Service levels for Adhering Parties
For Adhering Parties, the following service levels apply
Availability
Availability is a measure of the time a service is in a functioning condition. It includes the availability window and the maintenance window.
Availability window
The availability window includes the times at which Adhering Parties guarantee the availability of their service.
No norm is set for Adhering Parties' availability window, to leave Service Providers free to run their service whenever they deem appropriate (e.g. a trucking company does not need to leave its trucks' board computers on 24 hours * all days of the year).
Minimum level required at times deemed appropriate to run service**:** guideline of 95% availability* per calendar month, from 00:00-23:59h
*Planned maintenance does NOT count as unavailability
Maintenance window
The maintenance window includes the times at which Adhering Parties can perform planned maintenance, that is likely to result in downtime, to their service. If no downtime is expected, maintenance can take place outside of the maintenance window. Planned maintenance does NOT include incident resolution, as this can take place outside the maintenance window as described under incidents.
Norm:
The maintenance window includes all times outside office hours;
No norm is set for communication about (different forms of) maintenance, as this is a matter between Adhering Parties.
Performance
Performance includes the time it takes for a service to respond when requested or called upon; i.e. the time an Adhering Party's service takes to respond to a received message.
Before an Adhering Party knows whether it may respond to a request, however, it often needs to request (more) information from one or more certified parties; e.g. delegation info or authorisation info. It therefore needs to send out a new message itself, and wait for this message to be responded to by a certified party. While Certified Parties' response times are short, the process of sending out and receiving (sometimes several) new messages before the original request can be answered takes time. Consequently, no norm is set for Adhering Parties' total performance. The following guidelines are set:
95% of Adhering Parties' messages SHOULD be responded within 2 seconds of receiving all information needed from certified parties;
99% of Adhering Parties' messages SHOULD be responded within 5 seconds of receiving all information needed from certified parties;
Each Adhering Party SHOULD be able to process at least 100 simultaneous messages while meeting above requirements.
Incidents
An incident is an event, not part of the standard service operation, that results in a potential impact or risk with regards to the quality, availability, confidentiality and/or integrity of (data within) the iSHARE Trust Framework. This ONLY includes the data used for identification, authentication and authorisation purposes in the context of data exchange, but not the contents of the actual data exchange.
Three classifications of incidents are recognised within iSHARE, as explained in the incident management process:
Minor incident;
Calamity;
Crisis.
Norm:
All incidents MUST be communicated by the Adhering Party(s)to the Scheme Owner directly after they are discovered;
Communication MUST include date, time, incident level as estimated by the Adhering Party(s), argumentation including impacted service(s), and a potential incident manager;
In case of a calamity or crisis, the Adhering Party MUST have an incident manager available during working days, and SHOULD have an incident manager available 24 * 7;
An update on the incident MUST be communicated to the Scheme Owner*:
For minor incidents, at the end of each working day;
For calamities, within 2 hours of every significant update and at the end of each working day;
For crises, within 2 hours of every significant update and every 4 hours.
All incidents SHOULD be handled by the Adhering Party (in cooperation with the Scheme Owner as per the incident management process) within 3 working days after being appointed as the responsible party - unless agreed otherwise.
*In line with the incident management process, the Scheme Owner presents an overview of current calamities and crises on its website
Support
Support by Adhering Parties could include answering questions, requests, and complaints from other Adhering Parties.
No norm is set for Adhering Parties as it is a matter between them (and other Adhering Parties). The following guidelines are set, however:
Adhering Parties are available for support via e-mail;
They SHOULD confirm receiving a question/request within 1 working day. They SHOULD send an underpinned reaction (with an answer/solution or at the very least a direction) within 5 working days.
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