CAMSS is "the" solution to understand standards and specifications

Raul Abril, CAMSS Project Manager, Interoperability Unit, DG Informatics, European Commission

Are you struggling with ICT standards? Are you trying to figure out how to assess their quality, openness and coherence, but also to see if they are protected by intellectual property rights and accepted by others? The Common Assessment Method for Standards and Specifications (CAMSS), supported by the ISA²Programme, can help you!

Making the right choice in terms of standards and specifications is often a challenging task requiring a significant amount of time and resources. To tackle this issue, the European Commission has been developing CAMSS since 2008, based on best practices from EU countries. The main objective was to create a neutral and unbiased method for the assessment of technical specifications and standards in the field of ICT.

Currently, CAMSS is an established European guide for assessing and selecting standards and specifications for eGovernment projects. You can use it as a reference when building an ICT architecture and for justifying the choice of standards and specifications.

What can we offer you?

CAMSS offers its users three solutions: CAMSS Tools, CAMSS Assessments and CAMSS-as-a-Service. The CAMSS Tools constitute the actual method for assessing standards and specifications. They consist of a set of scenarios that can be adapted to specific cases and thus evaluate if a standard or specification is fit for a particular purpose.

Once we get a result of the assessment, this constitutes a fully reusable CAMSS Assessment. Our team publishes all approved assessments in the CAMSS Assessments Library.

Finally yet importantly, users can request the CAMSS Team to assess standards on demand or to review already performed assessments. This service is called CAMSS-as-a-Service (CAMSSaaS).

Users of CAMSS

Any person, entity or EU country can use the CAMSS solutions free of charge. In the Assessment Library, you can find assessments requested by EU countries, as well as by EU institutions.

Last year in March, the European Multi Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardisation endorsed CAMSS as the key driver streamlining the process for the evaluation of ICT technical specifications. This means that the method is now playing the main role in assessing specifications that can cover an identified need in public procurement. This way CAMSS opens up the possibility to use the full range of relevant technical specifications when procuring hardware, software and information technology services, thus increasing interoperability and allowing for more competition.

Plans for the future

Our team is now working on bringing more value to CAMSS users through the development of new solutions. As an example, we are currently developing an assessment scenario for assessing the compliance of standards and specifications with the European Interoperability Framework. The team is also working in close collaboration with the European Interoperability Architecture Team, in charge of the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA), on the development of the EIRA Library of Interoperability Specifications.

Our objective for the future is to strengthen CAMSS position as the reference solution for selecting and assessing standards and specifications for digital public administrations. This is both in ad-hoc cases and in support of decisions taken on the design of interoperable solutions for digital public services.

To put it simply, CAMSS is "the" solution to understand standards and specifications.

Want to know more?

Friday, 22 February, 2019