FYI (please notice as stressed by Miguel, this is confidential, please do not circulate it outside the consortium). For what concerns us as WP8 please have a look at: 4. Rejection of costs linked to deliverable D.8.1.2 5. Rejected cost of DT and NSN due to IDM concerns Don’t hesitate to share with me your comments and/or reactions to this. Of course something we could further discuss in the context of the final EC review for FI-WARE (probably in January but so far don’t have the dates yet). Hearing from you. Best Regards, Pascal [@@ THALES GROUP INTERNAL @@] De : fiware-wpl-bounces at lists.fi-ware.org [mailto:fiware-wpl-bounces at lists.fi-ware.org] De la part de MIGUEL CARRILLO PACHECO Envoyé : mercredi 17 décembre 2014 17:31 À : old-fiware at lists.fi-ware.org Cc : fiware-wpl at lists.fi-ware.org; JUAN JOSE HIERRO SUREDA; fiware-wpa at lists.fi-ware.org Objet : [Fiware-wpl] Fwd: RE: Observations to the Financial Assessment of reporting period 2 of the FI-WARE project Dear all, May I share with you the comments sent by the EC. This is their reaction to our "observations" on the cost rejections in Year2 of FIWARE. This is confidential, please do not circulate it outside the consortium. Best regards, Miguel -------- Mensaje original -------- Asunto: RE: Observations to the Financial Assessment of reporting period 2 of the FI-WARE project Fecha: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 15:20:03 +0000 De: <Arian.ZWEGERS at ec.europa.eu><mailto:Arian.ZWEGERS at ec.europa.eu> Para: <mcp at tid.es><mailto:mcp at tid.es> CC: <jhierro at tid.es><mailto:jhierro at tid.es>, <Stephane.ANDRIES at ec.europa.eu><mailto:Stephane.ANDRIES at ec.europa.eu>, <Jesus.Villasante at ec.europa.eu><mailto:Jesus.Villasante at ec.europa.eu>, <CNECT-ICT-285248 at ec.europa.eu><mailto:CNECT-ICT-285248 at ec.europa.eu> Dear Miguel, all, The Commission has received your observations on the financial assessment of the second reporting period of the FI-WARE project (FP7-285248). The consortium has submitted a total of well over € 19 million in costs for the second reporting period, of which about 7% of those costs were (definitely) rejected. This email responds to the consortium’s observations and follows the structure of the observations. For all points below, it should be stated that the reviewers have taken note of the results of the project, and have assessed the quality thereof, as well as the effectiveness, efficiency, and economy of the associated costs. In doing so, they have taken into account the grant agreement and the Description of Work. They have assessed whether all developments and efforts were for the benefit of the project, i.e. they have assessed the effectiveness, efficiency, and economy of these efforts. The Commission will not call into question the judgement of appropriately qualified experts. This response concludes the exchange of comments on the second reporting period review reports and financial assessment. The Commission will not engage in further correspondence on these matters. Separate responses are sent to some people who wrote to the Commission about the same or similar issues. The Commission will not engage in further correspondence on these matters. Best regards, Arian 2. Rejection of costs linked to deliverables D4.1, D4.5 and D5.1 The consortium claims that if a certain version of a deliverable is approved in a certain reporting period, all costs claimed for previous versions of that deliverable in the same reporting period must be approved as well. The argument is that all developments and efforts in the period are for the benefit of creating the end deliverable, and insufficient quality in interim deliverables is caused by missing contents only. Following that logic, all efforts leading up to an approved deliverable need to be considered effective, efficient, and economical. As a counterexample, beneficiaries in a consortium could go in arbitrary directions, pursue hobby horses, or spend efforts writing proposals, and – according to the consortium –such efforts would need to be considered effective, efficient, and economical if a later deliverable in the same reporting period would be approved. This is obviously not correct; not all efforts leading up to an approved deliverable need to be considered effective, efficient, and economical by definition. It should be noted that all review recommendations regarding costs were made when draft final costs were known. The Commission does not see sufficient reason to revise its decision on rejection of costs linked to deliverables D4.1, D4.5 and D5.1. 