1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. EXPECTED OUTCOMEThe DIME/ITDG steering group is invited to review the status report of the SERV project and to endorse the roadmap for the phase 3 of the project.

2. BACKGROUND AND BRIEF HISTORY

Investment in IT systems to support the collection, production and dissemination of statistics represents a significant share of statistical organizations budgets in terms of financial and human resources. Reusing software components across organizations can bring significant cost reductions and efficiency gains by avoiding the need to "reinvent the wheel" each time an IT application is needed for statistical production. As ESS business processes become increasingly standardized, software components (hereafter IT services) could be designed and operated in ways that allow their reuse and sharing across ESS members.

The objective of the SERV project is to create the conditions for developing and sharing IT services in the ESS. The scope of the project includes the set-up of governance aspects and the development of IT services to be shared among the ESS members.

Given the priorities stemming from the ESS Vision 2020, the project focuses on the development of IT services needed for the implementation of the ESS Vision 2020 portfolio.

The SERV project is structured in three phases (see Annex 1):

• The first phase 1 (2015-2016) focused on providing the necessary technical infrastructure for developing IT services to be shared in the ESS.

• The second phase (2016-2017) focused on implementing guidelines, governance, templates and example services (selected according to the priority areas of the Vision) to foster the sharing and reuse of IT services in the ESS.

• The third phase (2018-2019) will focus on the deployment of the governance set up in the previous phase and the lessons learnt, and will further develop and roll out IT services in the statistical production environments of the NSIs. Additional deliverables will be introduced to expand those provided in the business case.

In February 2015, the ESSC endorsed the business case of the SERV project and the implementation of its first phase.

In November 2016m the ESSC reviewed the execution of the first phase and endorsed the implementation of the second phase of the project.

The intermediate results of the second phase of SERV were presented to the IT Working Group (ITWG). The roadmap for the third phase was presented to the IT Directors Group plenary in February 2017 and validated by the Steering Group of the project. It was endorsed by the ITWG. The results of the second phase and the plan for the third phase will be presented to the ESSC in November 2017.

3. POLICY CONTEXT

The SERV project is part of the ESS Vision 2020 Implementation Portfolio and it links to two of the key areas of the ESS Vision 2020:

• "Identifying user needs and cooperation with stakeholders": the project facilitates cooperation by enabling sharing of IT services among ESS members.

• "Efficient and robust statistical process": the project will lead to increased efficiency by fostering the use of standard IT services. It will also contribute to reduce the investment cost for new IT systems development.

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4. CONSEQUENCES FOR NATIONAL STATISTICAL INSTITUTES

Sharing IT services will help ESS members to optimize their investments by finding synergies and sharing IT investments among ESS partners. This can be achieved by the use of an IT service hosted by other members of the ESS or its reuse within the organization's IT systems.

5. OUTSTANDING ISSUES

The first phase of the project focused on the technical conditions for the development of IT services to be shared in the ESS. The second phase built example IT services to garner lessons learnt both on transforming an existing solution and also on deploying a reused solution into production. The selected IT services covered data collection, data validation and transformation, statistical dissemination, and identification of legal units in business registries. The selection of these services was based on proposals from the ESS partners focusing on the main GSPBM steps and on the priorities of the Vision 2020.

In the second phase of the project, the governance aspects for the development and maintenance of shared IT services, guidelines on practices for shared software ownership, maintenance and revision, strategic study on candidate services and selection method, as well as sustainability actions have been produced and are being refined.

The third phase of the project will focus on deploying the outcomes of phase two. Additional IT services will be developed and deployed based on the needs of the ESS Vision 2020 implementation portfolio using the assessment method and candidate services list.

6. RISK ASSESSMENT

Coordination with business projects and insufficient participation from ESS members have been identified as major risks for the project.

The lack of coordination with ESS Vision 2020 projects would result in low business value of project outcomes. To mitigate this risk, close coordination with the ESS Vision 2020 project portfolio will continue, with a view to defining priorities for new IT services investment needs.

