ISO/TS 17427:2014 describes the (actor invariant) roles and responsibilities required to deploy and operate Cooperative-ITS (C-ITS). The organizational architecture described in this document is to be used for a fully operational system. ISO/TS 17427:2014 is couched in terms of an organizational or enterprise viewpoint, as defined in ISO/IEC 10746 Open Distributed Processing.

ISO/TS 17427:2014 is applicable to all types of road traffic of all classes. The description of roles is completely technology agnostic and, in terms of C-ITS communication modes, embraces vehicle-vehicle communications, vehicle-infrastructure communications and infrastructure-infrastructure communications.

ISO/TS 17427:2014 provides a methodology for the identification of service specific roles and their corresponding responsibilities based on a process oriented approach. Additionally, the defined methodology is used to identify the roles and responsibilities for C-ITS, in general. Both the methodology, as well as, the roles and responsibilities for C-ITS are deduced from the reference model: Open Distributed Processing (ISO/IEC 10746). Open Distributed Processing offers five viewpoints of which the enterprise viewpoint corresponds with the organizational architecture and the roles and responsibilities.

ISO/TS 17427:2014 separates C-ITS roles into 'external' and 'internal'. Those considered to be internal are all roles set up for the sole purpose of C-ITS and those considered to be external are all roles involved in C-ITS but not set up for the sole purpose of C-ITS.

ISO/TS 17427:2014 describes high-level architectural viewpoint on C-ITS. It can be used as a blueprint when implementing C-ITS and the corresponding organizational structures. The characteristics of C-ITS entail a huge number of data/information exchanges. Therefore, the implementation of the organizational architecture stringently needs to respect privacy and data protection, as defined in ISO/TR 12859 and in the national laws and regulations (where instantiated). Privacy and data protection affect all roles defined in this Technical Specification and due to these characteristics, all actors occupying roles in C-ITS need to respect the corresponding standards and regulations.