This Recommendation | International Standard defines an Application Service Element (the Common Management Information Service Element), which may be used by an application process in a centralized or decentralized management environment to exchange information and commands for the purpose of systems management, as defined by the OSI Management Framework in CCITT Rec. X.700 | ISO/IEC 7498-4. This Recommendation | International Standard is positioned in the application layer of ITU-T Rec. X.200 | ISO/IEC 7498-1 and is defined according to the model provided by ITU-T Rec. X.207 | ISO/IEC 9545. This Recommendation | International Standard defines: — a set of service primitives that constitute the application service element; — the parameters that are passed in each service primitive; — any necessary information for the semantic description of each service primitive. This Recommendation | International Standard does not define: — the nature of any implementation intended to provide the defined service; — the semantics associated with the information or commands that are exchanged by means of the service; — the manner in which management is accomplished by the user of the service; — the nature of any interactions which result in the use of the service. No requirement is made for conformance to this Recommendation | International Standard.