D1.1 – Project Reference Manual · FP7 - SEC-2013.1.6-1 - Framework and tools for (semi-) automated exploitation of massive amounts of digital ... D1.1 – Project Reference Manual

D1.1 - Project Reference Manual

LASIE Project

FP7 - SEC-2013.1.6-1 - Framework and tools for (semi-) automated exploitation of massive amounts of digital data for forensic purposes – Integration Project

Grant Agreement n°: 607480

Start date of project: 1 May 2014

Duration: 42 months

Document. ref.:D1.1

D1.1 – Project Reference Manual

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Disclaimer

This document contains material, which is the copyright of certain LASIE contractors, and may not be reproduced or copied without permission. All LASIE consortium partners have agreed to the full publication of this document. The commercial use of any information contained in this document may require a license from the proprietor of that information.

The LASIE Consortium consists of the following partners:

Partner Name Short name

Country

1 Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. ENG I

2 Centre for Research and Technology Hellas/Information Technologies Institute

CERTH GR

3 Neuropublic A.E. Pliroforikis&Epikoinonion NP GR

4 Queen Maryand Westfield College, University of London QMUL UK

5 Metropolitan Police Service MET UK

6 SenseGraph Limited SEN UK

7 Institutt for FredsforskningStiftelse PRIO N

8 Huawei Technologies Düsseldorf GmbH HUA D

9 TechnischeUniversität Berlin TUB D

10 United Technologies Research Center Ireland UTRC IRL

11 Innovation Engineering INNEN I

12 Venaka Media Limited VML UK

13 ACIC Video Analytics ACIC B

14 Insitut Mines Telecom IMT F

15 Universidad Politecnica de Madrid UPM E

16 VisionWare – Sistemas de Informação S.A VIS P

17 Ayuntamiento de Madrid – POLICIA MUNICIPAL MADRID ADM E

18 UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH UoG UK


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PROGRAMME NAME: SEC-2013.1.6-1

PROJECT NUMBER: 607480

PROJECT TITLE: LASIE

RESPONSIBLE UNIT: ENGINEERING Ingegneria Informatica Spa [ENG]

INVOLVED UNITS:

DOCUMENT NUMBER: D1.1

DOCUMENT TITLE: D1.1 - Project Reference Manual

WORK-PACKAGE: WP1

DELIVERABLE TYPE: Report

CONTRACTUAL DATE OF DELIVERY:

31/07/2014

LAST UPDATE: 20/08/2014

DISTRIBUTION LEVEL: PU

Distribution level:

PU = Public,

RE = Restricted to a group of the specified Consortium,

PP = Restricted to other program participants (including Commission Services),

CO = Confidential, only for members of the DICONET Consortium (including the Commission Services)


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Document History

VERSION DATE STATUS AUTHORS, REVIEWER

DESCRIPTION

0.1 22/06/2014 First Draft Ernesto La Mattina (ENG)

Table of Contents definition and document structure

0.2 12/07/2014 Draft Ernesto La Mattina (ENG)

First complete version

0.3 06/08/2014 Draft Vito Morreale (ENG) Some updates in section 1 and section 2

0.6 14/08/2014 Complete Version Ernesto La Mattina (ENG)

Updated all sections

0.8 18/08/2014 Final version Ernesto La Mattina (ENG)

Version ready for submission


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Definitions, Acronyms and Abbreviations

ACRONYMS / ABBREVIATIONS DESCRIPTION

AB Advisory Board

DC Data Controller

DoW Description of Work

CWE Collaborative Working Environment

EB Executive Board

PB Plenary Board

QCB Quality Control Board

WP Work Package

SAC Security Assessment Committee


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Table of Contents 1 About this document....................................................................................................................... 10

1.1 Purpose ................................................................................................................................. 10

1.2 Evolution, format and distribution .......................................................................................... 10

2 LASIE Consortium .......................................................................................................................... 11

2.1 Partners ................................................................................................................................. 11

2.2 Team ...................................................................................................................................... 12

3 Project Structure and Management Boards ................................................................................... 14

3.1 Project Overview and Structure ............................................................................................. 14

3.2 Overall management structure .............................................................................................. 14

3.3 Project Management ............................................................................................................. 15

3.4 Project Office ......................................................................................................................... 16

3.5 Quality Control Board ............................................................................................................ 16

3.6 Executive Board .................................................................................................................... 17

3.7 Plenary Board ........................................................................................................................ 18

3.8 Advisory Board ...................................................................................................................... 18

3.9 Data Controller....................................................................................................................... 19

3.10 Security Assessment Committee........................................................................................... 19

4 Collaboration, Communication, and Dissemination guidelines ...................................................... 21

4.1 Internal Communication and Collaboration ........................................................................... 21

4.1.1 E-Mail and Mailing lists ...................................................................................................... 21

4.1.2 Skype ................................................................................................................................. 22

4.1.3 Phone Conference Calls .................................................................................................... 22

4.1.4 Internal Collaboration Platform .......................................................................................... 22

4.1.5 Development Tools ............................................................................................................ 24

4.2 External Communication ....................................................................................................... 24

4.2.1 Publications, Presentations, Papers .................................................................................. 25

5 Monitoring and Reporting guidelines .............................................................................................. 26

5.1 Project Monitoring and Reporting .......................................................................................... 26

5.1.1 Periodic progress Reports ................................................................................................. 26

5.1.2 Interim Progress Reports ................................................................................................... 27

5.2 Project documents and deliverables ..................................................................................... 27

5.3 Change and issue management............................................................................................ 27

6 Procedures for Project Meetings .................................................................................................... 29