The lack of participation of Member States would undermine the deployment of the deliverables of the project. Several instruments have been put in place to facilitate the involvement of Member States. A Steering Group and a Task Force are now operational and an ESSnet has started to involve ESS members in the development of IT services.

No shift in risks has been identified.

7. NEXT STEPS

The project is now entering the third phase. Following its completion the project will come to and end; the project team, with the advice of the Steering Group, will then elaborate a closing report for the ESSC, including an assessment of the results of the project and a recommendation on steps to take to sustain the use of Shared Services in the ESS beyond the project phase.

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ESS VISION 2020 SERV PROJECT: STATUS REPORT

1. PURPOSE OF THE DOCUMENT

In February 2015, the ESSC agreed on the business case of Shared Services project ("SERV") and the implementation of the first phase. The goal was to create the environment to allow sharing IT services1 in the ESS and to define the priorities and areas where new IT services should be developed.

The purpose of this document is to: present the main outputs of the project close to the end of the second phase;

provide a roadmap for the next phase of the project during 2018-19.

At the end of the project in 2019, a closing report will be presented to the ESSC with possible steps for entering the process phase of the Sharing Services initiative in the ESS and ensuring its continuity.

2. OVERVIEW OF THE ESS.VIP SERV PROJECT

The purpose of the SERV project was defined as follows in the business case2:The project will provide guidelines for describing statistical services, recommendations for setting up appropriate governance for sharing of services across processes and among ESS and Eurostat, as well as advice on available products (including open source) to be used to set up service oriented architecture in an organisation.

This project supports mainly the following key areas of the ESS VISION 2020:

• "Identifying user needs and cooperation with stakeholders"

The project facilitates cooperation, by enabling sharing of IT functionalities among ESS members.

• "Efficient and robust statistical process"

The project will lead to increased process efficiency by enabling commonly used IT services and standardization. Re-using IT services can reduce the investment cost for new IT systems in the ESS.

The SERV project builds on the principles defined in the Common Statistical Production Architecture (CSPA) project3 sponsored by the High-Level Group on the Modernisation of Statistical Production and Methods of UNECE. CSPA provides a reference architecture for the statistical industry to develop and implement IT services through international cooperation.

The SERV project is structured in three phases4:

The first phase 1 (2015-2016) focused on providing the necessary technical infrastructure for developing IT services to be shared in the ESS.

1 Software component implementing statistical business function that can be reused in the statistical process of more than one organization.2 The business case of project SERV is available here: https://circabc.europa.eu/d/d/workspace/SpacesStore/0ffc64b1-5d5c-4a61-a030-4acd897779e0/SERV Business case v0.7.pdf3 The description of CSPA v1.5 can be found on the following web page: http://www1.unece.org/stat/platform/display/CSPA/CSPA+v1.54 A more detailed timetable can be found in Annex 1 (page 10) of this document

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The second phase (2016-2017) focused on implementing guidelines, governance, templates and example services (selected according to the priority areas of the Vision) to foster the sharing and reuse of IT services in the ESS.

The third phase (2018-2019) will focus on the deployment of the governance set up in the previous phase and the lessons learnt, and will further develop and roll out IT services in the statistical production environments of the NSIs. Additional deliverables will be introduced to expand those provided in the business case.

Sharing software components will help ESS members to optimize IT investment by profiting from the developments of other partners. The ultimate level of ambition of the project is that an environment is created for IT services sharing and that software components developed during the project are reused across different statistical processes (see Annex 2).

3. PROJECT GOVERNANCE

The project Steering Group is mandated to issue high level recommendations at business and IT level. Its mandate covers the lifespan of the project.

The Task Force has been mandated by the ITDG to carry out expert level work to enable IT service sharing in the ESS and it contributes to the project design and execution. It is renewed each year to allow for a rotation of participants and maximise adoption.

The Project team in Eurostat is responsible for managing the daily activities of the project, to inform the Steering Group on progress and to consult on strategic decisions. The Project team will also validate the deliverables produced by the ESSNets5.

