Last Chance: CEF eTranslation Calls for Proposals 2016

The deadline for submissions of proposals for up to EUR 6.5 million supporting the use of CEF eTranslation is 15 December 2016. Grant funding supporting the rollout of the CEF building blocks are administrated by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA)

For all you need to know concerning how to submit your proposal and links to INEA, just visit the article here.

Grant funding is available to stimulate the language resources collection for specific domains of interest to specific pan-European public services in order to improve the quality and coverage of automated translation offered by the CEF Automated Translation platform.  The funding is also available to integrate, use and extend the Automated Translation platform in other relevant multilingual, cross-border European digital services.

For more information on CEF eTranslation visit the CEF Digital 2018 website.

To learn more about the other CEF building blocks, watch our short video now 

JOINT DECLARATION : "IBM, Chasquis & Flame Express Our Appreciation and Commitment to the CEF eDelivery Program and Initiatives"

We – Flame, Chasquis and IBM – participating at the CEF eDelivery days 29-30 November 2016 would like to use this opportunity to express our appreciation and commitment to the CEF eDelivery program and initiatives.

During the last 3 years we, as service providers, have been deeply involved in and taking part in the eSENS project, where basic part of the eDelivery infrastructure has been developed, tested and specified.

The CEF eDelivery initiative is a cornerstone in building interoperability and cross boarder service in Europe to the benefit for citizen, companies and administrations. The eDelivery initiative will through an open, documented and standard based infrastructure open and strengthen competition and growth.

We encourage other service providers to join up the CEF and make awareness on the eDelivery program and consider where and how you can contribute.

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch  our short video  now 

CEF Digital 2018: Cross-Border Solutions for your next project

Financed by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the European Commission and EU Member States have developed and piloted a range of cross-border digital services, to help Connect Europe.

The CEF building blocks (eDelivery, eID, eInvoicing, eSignature and eTranslation) provide basic services which can be reused to enable more complex digital public services offered to citizens, businesses and public administrations. From secure message change, to mutual recognition of documents and nationally-issued IDs to machine translation, the building blocks may be re-used separately, or in combination.

The CEF building blocks can be re-used in different policy areas by a range of different actors. Specific projects are also supported by the CEF building blocks across policy domains, these are known as Sector Specific Digital Service Infrastructures (DSI), including e Procurement, eHealth and Cybersecurity.

The roll-out of the CEF building blocks has already started, with a range of services available to both public administrations and service providers. In addition, grant funding is available to facilitate the uptake of CEF Digital 2018 (the second 2016 CEF Telecom Calls were launched on 12 May 2016 – 15 September 2016) with a total budget of EUR 70 million. The Calls for Proposals are administrated by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA).

The European Commission has launched the CEF Digital 2018 Portal, home to the CEF building blocks.

Right now, there is a community working to digitally connect Europe using the CEF building blocks. Via the portal's collaborative platform, Public Administrations, Businesses and stakeholders can meet, discuss and collaborate on the CEF building blocks.

The portal provides access to information, tools, services and software to help European Projects and Public Administrations use the building blocks in their next project. It also includes the CEF Dashboard, which provides an overview of the progress, quality and uptake of CEF Digital 2018.

The CEF Building Blocks can support your project in the following ways:

Roll-out and development of the CEF building blocks has already started. Visit the CEF Digital 2018 Portal to get started and help us Connect Europe

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch our short video now 

Reusable Components at DIGITEC 2016: Digital Future

The IT Departments of the European Commission (DIGIT) and the European Parliament (ITEC) have joined forces to organise DIGITEC 2016: Digital Future.

The forum brings together the IT communities of the European institutions to share best practices to transform public administration through IT.

Teams from the European Commission and European Parliament will present Reusable Components at a dedicated booth during the event. Reusable components allow solution architects, developers and managers of development teams to avoid starting the construction of their Information Systems from scratch, cutting development costs and improving time to market of their planned solutions.

In the context of the Digital Single Market initiative, and supported by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the European Commission presents the CEF building blocks. These offer basic reusable capabilities available for any European project to facilitate the delivery of digital public services across borders.

The European Parliament presents KM Redmap, the reusable component supporting the KM Portal, and the PRINTSHOP server component, which offers services ranging from the creation of documents of different formats starting from XML sources to sending generated files to individual email addresses and/or printers.

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch our short video now 

CEF Digital 2018 Presented at the Event: Supporting the Implementation of eGovernment at Regional and Local Level

On 15 November 2016, the European Commission organised an event to help regional and local public administrations implement the EU's eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020.