6.1 Project meetings .................................................................................................................... 29

6.1.1 Plenary meetings ............................................................................................................... 29

6.1.2 Technical Meetings and focus meeting ............................................................................. 29

6.2 Meeting Procedures .............................................................................................................. 29

7 Management of intellectual properties ........................................................................................... 31

8 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 32

9 References ..................................................................................................................................... 33


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List of Figures Fig. 1: The management organization structure of LASIE. ................................................................... 15

Fig. 2: Internal Collaboration Platform – The Activities Timeline........................................................... 22

Fig. 3: Collaborative Working Environment – Wiki – Forum .................................................................. 23

Fig. 4: LASIE website ............................................................................................................................ 24


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List of Tables Table 1: LASIE contact persons. ........................................................................................................... 13

Table 2: LASIE Executive Board Members ........................................................................................... 17

Table 3: Security Assessment Committee ............................................................................................ 20

Table 4: Meetings procedure ................................................................................................................. 30


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Executive Summary

This document describes the procedures, rules, standards and best practices to be adopted by the LASIE project partners, in order to organize and carry on the scientific and technical activities and fulfil the contractual obligations towards the European Commission.

The Project Reference Manual defines and describes the implementation of the specific working organization adopted by the LASIE Project for ensuring high quality and efficiency to the research activities planned in the Description of Work (DoW) [1] according to the Consortium Agreement [2].

The document presents and describe the boards that have been established in the LASIE project in order to effectively manage and address the various heterogeneous aspects relevant for the project itself, such as consortium management, user and external stakeholder engagement and management, privacy, legal, and ethical issues, etc.

Then, in order to effectively operate in a big distributed team, such as the LASIE one, this document reports the procedures, the guidelines and the tools for effectiveness partners communication and collaboration as well as for external communication and dissemination of project results, the procedures for meetings, for progress reporting.

These guidelines, adopted by all partners, establish an operational methodology to reduce the project overhead and increase the efficiency and quality of the work carried out.

It should be noted that the procedures and the process for deliverable development, review and approval are report in a separate document, i.e. the D13.1 – Project Quality Plan [3].


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1 About this document

1.1 Purpose

This document is intended as the reference manual and handbook including the procedures, rules, standards and best practices to be adopted within the LASIE project consortium, in order to organize and carry on the scientific and technical activities and fulfil the contractual obligations towards the European Commission.

These guidelines should be adopted by all LASIE partners in order to establish and share an operational methodology to reduce the project overhead and increase the efficiency and quality of the work carried out. It is expected that all members of the LASIE consortium are aware of the important general aspects addressed in this report to successfully contribute to the project.

This document does not present the procedures and the process for deliverable development, review and approval, which are reported in a separate document, i.e. the D13.1 – Project Quality Plan [3].

Finally, this document does not report many details on detailed planning, deliverables, milestones, and partner contribution to project activities. Such information is provided in the Document of Work (DoW) [1]. Other general information on consortium management and agreements among the involved parties is reported in [2].

1.2 Evolution, format and distribution

This document will be updated during the lifecycle of the LASIE projects, according to the evolution of the project, the changes and adaptation of some procedures, the replacement of some people in the project boards and roles, etc.

The latest version of this document will be always available in two formats: a unique PDF document and an integrated and coherent set of related Wiki pages in the internal collaboration platform (see below for details).


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2 LASIE Consortium

2.1 Partners

The LASIE Project Consortium consists of 18 partners:

1. Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. (ENG) 2. Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) 3. Neuropublic A.E. PLIROFORIKIS & EPIKOINONION (NP) 4. Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London (QMUL) 5. Metropolitan Police Service (MET) 6. SenseGraph Limited (SEN) 7. Institutt for Fredsforskning Stiftelse (PRIO) 8. Huawei Technologies Düsseldorf GmbH, European Research Center (HUA) 9. Technische Universität Berlin (TUB) 10. United Technologies Research Centre Ireland, Limited (UTRC) 11. Innovation Engineering S.r.l. (INNEN) 12. Venaka Media Limited (VML) 13. ACIC SA (ACIC) 14. Institut Mines-Télécom, Télécom ParisTech (IMT) 15. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) 16. VisionWare – Sistemas de Informação S.A (VIS) 17. Ayuntamiento de Madrid (ADM) 18. University of Greenwich (UOG)

It has been carefully designed in order to involve:

Industry and SMEs: to design new challenging services and exploiting in an optimal way the results of the project;

Users: to provide a suitable testbed for a better evaluation of the LASIE framework in real-life situations;

Universities and research institutes: to provide high-quality research on several technical components of the LASIE framework and ensure legal and ethical compliance.

The consortium consists of 3 Industrial Partners: UTRC is the biggest world-wide player in security; HAUWEI is a leading global ICT solution provider with strong emphasis on security solutions; and ENG is among the biggest European system integrators leading also other security related projects.

Moreover, 6 SMEs are within the consortium: 3 of them (ACIC, VISIONWARE, VML) are forensics related SMEs; the others are SEN, INNEN, and NP.

Furthermore, 7 universities and research centres ensure the quality of scientific outcomes of LASIE (CERTH, QMUL, TUB, IMT, UPM, UoG) and their compliance with all ethical and legal EU norms (PRIO).

Finally, 2 very-high qualified end users (MET and ADM) are the ones which drive the specific use cases and ensure their applicability to policemen everyday lives. It should be noted that the MET (Scotland Yard) is the second bigger police in the world (after FBI).

The consortium is complemented by the participation of additional end-users from several EU countries; they constitute the end user and advisory board. The full list of the members and contacts of this board will be published in the public project Web site.


