Symposium on information systems

The NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) is organising its second symposium on the "Evolutionary Procurement of Information Systems" (EPIS) in The Hague, Netherlands, from 28-30 March.

The first EPIS Symposium (EPIS 90) was held in 1990 and led to the adoption of an evolutionary process in the definition and specification of NATO Information Systems and, in particular, the introduction of system prototyping and the use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf technology as an integral part of the procurement process

The 2001 symposium will re-examine and compare the processes used by NATO with those of member government organisations and commercial industries. One of its main goals will be to explore methods that will continue to ensure the timeliness and cost-effectiveness of acquiring software-intensive systems to support NATO's Business Processes (i.e. operational and strategic command and control (C2) and enterprise resource management (ERM), including communications.

This symposium is particularly timely since NATO is presently embarking on a number of large procurement programmes related to air C2 (ACCS), strategic C2 (Bi-SC AIS), support to the new NATO members and the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme, SATCOM (satellite communications), surveillance, and many other key programmes. The url for the EPIS site is: http://www.epis2000.org.