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Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives

Service Level Agreement

General

This Generic Service Level Agreement (CESSDA SLA) is valid for all CESSDA services listed at the CESSDA Service Catalogue This SLA may be extended or replaced by service-specific SLAs.

Service Operations and Exceptions

CESSDA services operate twenty-four (24) hours per day, seven (7) days per week. However, planned and announced interruptions may reduce the effective operating time of any or all of the services.

Planned interruptions to CESSDA services can occur on Tuesdays between 13:00 and 15:00 CET/CEST, as this is the window for updates and maintenance.

Support

Support is available for services covered by the scope of this SLA as follows:

Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:00 CET/CEST. This excludes Norwegian public holidays and working days from December 20 to January 5.

All service incidents and feedback should be sent to support@cessda.eu. Alternatively, the feedback form provided on each service’s web page can be used. Both options cause a ticket to be created in the CESSDA Helpdesk.

Service incidents are prioritised as follows:

  • “High”: These incidents relate to the security of the service. These incidents have higher precedence and are acknowledged and responded to more quickly.
  • “Medium”: These incidents relate to normal service access and usage.

Any incident reported through the CESSDA helpdesk channel will be acknowledged and responded to, depending on the above classification:

  • For a high priority incident, acknowledgement should be within one (1) working day
  • For a medium priority incident, acknowledgement should be within three (3) working days, and five (5) working days in July and August.

Service Level Targets

Monthly Availability

  • Defined as the ability of a service to fulfil its intended function over a calendar month.
  • Average service level target (as a percentage per month): 95%.
  • Minimum (as a percentage per month): 80%.

Limitations and Constraints

The provisioning of a service under the above service level targets is subject to the following limitations and constraints:

  • Support is provided in English
  • Downtime caused by fixing critical security issues is not considered a service incident.
  • Force majeure. A party shall not be liable for any failure or delay in the performance of this Agreement for the period that such failure or delay is due to causes beyond its reasonable control. This list includes, but is not limited to:
    • pandemic, fire, flood, earthquake or natural phenomena,
    • war, embargo, riot, civil disorder, rebellion, revolution.

Communication and Reporting

Any incidents or feedback relating to services should be reported via support@cessda.eu or by using the feedback form on the service web pages.

CESSDA will investigate the root cause of the incident, keep the reporter informed, and explore measures to prevent its recurrence. Any incidents that are not resolved within fourteen (14) working days will be escalated to CESSDA’s Head of IT for further attention and action.

The annual report on the compliance (or otherwise) of services with this SLA will be posted on the CESSDA website in January of each year.