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2.2 Team

The following table reports the main contact people for each partner. It should be noted that the actual LASIE team is bigger and includes many other people for most of the partners.

Partner Name Email

1. ENG Silvia Boi [email protected]

1. ENG Vito Morreale [email protected]

1. ENG Marialuisa Porro [email protected]

1. ENG Ernesto La Mattina [email protected]

2. CERTH Petros Daras [email protected]

2. CERTH Apostolos Axenopoulos [email protected]

2. CERTH Georgios Th. Papadopoulos [email protected]

2. CERTH Lazaros Gymnopoulos [email protected]

3. NP Koufoudakis Yiannis [email protected]

3. NP Stelios Papakonstantinou [email protected]

3. NP Stelios Stavroulakis [email protected]

3. NP Georgios Kormentzas [email protected]

4. QMUL Ebroul Izquierdo [email protected]

4. QMUL Tomas Piatrik [email protected]

5. MET David Way [email protected]

5. MET Mick Neville [email protected]

6. SEN Roberto Garigliano [email protected]

7. PRIO J. Peter Burgess [email protected]

7. PRIO Anne Duquenne [email protected]

7. PRIO Rozemarijn van der Hilst [email protected]

7. PRIO Vicky Ackx [email protected]

8. HUA David Virette [email protected]

8. HUA Giovanni Cordara [email protected]

8. HUA Lukasz Kondrad [email protected]

8. HUA Thomas Hungenberg [email protected]

9. TUB Ivo Keller [email protected]

9. TUB Marina Georgia Arvanitidou [email protected]

9. TUB Sikora [email protected]

10. UTRC Alan M Finn [email protected]

10. UTRC Anarta Ghosh [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



























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10. UTRC Hadzic, Tarik [email protected]

10. UTRC Amores Jaume [email protected]

10. UTRC Power Keith [email protected]

10. UTRC Sofiane Yous [email protected]

11. INNEN Paolo Salvatore [email protected]

11. INNEN Claudio Massari [email protected]

11. INNEN Andrea Ciapetti [email protected]

11. INNEN Leonor Carolina Salas [email protected]

12. VML Crene Geiser [email protected]

12. VML RuthM Mendez [email protected]

12. VML Sergio Velastin [email protected]

13. ACIC Jean-François Delaigle [email protected]

14. TPT Gaël Richard [email protected]

14. TPT Slim Essid [email protected]

14. TPT Yamina Belabassi [email protected]

15. UPM Cristina Pineda [email protected]

15. UPM Faustino Ángel Sánchez García [email protected]

15. UPM Federico Álvarez [email protected]

15. UPM José Manuel Menéndez [email protected]

16. VIS Filipe Custódio [email protected]

16. VIS Bruno Castro [email protected]

17. ADM Gabinete Técnico [email protected]

17. ADM José Ramón Carrasco [email protected]

17. ADM Nieves Ucendo Carmona [email protected]

17. ADM Inmaculada Fernandez [email protected]

18. UOG Chipo Nyandoro-kunzvi [email protected]

18. UOG James Lambert [email protected]

18. UOG Josh Davis [email protected]

Table 1: LASIE contact persons.

This table will be kept updated throughout the whole project lifecycle, in order to provide the team members with all reference people for each partner organization.

The latest updated version of the above table is available in the internal project collaboration tool (described below) at the following link: http://lasie.eng.it/group/guest/wikis.





























http://lasie.eng.it/group/guest/wikis


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3 Project Structure and Management Boards

3.1 Project Overview and Structure

The LASIE (LArge Scale Information Exploitation of Forensic Data) project will design and develop a novel framework to assist forensic analysts in their investigations, providing them with recommendations on evidence extracted from available data and supporting them in critical decisions. The envisaged framework will consist of tools to automatically manipulate, analyse and fuse vast amounts of heterogeneous data acquired from different sources including CCTV surveillance content, confiscated desktops and hard disks, mobile devices, Internet, social networks, handwritten and calligraphic documents. The type of data considered includes text, images, video, audio and biometric information in multiple formats.

In LASIE, search and retrieval of evidence will be enhanced through the provision of complex query formulations and multimodal search mechanisms yet through a user-friendly, user-centric human-computer interface.

LASIE will follow a privacy-by-design approach, ensuring that the aforementioned functionalities and the used forensic data strictly obey all legal and ethical restrictions and national laws.

In order to achieve such an ambitious objective, the LASIE project is divided into 13 Workpackages (WP) and these are in turn divided into Tasks according to the goals and structure of each WP. Each Task has the number of partners needed to fulfil the goals of the specific activity. Most of the partners contribute to many activities within several WPs.

The LASIE WPs are the following:

WP1: Project Coordination & Management

WP2: Privacy Management and Monitoring

WP3: Requirements, specifications and system Architecture

WP4: Processing of forensic data

WP5: Knowledge Management

WP6: Evidence-based Search Engine

WP7: Recommendation and Inference

WP8: User Interfaces

WP9: Integration and Technical Assessment

WP10: Pilots and User Evaluation

WP11: Dissemination and Exploitation

WP12: Training Activities

WP13: Scientific and Technical Coordination

3.2 Overall management structure

European integrated projects (IP) such as LASIE are complex organizations in which entities with different culture, approaches, and interests join forces and know-how to achieve common goals. In order to be successful, a functional organizational structure must be put in place, which ensures efficient, result-driven management.

