The European Commission is looking for suppliers to work on a new communications infrastructure covering all national governments and EU institutions across the continent, it has announced. The €100m (£66m) system will replace the existing network, known as Testa, which allows the exchange of data between European and national administrations.
The commission wants suppliers to set up a dedicated secure infrastructure providing at least one access point in every member state and EU organisation.
The idea is to build on national and local e-government networks, forging them into a pan European infrastructure. The commission will set up a basic number of access points for the system, and individual administrations will have to fund efforts to add additional links.
The deadline for responding to the tender notice is 13 September, 2004.
Implementation of the new system is to be controlled by a central support and operation service that will have responsibility for security and management of encryption technology. This service is to be outsourced to a supplier and is included in the commission's tender.
The commission plans to migrate the existing system to the new s-Testa infrastructure in mid 2005.
Quelle: ZDNet.co.uk, 23.07.2004