3. Rejection of costs linked to SAP WP3 deliverables Temporarily rejected costs can be resubmitted. Such costs will be assessed in the period in which they are resubmitted. 4. Rejection of costs linked to deliverable D.8.1.2 The consortium does not understand why 25% of the D8.1.2 costs were definitely/permanently rejected because the review comments identified specific GE content that should be resubmitted. The consortium requests that these costs be re-classified as temporarily rejected. The review report mentions a number of flaws in D8.1.2, and identifies the apparent lack of a clear, commonly agreed specification of the Identity Management GE as a serious concern in the context of the Security work package. Because of the apparent deviation from overall FI-WARE principles and the severity of these issues, a resubmission was requested within 1 month of the receipt of the review report. The severity of the flaws in D8.1.2 and the accompanying assessment of the effectiveness, efficiency, and economy in costs led to (permanent) rejection of costs. The Commission does not see sufficient reason to revise its decision on rejection of costs linked to deliverable D8.1.2. 5. Rejected cost of DT and NSN due to IDM concerns The consortium does not understand the cost reduction (i.e. the temporarily rejected costs) for Deutsche Telekom (DT) and Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN). It argues that there is no legal agreement or other hint that a GE needs to be accessible according open source conditions, and that when NSN and DT joined the project there were no obligations to apply open source conditions, e.g. contracts, project proposal or DoW. The Commission does not understand why the consortium made that observation. The Commission would like to point out that nor the review report, nor the Commission’s explanation of the costs acceptance decisions refer to open source conditions. As written in the review report, “the openness of the results of the FI-WARE Security chapter and especially the openness of all the specifications therein should be fully demonstrated and guaranteed by the partners.” Having public specifications for the IdM GE and having different, non-public specifications for an IdM implementation run contrary to the overall FI-WARE principles. The Commission does not see sufficient reason to revise its decision on rejection of costs by DT and NSN related to Identity Management. 6. Rejection of costs linked to WP9 (Tools Chapter) The consortium asks to revise the judgment concerning the percentages of rejected costs, and proposes to have costs “temporarily” rejected. The consortium gives 4 pages of texts to justify its request. The consortium argues that, at least for the Prototype deliverables, the work to develop the software prototypes was recognized, but more details were to be reported in the software accompanying reports. A prototype deliverable consists of software and a report. The consortium argues that effort spent for editing the reports is much less (namely around 10-15% of the whole deliverable) than the effort spent for creating the prototypes, where almost all the work performed consists in implementing the tools, creating related documentation, providing training and support, and promoting their adoption. The consortium consequently argues that costs may be rejected for a deliverable’s report part (e.g. 50% of 10-15% of the overall worth of a deliverable) but have to be accepted for the software part. The review report mentions that “this work package presently has a dichotomy. It appears that work is being produced (for example as reported in the M24 Periodic Report), yet all produced deliverables fail to demonstrate progress in sufficient detail”. Similar comments are made for the WP9 deliverables in the same review report. Nevertheless, the majority of WP9 costs in the second reporting period were accepted. Following the review report and a new plan on how to continue the work package, the “direction of WP9” was discussed at the M30 review meeting. As a result, the reviewers recommended to “immediately stop activities in WP9 that do not relate to either update/enhancement of the Catalogue (e.g. allow functionality/keyword-based searches, at the level of GE Implementations as well as the GEs) or the eLearning Platform” and that “unused resources should be redistributed to other work packages as appropriate”. The work in WP9 during the second reporting period was rather unclear and the effectiveness, efficiency, and economy of costs occurred were not sufficiently justified. When clarified at M30, the decision was taken to focus on the Catalogue and the eLearning Platform, and to cease all activities related to FI-Code and other tools. The Commission sees little merit in again giving the consortium the opportunity to clarify its WP9 activities, results, and costs. The Commission does not see sufficient reason to revise its decision on rejection of costs linked to WP9. 