The overall management of the LASIE project is based on the following points:

The Organisational Structure, which defines the management structure in terms of project governance and boards;

Means for governance and control: o The project Document of Work (DoW), which, among the others, describes the

project objectives and expected results, the work plan in terms of work packages,


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tasks, deliverables, milestones, and the effort/cost distribution per WP/task and per partner;

o The Project Reference Manual (this report), which defines in detail the structures, the procedures, and the actors of the project. This report also includes the guidelines for internal communication;

o The Project Quality Plan (closely related to this report), which defines the procedures and standards for quality management and assurance of project work and deliverables;

o The Consortium Agreement, which defines the rules of collaboration among partners within the Project (roles, responsibilities and mutual obligations for the project life)

o The Periodic Progress Report.

The following diagram describes the management structure of the LASIE project.

Fig. 1: The management organization structure of LASIE.

The proposed management structure for LASIE is based on all the previous case of successes, building upon established best practices. The structure has been designed to deal with typical project management challenges and problems associated with a distributed consortium of participants.

3.3 Project Management

All LASIE activities will be monitored by the Project Management group, which is responsible for the overall project administrative and scientific management and for interfacing with the European Commission. Further important responsibilities are: to keep in contact with the work package leaders in order to verify and validate the status of the activities and to be in charge of every administrative communication towards the Beneficiary Representatives. Project Management will comprise two people:

The Project Coordinator, Ms. Silvia Boi from Engineering. The Coordinator’s responsibilities include: to kick-off activities; to oversees action plans and monitors their due


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and timely execution, within the given resources; to monitoring compliance by the partners with their contractual obligations; to keep the address list of Members and other contact persons updated and available; to monitor the implementation of decisions taken during the project (e.g. during the meetings). The Coordinator can propose resource and/or time shifts between Partners and Tasks. The Coordinator interacts with the EU and the parties about the project, including the submission of the Deliverables, Progress Reports and Cost Statements. The Coordinator is the reference person for the project consortium.

The Scientific and Quality Manager Dr. Petros Daras from CERTH/ITI. The Scientific and Quality Manager’s responsibilities include: to define the qualitative and quantitative aims of each activity and checking the proposed methodology and work; to provide the Project Quality Plan, templates for deliverables and other documents at the beginning of the project; to monitor and control the overall scientific and technical progress of the project; to follow-up and coordinate all technical work packages. Above all, he is responsible for the compliance between different subsystems and modules. He also monitors the process and signalizes important deviations in terms of results, quality, timing and resources spent. His work will be based upon a detailed and quantified Internal Assessment scheme, based upon a variety of assessment parameters and their thresholds.

The close cooperation between them on day-to-day basis is the driving force behind the project activities.

3.4 Project Office

The Project Office includes the following services:

Financial Control: This service is intended not only to monitor the Annual Cost Statements, but also to receive the Partner MMs and expenditure on a 7-month basis and provide feedback to the Partner, the Coordinator and the Scientific and Quality Manager.

Secretariat: This service is intended to receive, process and disseminate all requests from Partners and the EU on daily basis. It will organise project meetings, workshops and reviews. It will also administer Calls of Tenders or central equipment provision or specifications, new Partners inclusion, etc.

External relations: This is an independent service, administered by the Secretariat, which will receive all external requests (i.e. questions on project concept and results through the Internet, relation to the Press and the Media), including follow-up of concentration activities with other projects (mainly new SEC projects) and of activities of relevant standardisation bodies.

Help Desk: This will be comprised of highly experienced staff from the financial control and the secretariat to provide feedback to the Partners upon request, as well as to issue guidelines on several issues regarding the required project administrative actions (timesheets, Project reports, Cost Statements, allowable costs, etc.). Finally, this service will organise remote training courses and seminars for the managerial and administrative personnel of the Partners.

The Project Office is lead and coordinated by Ms. Maria Luisa Porro.

3.5 Quality Control Board

The Quality control of activities and deliverables are of main importance for the LASIE project. The Quality Control Board (QCB) is responsible for the coordination and supervision, regarding the implementation of the measures for the quality assurance. Also, it is responsible for the project’s quality assurance matters. In accordance with the contractual agreements, the project’s quality management plan, complementing and providing additional guidelines and procedures to this report, addresses the following topics: general issues concerning quality, requirements of the project, quality control board, control of the documentation, files and archives, quality forms to be used, development procedure.

Refer to [3] for further details.


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3.6 Executive Board

The Executive Board (EB), led by the Coordinator, includes the Technical and Quality Manager and the Work Package leaders. EB members are permanent for the project duration, except if they wish to leave the Executive Board themselves or because of EU intervention.

The EB is in charge of operationally supervising the project progress and deciding upon all relevant scientific and administrative issues, such as: redirection of work in a WP, major transfer of resources across WPs or Partners (over 20%), technological choices, changes in time plans, inclusion of a new Partner, substitution or exclusion of an existing Partner, resolution of conflict between different WPs.

All Executive Board members have a single vote. In case of equal votes, the vote of the Coordinator shall be the decisive one. This Executive Board will meet once every three months and will be the project driving force.

Apart from the Coordinator (Ms. Silvia Boi) and the Quality and Scientific Manager (Dr. Petros Daras), the assigned WP Leaders and members of the Executive Board are summarized in the following table.

Role Name Partner Email

Project Coordinator Silvia Boi ENG [email protected]

Scientific and Quality Manager

Petros Daras CERTH [email protected]

WP2 Leader J. Peter Burgess PRIO [email protected]

WP3 Leader Koufoudakis Yiannis NP [email protected]

WP4 Leader Thomas Sikora TUB [email protected]

WP5 Leader Ebroul Izquierdo QMUL [email protected]

WP6 Leader Apostolos Axenopoulos CERTH [email protected]

WP7 Leader Sofiane Yous UTRC [email protected]

WP8 Leader Georgios Th. Papadopoulos

CERTH [email protected]

WP9 Leader Ernesto La Mattina ENG [email protected]

WP10 Leader Mick Neville MET [email protected]

WP11 Leader Jean-François Delaigle ACIC [email protected]

WP12 Leader Claudio Massari INNEN [email protected]

Table 2: LASIE Executive Board Members

Work Package Leaders are requested to manage their WPs, in cooperation with Task Leaders. They may arrange technical meetings for their WPs. WP Leaders are requested to communicate ordinarily with the Technical and Quality Manager and the Coordinator.