The seminar presented the various funding mechanisms - such as the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) - available for actions and discussed how to ensure alignment of these investments with the main priorities of the eGovernment Action Plan.

CEF Digital 2018, a programme supported by the Connecting Europe Facility, supports the provision of the CEF building blocks, basic reusable capabilities available for European project designed to facilitate the delivery of digital public services across borders. CEF Digital 2018 also includes Sector Specific Digital Service Infrastructure (DSI), such as in eJustice or Public Open Data, i.e. projects deploying the CEF building blocks. CEF Digital 2018 also has strong links to the eIDAS Regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market, and other relevant EU legislation.

The presentation explained the governance and legal structure behind the Connecting Europe Facility, and CEF Digital 2018, and how the provision of reusable cross-border digital services will support the creation of a Digital Single Market in Europe. Mr Frade noted that CEF Digital 2018 supports both services provided directly by the European Commission (the CEF building blocks) and funding to support the uptake of the CEF building blocks, achieved through grants administrated by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA). Calls for proposals for CEF eInvoicing and CEF eTranslation remain open until 15 December 2016, with further calls open at six-month intervals until 2020.

In addition, the presentation explored the scope of the CEF building blocks across industry, the public sector, the European Commission and other EU Institutions. Using the example of CEF eID, this building block is currently being reused by the finance sector, national authentication schemes (such as verify.co.uk or egiz.gv.at) and as the European Commission's main authentication platform, EU Login.

Finally, participants were provided with information on the take-up of the CEF building blocks, available online via the CEF Dashboard. The purpose of the CEF Dashboard is to track the performance of the CEF building blocks and to measure progress towards the long-term goals of CEF Digital 2018, as laid out in the CEF Work Programmes.

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch our short video now 

CEF eInvoicing: Helping EU Public Entities Comply with the Upcoming eInvoicing Standard

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch our short video now 

phoss SMP first implementation passes CEF eDelivery OASIS SMP Conformance Tests

The CEF eDelivery team is pleased to announce that phoss SMP is the first implementation to pass the eDelivery OASIS SMP conformance tests.

Phoss SMP is an Open Source SMP server that supports both the PEPPOL and OASIS SMP specifications and comes with a management GUI and optionally an XML backend for simplified operations.

The eDelivery OASIS SMP conformance tests are derived from the OASIS SMP specifications and are implemented on the Minder conformance testing platform.

For more details on CEF eDelivery, including conformance testing visit CEF Digital 2018.

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch our short video now 

CEF Digital 2018 and FIWARE Join to Accelerate the Testing of Secure Message Exchange in Different Sectors

Collaboration makes the testing of eDelivery easier, enabling open and, at the same time, secure digital ecosystems.

CEF Digital 2018, a programme under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), is the main EU programme supporting the establishment of trans-European digital infrastructures that contribute to the Digital Single Market. CEF Digital 2018 has begun collaboration in the area of generic enablers / building blocks with FIWARE, an open cloud-based platform for the creation and execution of smart applications and services. A first practical result of this collaboration is that a first CEF building block, namely eDelivery, will become integrated as Generic Enabler of the FIWARE Platform. This means developers, service providers and experimenters are now able to deploy and run eDelivery on the FIWARE Lab. They will also be able to download and locally deploy the Docker image of an eDelivery Access Point from the FIWARE Catalogue. An introductory course about CEF eDelivery is available on FIWARE Academy.

In just a few years, CEF Digital 2018 successfully implemented one of the most ambitious digital initiatives of the European Commission. Today, different sectors (eJustice, eHealth, eProcurement, etc.) are using the same basic building blocks to enable innovative cross-border digital interactions among public administrations, businesses and citizens: eDelivery is one of these generic enablers/ building blocks alongside eID, eSignature, eInvoicing and eTranslation. Consequently, further collaboration between the FIWARE initiative and the CEF programme is expected in the near future.

eDelivery is an essential element of any digital ecosystem where the exchange of data over the internet must be secured according to the provisions of Electronic Registered Delivery Service set in the eIDAS Regulation. CEF eDelivery interconnects different systems through eDelivery Access Points. The software industry already provides different messaging solutions compliant with eDelivery Access Point specifications. Given the growing popularity of eDelivery, public administrations and businesses across Europe are looking to test eDelivery Access Points at low cost and at speed. With FIWARE, testing of eDelivery can be done quickly and for free. The instances deployed on FIWARE support both experimentation and testing. Therefore, these instances will be created from the Open Source sample software offered by CEF, i.e. Domibus. True to FIWARE's goal "to build an open sustainable ecosystem around public, royalty-free and implementation-driven software platform standards", CEF eDelivery also supports Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMEs) in the context of the digital era. SMEs can participate in this process by creating eDelivery software or offering eDelivery services as an alternative to email technology. This is why CEF eDelivery, and the other CEF building blocks, are collaborating with the Enterprise Europe Network, the EU's foremost SME Network. The addition of CEF eDelivery to FIWARE's catalogue of generic enablers will expand its offering in key areas such as Smart Cities.

