European union committee of the Regions

European Economic and Social Committee

EUROPEAN UNION Committee of the Regions

1. 
   Context
   

1. 
   Background
   

• 
  The EESC is an assembly of 353members representing organised civil society.
  
• 
  The EESC issues opinions based on mandatory or optional referrals, using the right of initiative or as exploratory opinions.
  
• 
  The EESC promotes civil dialogue with networks of national economic and social councils and with civil society organisations at the level of the European Union, in Member States and other European countries, in Latin America, India, China, etc.
  
• 
  The EESC is one of the most active protagonists and promoters of participatory democracy.
  

Committee of the Regions (COR)

• 
  The COR is an assembly of 353 members representing local and regional government.
  
• 
  The COR gives local and regional government a say over the drafting of EU legislation (70% of EU laws are implemented at local/regional level).
  
• 
  The COR encourages a culture of Subsidiarity.
  
• 
  The COR provides a meeting place where regions and cities can share best practice and take part in a dialogue with the European institutions.
  

2. 
   Cooperation between the Committees
   

The agreement contains the following provisions concerning Governance:

• 
  Political Monitoring Group – responsible for political supervision (6 Members of each Committee meeting 3 times per year)
  
• 
  Secretaries General – responsible for strategic issues affecting the Joint Services (6 meetings per year)
  
• 
  Cooperation Committee – responsible for the supervision and coordination of services provided (Joint Services Directors, Directors of the Administration and concerned HoU’s meeting every month)
  

In certain areas, including IT, the Cooperation Agreement is complemented by "Mini-Agreements" defining technical arrangements for each department concerned. The main points of the IT "Mini Agreement" are that each Committee should appoint an IT Coordinator responsible for collecting the IT needs & priorities of their respective users, and that each Committee should establish an IT Steering Committee.

3. 
   IT Organisational Setup
   

The IT unit is composed of the following services:

• 
  Information Systems
  
• 
  IT Infrastructure
  
• 
  User Support Services
  

1. 
   Information Systems
   

• 
  Mission, vision & governance
  
• 
  Quality programme
  
• 
  Aligning IT & business strategy
  
• 
  Balancing supply & demand
  
• 
  Managing change
  

Information Systems Management is reinforced by:

• 
  Project Support – implements best practices in terms of Methodology, Architecture & Portfolio (MAP);
  
• 
  Project Resources – implements Supply & Demand Management, Technology Tracking and Inter-institutional co-operation in the field of "Information systems"
  

Project Managers are in charge of each of 4 "Business" sectors:

1. 
   HR & Finance
   
2. 
   Political Work
   
3. 
   Document Management
   
4. 
   Communication
   

2. 
   IT Infrastructure
   

1. 
   Data Centre
   

• 
  System administration of database and application servers
  
• 
  Database administration (Oracle)
  
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  Design, implementation and operation of the standby Data Centre and back-up procedures
  
• 
  Deployment, and technical support for third party applications
  
• 
  Technical support for the application framework
  
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  2nd level support
  
• 
  Inter-institutional co-operation in the field of "Database technologies"
  

1. 
   Office Automation
   

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  Design, implementation and operation of the "Back-office" infrastructure – installation, monitoring, upgrading, anti-virus measures, shared resources and back-ups – file servers, e-mail servers, print servers, , …
  
• 
  Development and maintenance of the tools for user management
  
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  Access, "who is who", mailboxes, "quota" and "active directory"
  
• 
  Reference configuration for the standard PC and software packages
  
• 
  2nd level support
  
• 
  Inter-institutional co-operation in the field of "Office Automation"
  

1. 
   Telecommunications
   

• 
  Telephony & networks - design, implementation & operation
  
• 
  Integrated data/voice network for all buildings and interbuilding links
  
• 
  External network connections – Internet & Testa Network & telephony operations including inventory
  
• 
  2nd level support
  
• 
  Inter-institutional co-operation in the field of "Telecommunications"
  

3. 
   User Support Services
   

• 
  Helpdesk – the Single Point of Contact for all IT queries
  
• 
  1st line user support
  
• 
  User/Identity Management
  
• 
  Communication and Documentation
  
  • 
    "Welcome sessions" for new users
    
  • 
    Preparation of weekly information messages
    
  • 
    Preparation and updating of documentation
    
• 
  Logistics
  
  • 
    Installation and replacement of equipment and software
    
  • 
    Writing-off of obsolete equipment
    
  • 
    Updating of the inventory
    
• 
  Telephone switchboard & associated services
  
• 
  Coordination with the other IT sectors (User & Change Committees)
  
• 
  Coordination with the training services
  

2. 
   IT Environment
   
   1. 
      Network infrastructure
      

1. 
   Local Area Networks (LAN)
   

• 
  Switching Ethernet
  
• 
  VLAN
  
• 
  Fast Ethernet / Gigabit Ethernet / 10 Gigabit Ethernet
  

2. 
   Wide Area Networks (WAN)
   

• 
  Internet;
  
• 
  Network interlinking the European Institutions.
  