The responsibilities of each WP leader include:

To fulfil the project/system-level requirements provided by the Project Coordinator and/or the Technical and Quality Manager, or arising from the Executive Board. These may include requirements for integration or coming from pilots analysis and specification;

To propose and keep updated detailed work plans for the work package: this includes the to-do list and the allocation of tasks to each partner involved in the work package;






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To manage and follow-up the progress and technical activity of the work package;

To follow-up the achievement of milestones and production of deliverables according to the project work plan;

To report on the activity to the Coordinator and the Executive Board;

To produce periodical control reports and send them to the Coordinator and the Technical and Quality Manager;

In case of conflict within the WP that he/she cannot solve, to report the issues to the Coordinator and propose solutions;

3.7 Plenary Board

The Plenary Board (PB) consists of the representatives of all Partners, each having one vote. It is led by the Coordinator, who has the decisive vote in case of equal votes. This Plenary Board will only meet every six months to review and plan project work. Any partner may raise issues. Minor issues (according to the Coordinator) may be discussed and decided within this board. Major issues will be transferred to the Executive Board.

The following table reports the members of the Plenary Board.

Partner Name Email

ENG Silvia Boi [email protected]

CERTH Petros Daras [email protected]

NP Koufoudakis Yiannis [email protected]

QMUL Ebroul Izquierdo [email protected]

MET Mick Neville [email protected]

SEN Roberto Garigliano [email protected]

PRIO Peter Burgess [email protected]

HUA Giovanni Cordara [email protected]

TUB Ivo Keller [email protected]

UTRC Sofiane Yous [email protected]

INNEN Paolo Salvatore [email protected]

VML Sergio Velastin [email protected]

ACIC Jean-François Delaigle [email protected]

IMT Gaël Richard [email protected]

UPM Federico Álvarez [email protected]

VIS Bruno Castro [email protected]

ADM José Ramón Carrasco [email protected]

3.8 Advisory Board

The Advisory Board (AB) is an external group composed by a number of experts and organisations responsible (at different levels) for the security of citizens. The participation of the Advisory Group in














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the project is intended to help and facilitate the development and validation of an efficient forensic security system.

The Advisory Group is mainly involved in the definition of LASIE specifications and in the test and evaluation of the system prototype, but it also freely contributes to other project activities, for instance giving suggestions and indications and providing the Consortium with operational knowledge about the issues implied by the LASIE project.

3.9 Data Controller

Data protection is of fundamental importance in LASIE. In order to clarify responsibility for personal data collected and stored as part of the LASIE project, a member of the consortium will undertake the role of Data Controller (DC). According to the Data Protection Directive

1, data controllers should

observe a number of principles when they process personal data. These principles not only protect the rights of those about whom the data is collected (“data subjects”) but also reflect good business practices that contribute to reliable and efficient data processing. Each data controller must respect the following rules as set out in the Directive:

Personal Data must be processed legally and fairly;

It must be collected for explicit and legitimate purposes and used accordingly;

It must be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which it is collected and/or further processed;

It must be accurate, and updated where necessary;

Data controllers must ensure that data subjects can rectify, remove or block incorrect data about themselves;

Data that identifies individuals (personal data) must not be kept any longer than strictly necessary;

Data controllers must protect personal data against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration and disclosure, particularly when processing involves data transmission over networks. They shall implement the appropriate security measures;

These protection measures must ensure a level of protection appropriate to the data.

Every EU country provides one or more independent supervisory authorities2

for national data protection. Throughout the duration of the project activities, the Data Controller will notify the supervisory authorities when there is an issue of personal data processing.

The Data Controller in LASIE is Prof. J. Peter Burges (PRIO), and the vice-Data Controller is Mr. Lazaros Gymnopoulos (CERTH).

3.10 Security Assessment Committee

The Security Assessment Committee (SAC) will consist of consortium members with sufficient knowledge of security issues. SAC monitor regularly the project and assess the sensitivity of all information handled by participants and all deliverables before any publication. Special attention will be given to WP4, WP10 and WP11 deliverables as well as to deliverables D3.1 and D3.2. Level of dissemination of the above reports should be verified with their actual content as limited to the consortium and involved end-users.

More specifically, SAC will be tasked with:

assessing the sensitivity of all project deliverables, especially those mentioned above;

1 Data Protection Directive: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/data-collection/obligations/index_en.htm

2 National data protection authorities: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/bodies/authorities/eu/index_en.htm


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assessing the sensitivity of the information handled by the project.

Their recommendations should be fed into the Quality Control Board. Each deliverable cover page should contain an indication that it has passed the Security Assessment control and the result of this assessment. The committee's overall conclusions should be included regularly in the Periodic Reports and the interim management reports.

The members of the Security Assessment Committee are reported in the following table:

Name Partner Email

Peter Burgess PRIO [email protected]

Lazaros Gymnopoulos CERTH [email protected]

Sofiane Yous UTRC [email protected]

Mick Neville MET [email protected]

José Ramón Llano ADM [email protected]

Table 3: Security Assessment Committee







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4 Collaboration, Communication, and Dissemination guidelines An important key of success for the LASIE project is to ensure effective coordination and collaboration as well as good communication among project partners and towards outside entities.