4. RESULTS OF THE FIRST PHASE

Project activity

During the first phase of SERV, the project set up the technical environment for hosting the IT services, including the creation of a service catalogue and the set-up of the infrastructure to deploy IT services in the ESS.

The project has also contributed to other projects of the ESS Vision 2020 portfolio, such as Validation and ESBRs. The governance structure of the project has been created (Steering Group and Shared Services Task Force) and with their support and in consultation with other ESS bodies (DIME/ITDG and VIG) the project has identified the priority areas that should be targeted for the development of IT services. The latter include:

Implementation of the ESS Vision 2020, with a focus on software components supporting Validation and ESBRs;

Coverage of integrated production processes in order to allow ESS members to use IT services for the end-to-end statistical production chain: The goal will be to identify services that can be used to implement one of the high level steps defined in the GSBPM standard (collection, editing, production and dissemination) and make it reusable by the ESS members. One example of this could be the SDMX based dissemination service created by Eurostat for the Census HUB project that now can be used by the ESS members to disseminate data for other domains in SDMX standard.

A list of IT services based on these priorities has been identified to be implemented in the second phase of the project.

In this first phase, work has also started in different areas of managing IT services, such as:

Technical guidelines for the creation of new services; Governance of the IT shared services and legal aspects around the reuse of the services; Recommendation on utilizing Open Source to build IT solutions for statistical production.

5 The ESSnet on "Sharing Common Functionalities in ESS" launched in the project is a multi-beneficiary grant agreement consisting of 7 partners from 6 Member States (France, UK, Portugal, Lithuania, Slovenia, Germany); the ESSnet will be responsible for several deliverables of the second phase of the project.

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These work packages will finalize their work in the second phase of the project, supported by an ESSnet.

Deliverables

The main high-level deliverables of phase 1 are summarized in the table in Annex 3.They were all delivered, with the collaboration with other ESS.VIP project being a continuous activity throughout the project.

Overall evaluation of progress

The deliverables of phase 1 have been produced on time, and the project spending is in-line with the plan.

The deliverables of the first phase have also been presented to the ITDG technical and strategic bodies. The project has been presented to the plenary ITDG in February 2015; the results have been presented to the IT Working Group 2015, to the ITDG/ DIME Steering Group in November 2015 and to the ITDG/ DIME plenary in February 2016.

In all cases, the results of the project were well received by these groups. The deliverables will enable the further work of the project to be carried out in the second phase during May 2016 to December 2017.

In this phase, the Member States have been actively involved in the project by participating both in the Steering Group and in the shared services Task Force.

5. RESULTS OF THE SECOND PHASE

Project activity

During the second phase of SERV, the project executed an ESSnet which delivered the technical guidelines, governance of the IT shared services, recommendations on using Open Source to build solutions for statistical production. Three example services were developed and used in a production environment by the ESSnet, providing valuable lessons learnt.

A new version of the services catalogue integrating an assessment workflow to manage the lifecycle of the services has been developed.

Eurostat also delivered four new and adapted services to be shared with the statistical community.

The four priority areas identified in the previous roadmap update have been covered during phase two.

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Deliverables

New version of the service catalogue

Main actor ESTAT

Projected delivery date

December 2015

Delivery status

Static version 06/2017

Complete Planned 12/2017

Description The catalogue is a repository of IT services, with documentation and operational guidelines on software components. It provides a workflow for assessment and lifecycle management. It is hosted and maintained by EUROSTAT.Status and impact The service catalogue is in production and used by various statistical organizations.

Example services(see Annex 5)

Main actor ESSnet

Delivery date December 2017

Delivery Status

Iterative until 12/2017

Description Seven services are planned to be delivered by the ESSnet and ESTAT and inserted into the service catalogue.Status and impact 6 services planned were delivered.1 service not planned was delivered, 1 service planned will not be delivered on time.