This collaboration will both enable and accelerate the testing of secure message exchange in different sectors. The easiest way to start is to create an account on FIWARE Lab, the working instance of FIWARE available for experimentation, and launch an eDelivery Access Point.

Further collaboration is explored between the FIWARE initiative and the CEF program, both in the direction of contributing CEF building blocks as FIWARE Generic Enablers, and exploring the adoption of some FIWARE GEs as CEF Building Blocks, with the intention of accelerating the development of trans-border digital services.

It is also important to mention that CEF makes available up to EUR 300 million in grants until 2020. These grants are used for digital enablement projects, many of which use CEF eDelivery. All information about the grants: requirements, deadlines, instructions on how to apply and documentation are available on the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) website.

Developers, service providers and other experimenters may contact the CEF team to know more about the CEF building blocks, or visit the CEF Digital 2018 Portal.

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch our short video now 

The CEF eInvoicing Stakeholders' Day

The CEF eInvoicing Stakeholders' Day, open to all public entities and service and solution providers, will be held in Brussels on Thursday 1 December. The CEF eInvoicing Stakeholders' Day event is the third in a series of stakeholder meetings to be held between 29 November and 1 December inclusive. After two days on eDelivery, the objective of the eInvoicing Stakeholders' Day is to provide all relevant stakeholders with an update on eInvoicing, the support available to help public entities to comply with the eInvoicing Directive (2014/55/EU) and provide market clarity for service and solution providers.
 

A panel of stakeholders responsible for eInvoicing from both the public sector and industry will share their experiences, views on the benefits of eInvoicing and the challenges to be addressed to realise its benefits in the context of the eInvoicing Directive.

A senior representative of the Centre Européen de Normalisation (CEN) will be present to discuss how the future European standard (EN) on Electronic Invoicing can benefit public entities and service and solution providers. You can also discover how another CEF Building Block, eDelivery, can help public entities and service and solution providers to reap the benefits of eInvoicing.

After lunch, you can delve into and discuss the eInvoicing Readiness Checker during a dedicated workshop. This web-based resource will go live in early 2017 to help public entities and service and solution providers to prepare for compliance with the eInvoicing Directive. Its resources include:

• An eInvoicing maturity self-assessment tool for public entities
• Country Sheets for 12 countries on the state of play of B2G eInvoicing
• Profile pages available for public entities and solution & service providers to share and promote their eInvoicing experiences 

Afterwards, a second workshop will enable participants to learn about the 2016 State of play of B2G eInvoicing in public procurement study, which produced the aforementioned country sheets, and to suggest ideas to build on this for the 2017 study.

So come, learn, share expertise, network, lunch, contribute, suggest ideas and shape the future of eInvoicing in Europe. For more information, please contact the CEF Building Blocks.  

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch our short video now 

New release of the CEF Reuse Watch

Reuse Overview

64% of the CEF Sector Specific DSIs are reusing or committed to reuse at least one building block. The pie chart below shows how many systems are reusing zero or more building blocks.

The European Commission has released a new version the CEF Reuse watch. The new dashboard includes an update on the reuse data for 2016 Q3, and the addition of a reuse overview section which presents reuse in a single aggregated percentage. Detailed figures and the evolution of reuse per building block remain available.

The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) provides EUR 870 million for the creation of cross-border digital services in Europe, largely through the CEF building block Digital Service Infrastructure (DSI) (eDelivery, eID, eSignature, eTranslation and eInvoicing). Cross-border digital services are a fundamental aspect of the Digital Single Market, which aims to overcome digital barriers, with a projected value of EUR 415 billion to the European economy.

Reuse of the CEF building blocks is gaining momentum with over 50 projects reusing or actively considering reusing the CEF Building Blocks. In addition, Calls for Proposals for an indicative EUR 70 million of grant funding are open for a number of CEF building blocks and related Digital Service Infrastructure in 2016. The Calls for Proposals are administrated by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) .  

The CEF Monitoring and Reporting framework includes three categories of monitoring activities:  

CEF dashboard users have now a better visibility on the reuse of the CEF Building blocks and this dashboard will continue to be updated on a quarterly basis.  

To learn more about the CEF building blocks, watch  our short video  now