A fast, reliable, and easily accessible collaboration and communications infrastructure is crucial for the proper operation within a large-scale pan-European project. This will be implemented through the intensive use of electronic communications (e.g., email, web based exchanges, file sharing, video-conference, etc.).

A project web site, in particular the collaboration platform within the private area, will also be used to enable fast and efficient exchanges of information.

4.1 Internal Communication and Collaboration

In order to assure an efficient internal communication between partners, the LASIE project adopts many tools: the internal collaboration platform, the electronic mail, Skype and the phone conference calls.

4.1.1 E-Mail and Mailing lists

Mailing lists represent a major communication tools used in the LASIE Project. All mailing lists are closed lists: only members registered for a particular list may send messages to the list. To avoid unnecessary emails, each person posting to any of the email lists should ensure that the content of the message is appropriate for the recipients of the list selected.

For LASIE project has been defined:

General Project Assembly (all the project participants);

12 list for each WP

LASIE has already set-up and maintains the following mailing lists:

[email protected] for all LASIE participants

[email protected] for Communication related to project management

[email protected] for WP2 Communication











The following mailing lists will also be available soon:

[email protected] for Executive Board Communication

[email protected] for Ethics Advisory Board Communication

[email protected] for External Advisory Board Communication

The member lists for each mailing list are reported on wiki subsection of the collaborative platform and will be updated during the project.


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4.1.2 Skype

It is kindly recommended that each participant use the Skype service in order to allow the other project participants to know when a colleague is on-line and quickly check to determine whether they is available for discussions, document exchange and so on.

Skype allows to talk free over the Internet, and if a webcam is available, to also have video-conference. Multi-conference audio calls can also easily be made. A Skype conference is a remote meeting but all times someone among the partners cannot attend a Skype conference (because of internal security policies, for instance), phone conferences will be arranged.

4.1.3 Phone Conference Calls

Telephone conference calls allow to organize short remote meetings between a restricted set of participants. They can be set up with short notice; participants only need a plain telephone set to participate and do not need to spend time travelling.

Remote meetings will be held periodically: every week or every two weeks, depending on what established during the various project meetings. Specific virtual meetings can be arranged depending on particular needs of the Project.

The information related to connect to the meeting as well as the agenda will be circulated not later than a couple of days before the meeting. The minutes will be prepared in the format of e-mail and circulated immediately after the conference.

4.1.4 Internal Collaboration Platform

An internal Collaboration Platform is available for the LASIE project at http://lasie.eng.it/ (Fig. 2). It is managed by Engineering and offers a Collaborative Working Environment equipped by useful tools and functionalities to support collaboration and collective knowledge management within the consortium in all phases of the project.

Fig. 2: Internal Collaboration Platform – The Activities Timeline

All partners and all the people involved in the project (see Table 1) can access to the platform and can refer to it for download LASIE project templates, upload deliverables, participate to discussions related to user scenarios, technical aspect, scientific topics and to propose ideas and insights for the various research topics addressed in the project. The platform allows to be constantly informed about the

http://lasie.eng.it/


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users' activities. Each platform member can follow the evolution of the discussions in which are interested and actively participate on activities to carry out.

The access to the platform is controlled by username and password of personal user account, which are assigned by the platform administrator (ENG).

Currently the main sections provided by the platform are:

Community tools (Blog, Discussions, Wiki);

Group Management;

Resource (i.e. any content) management;

Central Document Repository; Activity streams; Universal Search; Events Calendar; Bookmarks.

Other functionalities and services could be made available in next months.

The Collaborative Working and Collective Knowledge Environment is based on common collaborative tools: forum, wiki, chat, blog, social bookmarking. The cooperative working area is private and reserved to the project partners. All platform members can discuss specific topics in the Discussions, bring open issues and provide their solution in the Blog, cooperate in writing through the Wiki. Different discussion groups will be created around to the various scientific and administrative issues.

Wiki and Forum are already set up with specific sessions and threads to discuss about use cases and user scenarios (Fig. 3). Users can decide to follow people, discussions or any kind of interesting resource such as blog.

Fig. 3: Collaborative Working Environment – Wiki – Forum

The LASIE Collaboration Platform provides the Central Document Repository of the project. It acts as the primary means of communication for the delivery and interchange of documents, dataset and multimedia contents. All project participants are granted access to the LASIE shared workspace. Each project partner is responsible to notify ENG of changes of project participants in their organization, in order to allow ENG to update the lists of users involved in the various work packages.


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To reduce the number of emails among partners each project partner is allowed to add additional folders to the Document Repository, even though Engineering is in charge to give a structure to the repository. As a general principle, the documents must be uploaded to the internal collaboration platform and then announced by email; this method is preferred to sending them as attachments by email.

4.1.5 Development Tools

Each project requires a central repository for software code with the capability of managing versions and concurrent accesses. For this reason, the governing bodies of the project are evaluating some software repository and version control system. LASIE software code could be stored in a central repository where each project partner is allowed add the code developed.

LASIE project could adopt subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/), well known in the open source community, as software repository and version control system. It allows maintaining current end historical version of files such as source and object code, web pages and documentation.

Subversion is released under the Apache License. It represents one of the best solutions in the Software Configuration and Change Management (SCCM) category.

Nevertheless, other options such as GIT (http://git-scm.com/) will be evaluated depending on specific needs of the Project as well as on the skills and expertise of the development team.