Governance(see Annex 4)

Main actor ESSnet

Projected delivery date

December 2017

Delivery Status

First version 01/2017

Update 12/2017Description Guidelines to manage IT services to be adopted in the ESS as well as recommendations for governance of IT services; including the setup of an (ESS) service certification committee and maintenance of the ESS services listed in the service catalogue. Open source handbookStatus and impact First deliveries received 12/2016. Updates and last documents on track.

Support for VISION projects

Main actor ESTAT

Projected delivery date Continuous Delivery

Status Ongoing

Description Ensure the alignment of ESS Vision 2020 projects with the Service Oriented Architecture guidelines.Status and impact Advice on IT architecture was provided to the Validation project and a first IT service (for structural validation of data sent to Eurostat by ESS members) has been deployed in relation with that project. Coordination work was also started with ESBR and DIGICOM.

Overall evaluation of progress

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The deliverables of phase 2 have been produced on time, and the project spending is in-line with the plan.

Available deliverables of the second phase and progress reports have been presented to the IT Working Group 2017 and to the ITDG/DIME plenary in February 2017.

In all cases, the results of the project were well received by these groups. The deliverables will enable the further work of the project to be carried out in the third phase in 2018 and 2019.

6. ROADMAP FOR THE THIRD PHASE

In the second phase of the project, a survey to IT Directors was launched by the ESSnet SCFE in March 2017 in the context of the project. It allowed gathering strategic priorities in the implementation of services.

The third phase of the project will deploy the results obtained in the phase 2. It will:

Use the ESS guidelines and governance as well as follow the service priorities, Implement new services and integrate them in the service catalogue, Continue by helping NSIs to use these and other existing services in their statistical production

process.

Use the ESS guidelines and governance

The second phase of the project has delivered guidelines and governance documents which follow international standards( CSPA, GSBPM, …), to foster and facilitate sharing and reuse, which NSIs willing to participate and take advantage of the Sharing Services initiative should follow when implementing new services.

In the third phase NSIs will be able to start using them. The selection process of services to implement will follow the governance and take into account the priorities defined by the ITDG survey and the ultimate goal of the project, while grants will be put in place where the use of the service guidelines will be made mandatory. This approach will allow for refining those documents in a continuous improvement process until the end of the project.

Implement new services and integrate them in the service catalogue

Building on the deliverables of the second phase (service catalogue, governance documents, SOA infrastructure, lessons learnt), new services will be implemented to deploy the use of these deliverables. They will be added to the service catalogue and publicised, enhancing the goal on the fostering of collaboration.

This approach to the deployment of the outcomes of the project will also allow to meet the ultimate goal by selecting services taking into on their position in GSBPM and covering the full layer 1 of the standard.

Continue by helping NSIs to use these and other existing services in their statistical production process

In order to enhance the collaboration and to reap the benefits of the services made available, the third phase of the project will launch grants to encourage NSIs to implement services developed within the ESS and following the CSPA standard in their statistical production process thus standardising and quickening the ESS statistical production overall and allowing for overall streamlined and more economical implementations.

An additional benefit will be the interoperability and standardisation with tools and processes of the international statistical community beyond the ESS.

Deliverables and planning

The table below is a proposed list of deliverables which will be reviewed by the different ESS bodies with a view to be endorsed by the ESSC in November 2017.

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ID Name Description Estimated delivery dateD 3.1

Updated ESS governance and guideline documents

Building on the experience acquired during the last phase, refined version of the guidelines allowing for sharing of statistical services across processes and among partners in the ESS and Eurostat (Commission) as well as of the recommendations for governance of statistical services; including the setup of an (ESS) service certification committee and maintenance of the content of an ESS service catalogue.

June 2019

D 3.2

New Statistical Services Implementation or adaptation of new statistical services with compliant service documents and lessons learnt to be added to the service catalogue

Iterative delivery until June 2019

D 3.3

Enhanced features for the Service Catalogue

New features to be added to the service catalogue for improved lifecycle management of statistical services from definition to implementation and until end of life

Iterative delivery until June 2019

D 3.4

NSIs using shared services available in the catalogue

Durable implementation into their statistical production for at least one statistical domain. It will considered a success criteria that at least 5 NSIs make use of available services in the service catalogue.