7. Rejection of costs linked to Testbed/FI-Lab chapter The consortium claims that not all deliverables were submitted at all or in due time in order to concentrate on the practical work rather than on its documentation. The consortium claims that it already adjusted autonomously its WP10 costs, since WP10 is significantly underspending. Such self-reduction was done because not all the contractual results were completely achieved. The first point is the old song of a consortium that does not respect contracts, Commission or reviewers and does not have the decency to agree with the Commission on what to do with late deliverables before sending periodic reports or showing up for review meetings. Such attitude cannot be accepted. Regarding the second point, the Commission notes that underspending is not equal to ‘self-reduction’. Regarding deliverable D10.5.2, the consortium requests to introduce another assessment of this deliverable in order to be able to claim the respective costs from Y1 and Y2. It argues that it did all what was needed and that D10.5.2b summarizes the full analysis and detailed description of the work, which has been carried out responsibly starting in Y1/Y2. The Commission considers that the review reports are sufficiently clear with respect to D10.5.1 and D10.5.2. Deliverable D10.5.2b will be assessed in the third reporting period. The Commission does not see sufficient reason to revise its decision on rejection of costs linked to deliverable D10.5.2. Notwithstanding the above statements about the attitude of the consortium, and considering the efforts done leading up to the launch of FI-Lab in the third reporting period, the Commission re-classifies the rejected costs for the non-submitted deliverables D10.1.2 and D10.3.2 as ‘temporary’. 8. Rejection of costs linked to WP2 The consortium claims that the rejection of 25% of costs reported linked to deliverables associated to the FI-WARE Technical Roadmap (D.2.4.x) is not justifiable because it seems to be linked to recommendations made by reviewers regarding traceability of features. The consortium subsequently gives several arguments why such traceability would be of little value. The Work Programme mentions that “the dynamic specification of the Core Platform functionalities largely depends on the requirements stemming from the identified use cases” and that “of particular importance for each selected use case is the identification of usage specific requirements versus generic requirements that can be implemented through Generic Enablers. The latter will be developed by the Objective 1.7 which takes a central role in collecting requirements and defining generic enabling capabilities and interfaces, feeding them back into the specifications for the use case experiments”. Therefore, the Description of Work mentions that “to a large degree, the functionalities of the Generic Enablers will be driven by requirements from Use Case projects in the context of the PPP. Therefore, FI-WARE will closely collaborate with Use Case projects and the Capacity Building project in the FI-PPP program”. Other potential sources of requirements are mentioned too. For a project that is positioned in a programme vis-à-vis other projects like FI-WARE, and for a project that is so vulnerable to slip into technology-push only, which would severely diminish the effectiveness of its results for these other projects, the need to justify how its choices relate to actual requirements from use cases is trivial. For the D2.4.x deliverables, the review reports clearly highlight several flaws other than traceability or accountability. The Commission does not see sufficient reason to revise its decision on rejection of costs linked to WP2. 