• The contractor shall engage with relevant stakeholders, including committees, subject matter experts, custodians, operational and technical bodies, to elicit, analyse, and validate requirements related to ontology engineering, data standards, and interoperability. This includes translating complex operational and technical needs into clear, actionable, and testable requirements that inform downstream development and standardization activities.

Ontology Engineering and Lifecycle Management:

• The contractor shall design, develop, integrate, and maintain ontologies supporting NATO operational and technical use cases. This includes ensuring compliance with agreed standards, enabling interoperability across systems, and managing ontology artefacts through controlled lifecycle processes, including versioning, validation, and updates.

Semantic Artefacts Development and Management:

• The contractor shall develop and maintain semantic artefacts, including taxonomies, thesauri, dictionaries, and code lists, to ensure consistency of terminology and structured data usage across NATO systems and initiatives. These artefacts shall align with NATO terminology directive and applicable standardization policies.

Data Standards Development and Harmonization:

• The contractor shall contribute to the development, review, and harmonization of NATO data standards, ensuring alignment with ISO standards and NATO standardization artefacts. This includes supporting the modernization of standardization processes and improving interoperability across military and non-military domains.

Ontology Governance and Architecture Alignment:

• The contractor shall define and implement governance processes for ontology lifecycle management, including roles, responsibilities, workflows, and quality assurance mechanisms. The contractor shall ensure that ontology and data artefacts are aligned with the NATO Enterprise Architecture Framework (NAF v4.1) and model-driven development practices.

Integration, Data Exploitation, and AI Enablement:

• The contractor shall support the integration of ontologies into knowledge graphs and operational systems, enabling advanced data exploitation and supporting artificial intelligence and machine learning use cases. This includes ensuring compatibility with secure cloud environments and supporting DataOps and MLOps practices, where applicable.

Reporting, Briefings, and Cross-Functional Coordination:

• The contractor shall prepare and deliver briefings, presentations, and reports to NATO committees, capability panels, and working groups, and shall coordinate activities across stakeholders to ensure alignment, transparency, and effective progress of all assigned tasks.

Support to Unforeseen and Ad Hoc Requirements:

• The contractor shall provide support to unforeseen or ad hoc requirements within the scope of ontology engineering, data standardization, and interoperability, as requested and prioritised by CDT. Such support shall be subject to mutual agreement on scope, effort, and priority.