December 2019

D 3.5

Governance structure for the sustainability beyond the project phase

Setting up the governance and work packages of a Centre of Excellence or other sustainable instrument to support the process phase of the Sharing and reuse of statistical services initiative

December 2019

Involvement of Member States

SERV follows a community based approach for European cooperation. The ESSnet "Sharing common functionalities in ESS" (ESSnet SCFE) provided key deliverables of the project like the definition of the governance, the service guidelines and the implementation of some of the services proposed in the second phase of the project. For the third phase, the countries are expected to make use of existing services and to create new services following the investment priorities identified and the guidelines and governance model proposed during the second phase of the project. Grants instruments will be available to support the involvement of the Member States.

7. SERV NEXT MILESTONE

At the end of the second phase a report will be provided to the ESSC that describes the achievements and benefits realisation of the second phase and covers the deployment phase. It will also contain a proposed roadmap for the third phase of the project, which will be focused on deploying the project deliverables, including in terms of capacity building, across the ESS Member States.

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ANNEX 1 - MASTER PLAN

The update master plan of the project is defined as follows:

ANNEX 2 – ULTIMATE AMBITION OF THE PROJECT

This annex describes shortly three alternative scenarios for SERV project deployment.

Scenario 1:

The SERV project develops and deploys the shared IT services described in Phase 2. Governance deliverables, while being finalized, are not widely used in practice in the ESS. Only limited use of the IT services in productions takes place. Software components for the ESS Vision 2020 are developed, but they are not further integrated with the national and ESS statistical production processes.

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Pros:

Limited transformation needed, only in specific cases shared IT services will be used; None or limited dependency on other organizations.

Cons:

No major efficiency gains, no major gains in terms of reduction of investment needed; Limited use of the governance deliverables makes it difficult to work even with the limited

number of shared IT services.

Scenario 2:

The project supports the ESS strategic objectives by enabling IT software investment for the ESS Vision 2020 projects. The IT services are deployed and can be further integrated in the production processes (the diagram is illustrated with examples of services covering the different steps in the process).

Pros:

All steps of the GSBPM can be covered with shared IT services; Growing level of standardization in the ESS that will contribute to more agile developments

of new statistical products; Governance in place will help the optimal implementation of shared IT services.

Cons:

No full coverage across all statistical processes.

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Survey generation

service

Content validation

serviceTime series

serviceSDMX data

dissemination

Scenario 3:

The IT services to support the ESS Vision 2020 portfolio are developed and all GSBPM level 1 processes are covered for all statistical domains by the software services available in the services catalogue. This allows revamping IT systems in the ESS for all production process in any domain by assembling available service blocks.

Pros:

All steps of the GSBPM can be covered with shared IT services; Full standardization on the ESS production processes contributing to more agile

developments of new statistical products; Governance in place will help the optimal implementation of shared IT services.

Cons:

High level of ambition, scenario difficult to reach during the project given time and resource constraints;

Full dependency on other organizations, governance should be strictly applied in order to avoid risks affecting the production of statistics.

Conclusion:

Considering the three presented scenarios, the SERV project targets scenario 2, where shared IT services are available for different phases of the GSBPM process and support IT software components to be used by ESS Vision 2020 projects. . This is the most cost-effective scenario, in line with the budget assigned to project6.

6 For more information, please check the SERV project factsheet: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/42577/6906243/SERV+fact+sheet.pdf/1dc026fe-10a1-4eb8-be1d-248478c434de

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ANNEX 3 – PHASE 1 DELIVERABLES

Creation of the service catalogue

Main actor ESTATProjected delivery date

December 2015

Delivery status Delivered

Description The catalogue is a repository of IT services, with documentation and operational guidelines on software components. It is hosted and maintained by EUROSTAT.Status and impact The service catalogue is in production and used by various statistical organizations.

