This document provides a description of the primary services that have been internationally defined to promote consistency among implementations. Implementations can provide any of these services in combination with any other services that are appropriate. This document organizes ITS services by defining service groups, which are placed into one of several service domains. Each service group contains one or more individual services, each of which is described.

This document is intended for use by at least two groups of people involved in the ITS sector:

For the first group, this document provides service descriptions that can act as the catalyst for more detailed descriptions. The level of detail can differ from one ITS implementation to another, depending on whether or not a national ITS architecture is involved, and whether or not this architecture is based directly on services, or on groups of functions. The service descriptions in this document are pitched at a high-level as too much detail can be prescriptive and reduces flexibility.

For standards developers, this document is applicable to Technical Committees who are developing International Standards for the ITS sector. This document is designed to provide information and explanations of services that can form the basis and reason for developing standards.

Due to its nature, this document is largely advisory and informative with minimal requirements. It is designed to assist the integration of services into a cohesive reference architecture, thereby promoting interoperability and the use of common data definitions. Specifically, services defined within the service groups can be the basis for defining “use cases”, “user needs” or "user service requirements” depending on the methodology being used to develop the resultant ITS architecture functionality. They can also assist with defining applicable data within data dictionaries, and applicable communications and data exchange standards.