4.2 External Communication

The communication outside the LASIE consortium, such as other European projects or Public Administration Entities will be mainly performed by the public LASIE website that. It is developed and managed by INNEN and can be accessed at http://www.lasie-project.eu/.

Fig. 4: LASIE website

The website contains the project overview and detailed information about LASIE consortium. Any news relevant to the project will be reported in the website throughout the duration of the project. From the website it will be possible to access in the Private Area represented by the Internal Collaboration Platform.

http://subversion.tigris.org/

http://www.lasie-project.eu/


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4.2.1 Publications, Presentations, Papers

If one or more partners intend to submit for publication a part of work performed within the project, the partner shall inform the Coordinator, the Technical & Quality Manager and the consortium members before the submission, by sending an email to them with the relevant information about that publication (titles, authors, abstract).

Any objection from consortium partners to the planned publication shall be made in writing to the Coordinator and the Technical & Quality Manager within 7 days after receipt of the notice. Example of justified objections are: (a) the objecting Party's legitimate academic or commercial interests are compromised by the publication; (b) the protection of the objecting Party's Foreground or Background is adversely affected; (c) legal, privacy, ethical constraints are not respected. Other objections could be justified. However any objection has to include a precise request for necessary modifications.

If an objection has been raised, the involved partners shall discuss how to overcome the justified grounds for the objection on a timely basis (for example by amending the planned publication and/or by protecting information before publication) and the objecting partner shall not unreasonably continue the opposition if appropriate actions are performed following the discussion.

A written acceptance shall be returned to the partner (within 2 weeks) before he/she proceeds to the submission. Moreover, the participation in exhibitions through a stand and the presentation of demos of the project results require prior agreement of the whole project Consortium.

All publications, presentations, active participation to events etc. in the name of the project must be announced to the Coordinator and the Technical & Quality Manager and will be centrally documented. Updates need to be done in the respective tables in the interim reports. In addition, each partner shall fill in the respective template “LASIE Dissemination Form” which is available from the Coordinator and the Technical & Quality Manager.


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5 Monitoring and Reporting guidelines The Coordinator will use the Microsoft Project and Excel software to undertake full scheduling, budgeting control for the purposes of the project itself, towards the Commission Services, and for the partners themselves; the Coordinator could also evaluate any other Project Management System of relevant capabilities.

Monthly updates will be carried out as per the requirements of the contract, and various tables and graphics will be used to demonstrate project progress. The typical graphics include Gantt chart, Network diagram and various histograms depicting resources employed and/or costs.

The reports and graphics to be used will depict deviations from planned project targets including delays or early finishes and their implications on the overall progress will be evaluated. Then the corrective actions that are necessary for implementation will be considered and taken as appropriate.

Results and recommendations will be communicated to the Scientific and Quality Manager and to the work package leaders so that corrective actions can be taken in a timely manner in order to achieve optimum performance.

Interim management reports (every 7 months, between the periodic reports) will be prepared for Consortium use. Three Project Periodic Reports and Updates of the detailed Implementation Plan will be additionally submitted to the Commission, where detailed reporting and the progress achieved during project execution will be demonstrated using the above-mentioned software. The periodic reports will also include the overall conclusions of the Security Assessment Committee, while each deliverable cover page should contain an indication that it has passed the Security Assessment control and the result of this assessment.

5.1 Project Monitoring and Reporting

Project monitoring and reporting will be performed by means of:

Periodic meeting;

Periodic reporting;

Review of main project milestones;

Audits.

Periodic reporting documents are:

Periodic Progress Reports (Month 14, Month 28, Month 42);

Interim Progress Reports (Every seven months).

5.1.1 Periodic progress Reports

Progress Reports must be produced periodically, on the basis of the requests coming from the European Commission during the negotiation phase. The template for the Progress Monitoring Report will be made available on the LASIE internal website.

Periodic Progress Reports will be produced within 60 days of the end of each reporting period and will include Technical and Administrative Issues:

Research activities progress;

Deliverables and milestones;

Publications (Authors, title, publication, date);

Conferences and presentations (Date, location, participants, subject, outcome).

Effort on each Work package (PMs per WPs and months);

Meetings (Date, location, subject, attendees);

Travelling (Date, location, reason to travel, name of the traveller).

Progress reports will also contain the following information:


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a management-level overview of the activities carried out;

a description of progress toward the scientific and technological objectives;

a description of progress toward the milestones and deliverables foreseen;

problems encountered during the project and actions taken to correct them.

ENG will be in charge of preparing this and will ask each partner for any additional contributions.

5.1.2 Interim Progress Reports

Interim management reports (every 7 months, between the periodic reports) will be prepared for Consortium use. The interim report will include to the following sections:

The key results achieved by the project during the considered period (expected contribution by Work Package Leaders);

The activity performed by partners (expected contribution by all partners);

Financial figures summarizing the main expenses: travels, equipment, etc.)

Effort (a table presenting the used manpower).

Project risk summary table (table to be updated continuously by each partner and WP Leader)

This report is intended for internal use and should help to detect early issues.

5.2 Project documents and deliverables

Official Deliverables, Milestones, and Tasks are those that are described in the Description of Work [1]. Official deliverables need to be submitted and approved by the EC. Official milestones need to be reported to the EC. These external constraints and goals are part of the Grant Agreement and therefore need to be met. Any discrepancy between actual and planned achievements needs to be explained and justified. Official deliverables and milestones go through thorough quality control by peer review before being published.

In order to prevent issues for the decoding on the documents, it is recommended to use the following tools:

Word processing: MS Word.

Spreadsheet: MS Excel.

Slides presentation: MS PowerPoint.

Document for web publication: PDF.