3. 
   Building wiring
   

• 
  horizontal cabling: multipurpose wiring, four twisted pairs, Category 5, Class D (as a minimum requirement);
  
• 
  vertical cabling: multi-mode optical fibres / twisted pairs.
  

4. 
   Network administration
   

2. 
   Telephony
   

3. 
   WiFi
   

4. 
   Servers
   
   1. 
      Servers for centralised IT management
      

• 
  File servers, terminal server, system supervision;
  
• 
  Logon validation services (Active Directory), DNS, DHCP, folder replication, data transfer, remote access services via Windows Terminal Services, application servers;
  
• 
  E-mail, Intranet/Internet;
  
• 
  Virtualisation (VMware)
  

• 
  Database servers (Oracle)
  

The computer centre also has SAN storage infrastructure based on EMC VNX.

With regard to software, and in line with the policy adopted by the European Institutions, the EESC-COR is taking an open source solution approach whenever possible:

1. 
   Workstations
   

In order to meet specific needs with regard to applications, together with management, security and portability requirements, the EESC-COR has defined a standard configuration seeking to make workstations totally user-independent and give users an enhanced level of service based on the portability of their parameters and documents.

The following table sets out the EESC-COR's standard hardware and software configurations for work stations:

Hardware		Current configuration
		Intel Celeron CPU G530 (2,4GHz); 4 GB, HD 250GB, NIC 10/100/1000, DVD-RW, USB

Software		Current configuration / developments
Operating system:		Windows Seven 64 bits SP1
Office suite:		Office 2010 32 bits SP1
Mail user agent:		Outlook 2010 32 bits SP1
Web client:		Internet Explorer 9 Mozilla FireFox 15

2. 
   Environments for development of centralised applications
   

For centralised applications hosted at the EESC/CoR, the following environments are provided:

The technical barriers between these environments are maintained by the database and system administrators.

3. 
   Development environments and recommendations
   

1. 
   Development environments - Overview
   

At present, there are 4 main development environments been used, Power builder, Java-J2EE, .NET and SharePoint.

It has been one of the main leaders world-wide in the Client-server application architecture. Because of its powerful features to access databases, the rich functionality and the relatively low learning curve has been extensively used in our organisation. Several of the critical systems are developed using this technology. By now the Client-server paradigm has been questioned, since the internet has imposed the use of web based applications.

.Net has become the standard development environment for the Members portal and all the internet applications.

It has a high degree of flexibility and it is well suited for agile development. It supports multilingualism and it has become a robust development platform.
Java

Java was introduced in the year 2002 with the development main operation applications such as Agora (Political work back office). Java was chosen to be the main development language for the Enterprise development. Back then Java-J2EE was the standard of modern enterprise application development. Java-J2EE offers reliable enterprise architecture for web based applications. From the different java products and providers the IS service choose to use the Open source tools and servers.

SharePoint is a Content Management platform. SharePoint was introduced in the year 2009 with the development of Web platforms.

• 
  the main development environment for the Websites
  
• 
  and the main environment for the Document Management
  

2. 
   Development environments - Tools and environments
   

Programs used by the development team to carry out the implementation of the applications

3. 
   Development environments - Technologies
   

Programming languages, modelling languages and techniques used by the development team to produce an application.

4. 
   Methodological Recommendations
   

Joint Services has adopted the RUP methodology. There are several reasons:

• 
  RUP is a wide spread and well known framework that covers the complete development process.
  
• 
  JS - Information Systems has carried out a project in order to adapt RUP to their needs.
  
• 
  Training is available.
  
• 
  Some supporting tools are already used in the Information System Service.
  

Join Service use, as much as possible Agile development methods.

• 
  The use of mock-ups and prototyping will be the preferred methodology during the analysis and development phases.
  
• 
  The contractor will have to present and deliver regularly, within a maximum timeframe of four to five weeks, the successive versions of the components in his test environment. This will allow progressive validation version by version.
  
• 
  In order to allow corrective and perfective maintenance of work accomplished, the contractor will have to hand over the source codes of this development and produce relevant technical documentation.