Senior Expert on TES matters (Trans European Systems) (Deadline 14/09/2021)

Customs Trans European Systems

Tasks description

The requested profile should provide services to the unit TAXUD B3 in relation to the work on all the Trans European Systems (TES) e.g. the following Union Customs Code systems: CCI, NCTS, AES and ICS2.

The tasks of the expert will be centred on the integration aspects of the TES, both amongst themselves, with the MS systems and with any other system including third countries’ systems. The priority is to keep NCTS and AES aligned and identify opportunities of convergence with CCI and ICS2.

In this context it is required the support from a Senior Expert on TES matters to:

• Converge and synergize the TES architecture, deployment, and operation strategy in full respect with their respective requirements, with the objective to minimize the burden on trade, National Administrations and TAXUD;
• Produce convergence and synergy plans and follow their implementations;
• Influence the proposal for interfaces between the T€S themselves and with new international initiatives as to get them facilitating, if not neutral, the convergence and synergy policy and plans;
• Identify areas where there is a discrepancy in the implementations of the following TES items in the common domain as well as the external domain:

• Customs TES business processes;

• Data structures;

• UCC Annex B, Design Documents for the National Systems: DDCOM, DDNCA, DDNTA, DDNXA, ICS2-DDNA;

• Terms of Collaboration (ToC) and SLA for all TES;

• Reference data e.g. country codes.

• Produce high-level cross-TES architecture, as well as low level design for any TES;
• Design supporting TES services e.g. collection of statistical data, conformance testing tools;
• Design data migration strategy e.g. phase-in, phase-out, conversion;
• Plan and coordinate the conformance campaigns with the MS;
• Plan, design and rollout TES in conformance and production;
• Data modelling;
• Business process modelling.

The Senior Expert’s activities also include:

• Manage and follow up a (set of) project(s) in some or all its (their) life cycle phases (inception, elaboration, construction and transition); during the software development phase of the plan, to manage and follow up, evaluate and contribute with his/her proposals in some or all activities (architecture, specifications, development, tests – including tests with Member States or other partners14, etc.);
• Set up and enforce the respect of organisation, procedures and project office tasks, raising warnings in case of non-respect of these;
• Propose new initiatives and contribute to the IT system design and strategic planning work;
• Coordinate the projects’ various stakeholders (DG TAXUD business and IT teams, subcontractors’ teams, COTS providers, Member States’ representatives, etc.);
• Contribute to the program planning and delivery of artefacts according to the contract planning of deliveries; Enforce the delivery of the project(s) according to the agreed schedule, with the expected quality and with the resources provided;
• Structure, plan, organise and monitor the project(s) he/she is responsible for during some or all its (their) life cycle phases;
• Systematic progress assessment and timely reporting on the project status (tasks progress, plan, actions, risks, issues, decisions, changes, KPI, etc.) within DG TAXUD and/or with Member States or other partners;
• Structure the information in ways that are appropriate to the target audience;
• Understand the technological aspects of the project, including the risks and the success factors. Work with the help of solution architects/IT analysts only on complex matters;
• Escalate risk and issues, in particular the ones with potential impacts on time or resources;
• Produce and/or review documents;
• Provide suggestions for service or methodology improvements;
• Ensure compliance with internal standards, raising warnings in case of non-respect of these;
• Support to transversal activities such has conference calls, produce documents, documents review, meetings minutes and quality checks;
• Asses the quality of deliverable and services from contractors;
• Accurate and timely support to MS questions and issues;
• Coordinate within TAXUD, with sub-contractors and with NAs environments configuration, application deployment; as well as incident, problem, change, configuration and release management;
• Participate and contribute in meetings with DG TAXUD, contractors, Member States and/or other partners including preparing material for these meetings;
• Contribute, review to and provide input to the validation of contractors’ proposals;
• Participate in bilateral meetings with any B3 stakeholder e.g. other units in TAXUD, or EC, MS, traders.

Required abilities

The envisaged consultant must be a Senior Consultant with a solid background in at least one Customs TES (CCI, NCTS, AES and/or ICS2).

The consultant must have:

• General knowledge of European Customs legislation, processes and data;
• Extensive experience with large scale complex IT systems architecting, data and business process modelling, development, deployment and operation;
• Recent extensive project management experience within IT in large-scale integration projects including in organisations linked to Customs environment, using a recognised methodology;
• Extensive experience in negotiating technical solutions e.g. coming to an agreement on divergent views on data structures;
• Extensive experience with conformance testing of distributed systems against agreed standards;
• Recent extensive experience in consultation and coordination with business stakeholders for the assigned IT projects;
• Extensive experience in international/multicultural environment;
• Extensive experience with enterprise architecture solutions;
• Recent experience in managing the design and development IT design and Technical Specifications , of Tran-European / international distributed IT systems with multiple stakeholders such as NAs involved;
• Recent experience in managing the deployment into operations of Tran-European /international distributed IT systems with multiple stakeholders such as NAs involved, including coordination of MS Conformance Testing;
• Recent experience in preparing and roll-out of transition and/or migration of large-scale IT systems from the one operational phase to the subsequent one;
• Extensive experience in project management supported by a well-established project management certification e.g. PMI, PM2, PM2-Agile, Prince2;
• Recent experience with Project Management tools (such as MS Project, Word, Excel and Visio); willingness to use the project management tool and methodologies as specified by DG TAXUD;
• Expert XML, XSLT knowledge;
• Recent extensive experience in consulting and coordinating multiple sub-contractors for the assigned IT projects;
• Technical knowledge of the European Commission standard IT products and technologies;
• Knowledge of EU Customs and/or WCO Data model is an asset;
• Knowledge of Oracle/WebLogic/Java technology stack is required;
• Strong organisational, project management and coordination skills with many international stakeholders is required;
• Ability to present and to animate collective intelligence sessions, rapid self-starting capability and ability to work autonomously are mandatory;
• Experience in progress monitoring and reporting to all levels within the organisation and involved stakeholders;
• Good communication skills (adapt the information to the target audience);
• Ability to produce minutes, notes, business cases, vision documents, service level agreements, terms of collaboration, planning schedules, etc. is required;
• Ability to understand the technological aspects of the project, as well as the risks and the success factors is required;
• Understanding of IT SOA and Java related architecture and technologies is an asset;
• Knowledge of ITIL Service management framework us an asset;
• Excellent English speaking and writing skills;
• Experience with making presentations in front of large audiences;
• A customer oriented approach.