9. Rejection of costs linked to WP11 on Exploitation The consortium would like to kindly ask for some feedback regarding the new M30 individual exploitation plans resubmitted and presented on a confidential basis. The main purpose is to be able of reassessing the situation in the next round, M36, and resubmit the costs accordingly (if accepted). Therefore the consortium would ask for changing the “definite” reduction towards a “cost acceptance” or at least a “temporary” reduction. SAP provides additional arguments centred on its announced open source strategy to request reconsideration of its rejected costs. The request to submit exploitation plans directly to the Commission at M30 was exceptional and was only done to assess the prospects for future use of GE implementations as an input to allocate scarce resources to the more promising activities. Such assessments could be done by the consortium itself. The Commission fails to see the rationale behind the request to change the “definite” reduction in the second reporting period to a “cost acceptance” or a “temporary reduction”, based on documents submitted at M30. Regarding the SAP arguments, having an open source strategy is not necessarily sufficient to have suitable exploitation plans. The Commission does not see sufficient reason to revise its decision on rejection of costs linked to WP11. ----- From: Miguel Carrillo [mailto:mcp at tid.es] Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 4:30 PM To: CNECT-ICT-285248; ZWEGERS Arian (CNECT) Cc: Juanjo Hierro; ANDRIES Stephane (CNECT); VILLASANTE Jesus (CNECT) Subject: Observations to the Financial Assessment of reporting period 2 of the FI-WARE project Dear Arian and members of the EC, This message is sent on behalf of Mr. Hierro. Please find enclosed a document gathering a number of observations that the FI-WARE partners wish to perform to the Financial Assessment of reporting period 2 of the FI-WARE project. We are ready to meet you (in a conference call or face to face meeting) to further elaborate on these observations. We look forward the positive consideration of these observations as to amend part of the Financial Assessment that were communicated to us. We were considering whether to send this to the reviewers directly as well. We have realised that the most sensible approach is to reply to your original message and let you decide yourself how you want to handle it. We would kindly ask you to acknowledge receipt of this letter. Best regards, Juanjo Hierro FI-WARE project Coordinator and Chief Architect -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Grant Agreement No. 285248 FI-WARE - Financial assessment for reporting period P2 from 01/05/2012 to 30/04/2013 Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 11:39:27 +0100 From: <CNECT-ICT-285248 at ec.europa.eu><mailto:CNECT-ICT-285248 at ec.europa.eu> To: <jhierro at tid.es><mailto:jhierro at tid.es> CC: <CNECT-ICT-285248 at ec.europa.eu><mailto:CNECT-ICT-285248 at ec.europa.eu>, <Arian.ZWEGERS at ec.europa.eu><mailto:Arian.ZWEGERS at ec.europa.eu>, <Stephane.ANDRIES at ec.europa.eu><mailto:Stephane.ANDRIES at ec.europa.eu>, <Jesus.Villasante at ec.europa.eu><mailto:Jesus.Villasante at ec.europa.eu> Dear Mr. Hierro Sureda, I wish to advise you that the reports mentioned in Article 4 of Annex II to the grant agreement in reference, and submitted to the Commission on 26/09/2013, for the reporting period P2 from 01/05/2012 to 30/04/2013 have been examined. The results of the analysis of the financial statement are detailed in the attached financial statement acceptance forms. In summary a payment of 11.981.989 EUR will be made. We wish to draw your attention to the following: • According to Article II.22 of the grant agreement, the Commission may, at any time during the implementation of the project and up to five years after the end of the project, arrange for financial audits to be carried out, by external auditors, or by the Commission services themselves including OLAF. • According to Article II.23 of the grant agreement, the Commission may initiate a technical audit or review at any time during the implementation of the project and up to five years after the end of the project. The payment of the Union financial contribution to the coordinator discharges the Commission from its obligation on payments to the other beneficiaries. Therefore, you shall ensure that all the appropriate payments are made to them without unjustified delay (see Articles II.2 and II.3). Furthermore note that according to the provisions of the Financial Regulation and of the grant agreement, sums due to the Union by a beneficiary may be recovered by offsetting them against any sums it owes to the beneficiary concerned, after informing the latter accordingly. Please inform the other beneficiaries of the results of the financial assessment for this reporting period. Yours sincerely, ZWEGERS Arian email Arian.ZWEGERS at ec.europa.eu<mailto:Arian.ZWEGERS at ec.europa.eu> Project Officer ________________________________ Este mensaje se dirige exclusivamente a su destinatario. Puede consultar nuestra política de envío y recepción de correo electrónico en el enlace situado más abajo. This message is intended exclusively for its addressee. 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