Standard documentation template will be provided on internal website in order to be available for all partners that will use it to produce standardised documentation.

Exhaustive information about the quality standards adopted for LASIE deliverables, naming and convention, codes and identifiers, deliverable workflow and templates, are reported in [3].

It should be noted that in order to ensure that official deliverables and milestones are met, all project partners and particularly work package leaders will develop the work plan in more detail. This should be done by adding internal and more specific activities, tasks, and milestones into the work plan. The work on these more internal aspects and outcomes needs to be reported as well (for instance through detailed plans, action lists, etc.).

5.3 Change and issue management

All LASIE participants should be aware of their commitment. Nevertheless, unpredictable situations could affect the overall activities of the project, including delays of deliverables. In such cases, all necessary actions can be taken by the Coordinator with the support of the Executive Board in order to solve the problem. If necessary, a reallocation of resources can be considered, evaluated and implemented.


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As soon as the Coordinator detects (or any partner detects and reports) problems, which can endanger the objectives of the project (such as serious delays of deliverables), he could call for an extraordinary Executive Board meeting or specific meetings with the involved parties. Other issues or requested changes that follow the same procedure could refer to important changes in the planned scope, schedule, and costs.

In this meeting, the situation will be analysed and a decision will be proposed in order to solve the problem. The participant at the origin of the problem will be informed about this decision. After five days, the Executive Board must decide, according to the answer of the participant, whether to maintain the participant in its role within the consortium, or declaring it “not-in-line” with the project execution. In both cases, an appropriate revision of the Work plan will be decided and communicated to the Commission for acceptance.


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6 Procedures for Project Meetings The LASIE project kick-off meeting has represented the effective start of the project. It has allowed toidentify the responsibility of each participant. Unresolved technical issues have been identified and debated; cooperation between people involved in each work packages has been started. The management discussed what is expected from each partner in terms of results, performance and reporting. The detailed course for the whole duration of the project has been confirmed and fine-tuned.

6.1 Project meetings

6.1.1 Plenary meetings

All the partners involved in the Project are expected to take part in the periodic Plenary Project meetings. The plenary meetings are chaired by the Project Coordinator and will involve the Technical and Quality Manager and, at least, all the WP leaders; even though the participation of technicians and team leaders can be required to discuss specific open issues. Plenary Project meetings are generally planned every six months, even though in the initial phases of the projects they could be arranged every 3-4 months.

6.1.2 Technical Meetings and focus meeting

Technical meetings or remote conferences (audio/video, or web) are to be held as necessary. A Work Package (WP) leader may call for physical meetings of the WP whenever required, typically at least once every two months. They may also organize meetings at any time in the case of an emergency situation. The WP leader should give each of the members of the WP at least ten (10) calendar days’ notice and provide in a timely fashion an agenda.

6.2 Meeting Procedures

Any member of a Consortium (hereinafter referred to as "Member"):

should be present or represented at any meeting in which his/her organization is involved and invited;

may appoint a substitute or a proxy to attend and vote at the meeting;

should actively participate in a cooperative and fruitful manner in the meetings.

Procedures for physical meetings are outlined in Table 4.

Procedure for Meetings

INVITATION

Responsible Meeting organizer: the Project Coordinator or any project board leader

Deadline At least 10 calendar days before the meeting

Format Email to the each invited and relevant member of the Consortium and publication in the project collaboration platform (as an event in the Calendar).

AGENDA Responsible Meeting organizer: the Project Coordinator or any project board leader


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Format Email with the Agenda to the each member of the Consortium invited/involved in the meeting and publication in the project collaboration platform.

ADDING AGENDA ITEMS

Responsible Any member of a Consortium invited/involved in the meeting


In some cases, this can happen during the meeting

Format

Email with the Item proposed to all of the other meeting participants and publication in the project collaboration platform.

(During the meeting) Unanimously agree with the other meeting participants

MINUTES

Responsible Meeting organizer: the Project Coordinator or any project board leader

Deadline Within 7 calendar days after the meeting

Format

Email with the draft minutes to all Members

The minutes can be amended by all members participating the meeting within 3-4 days after sending the draft version.

The Meeting organizer integrates all amendments and publishes the accepted minutes in the collaboration platform notifying all the Members within 15 days after the meeting.

Table 4: Meetings procedure

The templates for meeting agenda and minutes are available in the project collaboration platform.

Meetings may also be held by teleconference or other telecommunication means. Remote meetings, such as audio or web conferences, will be held periodically, depending on what established during the Plenary Project meetings. Specific virtual meetings can be arranged depending on particular needs of the Project. The invitation (containing information to connect to the meeting) as well as the agenda will be circulated not later than a couple of days before the meeting; the minutes will be prepared in the format of an e-mail and circulated immediately after the conference. No further (strict) constraint is established in order to avoid a bureaucratic overhead.


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7 Management of intellectual properties The management of intellectual properties is addressed in the deliverable D13.2 – IPR Management Plan.


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8 Conclusions The present report and the report related to the Project Quality Plan [3] define together all rules and procedures that the LASIE project participants must follow in order produce high level results. All the project bodies were defined and explained on the basis of what was already established in the proposal and accepted by all the participants by signing the Consortium Agreement. In conclusion these reports represent the reference of all Consortium members for all the procedures with which partners must be compliant.


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9 References [1] LASIE - Annex I - "Description of Work"

[2] LASIE Consortium Agreement (CA)

[3] D13.1 – Project Quality Plan

Documents

D1.1 – Project Reference Manual · FP7 - SEC-2013.1.6-1 - Framework and tools for (semi-) automated exploitation of massive amounts of digital ... D1.1 – Project Reference Manual