Creation of ESS Infrastructure for hosting central services

Main actor ESTAT

Delivery date December 2015

Delivery Status Delivered

Description The infrastructure is used to expose software components to be shared by ESS members.Status and impact The infrastructure is configured and available; the first IT service has been deployed by Eurostat.

Support for VISION projects

Main actor ESTATProjected delivery date Continuous Delivery

Status Ongoing

Description Ensure the alignment of ESS Vision 2020 projects with the Service Oriented Architecture guidelines.Status and impact Advice on IT architecture was provided to the Validation project and a first IT service (for structural validation of data sent to Eurostat by ESS members) has been deployed in relation with that project. Coordination work was also started with ESBR and DIGICOM.

Governance structures and work packages for phase II

Main actor ESTATProjected delivery date

December 2015

Delivery Status Delivered

Description Setting up the project governance by creating and launching a Task Force, a Steering Group and an ESSnetStatus and impact The Task Force was created and had its first meeting in October 2015; The Steering Group was created and had its first virtual meeting in December 2015; The ESSnet was created and launched. It started its work in January 2016.

ANNEX 4 – GOVERNANCE OPEN ISSUES

To ensure the efficiency the governance, the following specific points are addressed in the deliverables of the second phase of the project:

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How shared IT services will be funded?: the project will provide guidelines based on different funding models, assessing existing practices like membership community based (OECD .STATS), license based software (like Blaise) or other existing models in the ESS and beyond.

How will they be supported?: the project will provide guidelines based on existing support models, such as the one in place for the SDMX-RI software. Another support model to be assessed is the one in use in JDEMETRA. Other models in the market will be assessed as well.

How will they be delivered?: the project will provide guidelines based on existing practices on usage of central services (like validation) or replication of services (like SDMX based dissemination services).

How to use or reuse open source solutions: the project will provide guidelines based on existing usage of open source software and will be based on experiences in the ESS of the usage of these products, like for example R libraries.

Practical guidelines: Based on the previous points, the guidelines will develop different scenarios on how the complete cycle of governance of the shared IT services will work, taking into account the development, delivery, support and ownership of IT software component and considering both developed/licensed products and open source ones.

ANNEX 5 – LIST OF SERVICES IMPLEMENTED IN PHASE TWO

In the first phase of the project, the priorities for the development of services (ESS Vision 2020 and coverage of GSBPM activities) were identified. Based on these priorities, 6 new IT services have been developed in the second phase of the project.

Name Actor Main function Priority Area

Validation services

Eurostat Data validation by Member States before the data is sent to Eurostat. The services include content validation, according to validation rules defined for the different statistical domains and validation of the structure of the files.

ESS Vision 2020 (Validation)

Transformation Service

Eurostat Perform data conversion between different file types (from CSV to SDMX and vice versa) to support standardisation on data collection and validation.

ESS Vision 2020 (Validation)

Time Series ESSnet Perform seasonal adjustment based on the functionalities offered by JDemetra+

GSBPM (Process)

Questionnaire Generation

ESSnet Automated generation of questionnaires (web, PDF) from their DDI description.

GSBPM (Design)

Metadata Dissemination

ESSnet Access to different types of information about statistical concepts and classifications (list of items, correspondence tables, etc.)

GSBPM (Disseminate)

SDMX Data Dissemination

Eurostat Dissemination of statistics according to the SDMX standard. It can be used to plug it in a dissemination database and to generate automatically data in SDMX format for the

GSBPM (Disseminate)

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dissemination and data sharing.

These services will be added to the service catalogue once ready to be deployed. In addition, the ESSnet will ensure communication and support in first use of the IT services in the ESS.

Note 1: The Identification Service planned from the ESBR project will probably not delivered in the context of the second phase.

Note 2: The SDMX-RI and SDMX registry services were adapted by Eurostat to be CSPA compliant while they were not initially planned.

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