CEF eSignature at the 3rd Foss Hackathon
On 5 - 6 October 2019, the 3rd Foss Hackathon took place, part of the EU-FOSSA 2 project managed by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT), in Brussels,.
The Hackathons aimed to improve and contribute to open source software, by bringing together members of the open-source community to collaborate and create innovative solutions.
The attendees were able to choose between two tracks – create or improve, where they would either fix or enhance existing security, features or documentation of projects; or create new project features using the latest innovations in open source software, open hardware and open data respectively.
The Commission supports eSignatures and Trust Services in the EU with the help of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme, which funds key digital infrastructure, known as Building Blocks. The eSignature Building Block helps public administrations and businesses to accelerate the creation and verification of electronic signatures.
The Digital Signature Services (DSS) of the eSignature Building Block’s was one of the products to be tested by several developers across the globe participating at the Foss Hackathon. The atendees were able to provide input on the DSS open-source library.
The DSS is an open-source software library for electronic signature creation and validation. It supports the creation and verification of interoperable and secure electronic signatures.
The DSS can be re-used in an IT solution for electronic signatures to ensure that signatures, as well as seals, are created and validated in line with the eIDAS Regulation and related standards.
During the Hackathon, the participants were able to discuss on the current DSS version and propose enhancements for the performance and scalability of the DSS. This has allowed the DSS team to adopt the appropriate recommended measures.
The event was also a great opportunity for open-source enthusiasts and experts to connect while working on different products and services, as well as to spread more awareness on the CEF Building Blocks and in particular the eSignature Building Block.
eTranslation presented during the European Commission Knowledge Week 2019
The 2019 European Commission Knowledge Week took place on the 30 September – 4 October 2019. The aim of the 5-day event was to bring together staff members of the European Commission interested in innovative results, better policymaking, collaborative working practices, organisational learning and lifelong learning.
On 2 October 2019, at the “Lunchtime talk on eTranslation”, the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology and the Directorate-General for Translation presentedeTranslation. eTranslation is the Commission’s machine translation tool, designed for security and EU staff needs. The participants were able to learn about the possibilities that it offers, how it can be used, and then were shown a practical demonstration and an explanation of how computers learn to translate.
While the eTranslation is the European Commission’s internal machine translation tool, through Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the Commission promotes it externally as a free tool to businesses and other public administrations in the EU Member States.
CEF eTranslation can be integrated and implemented into an online site or service, by making it multilingual.
CEF eTranslation is a machine translation tool, which draws upon decades worth of work by EU translators and is designed to retain the format of structured documents during translation. It can translate multiple documents to multiple languages at once and guarantees continuous service of high quality, with due consideration for the confidentiality and security of data during the translation process.
CEF eTranslation is built using cutting-edge neural network technology. This AI-based machine learning approach examines the full context of a sentence to produce highly fluent, readable, and almost human-like translations.
Through CEF eTranslation, citizens and businesses can benefit from a wider range of digital public services in Europe, regardless of their language ability.
Learn more about the use of eTranslation by projects like this by reading the eTranslation Success Stories.
CEF Context Broker at FIWARE Summit 2019
On 23-24 October 2019, the 7th FIWARE Global Summit: “Scale Up for a Real Smart Future” took place in Berlin, Germany.
On 23 October, a panel entitled “Smart City Program Leaders” was organised, in which Kenji Hiramoto, IT Chief Strategist in the Cabinet Secretariat of the Government of Japan, presented the Smart Cities program in Japan. Caroline Corneau, IT Project Officer at the European Commission, presented the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme. The discussions between the participants and the panellists allowed a better understand of the extent to which the vision of the Japan government and of the European Commission are aligned, and the progress made in Japan and in the European Union on helping towards the transformation of cities into engines of growth by enabling the Data Economy.
On 24 October, the CEF Context Broker Building Block was presented at the summit during an interactive workshop entitled “CEF Connecting Europe Facility Workshop: Ready to digitize Smart Services for Public Administration".
The workshop aimed at identifying the benefits of the Building Blocks for public administrations in EU Member States, and the ways in which the Building Blocks can facilitate the development of smart solutions and how they can enable the creation of digital service infrastructures for digital services that work seamlessly across the frontiers of the EU Member States.
The workshop was an opportunity for the participants to ask questions, explore together the challenges and the needs of the organisations in which they are managing, and find out the ways in which the Context Broker Building Block can be useful for their organisation, public or private. A number of CEF Success Stories look at how the Context Broker has helped build world-class services using context data.
In late 2018, the Context Broker, the core of the FIWARE platform, was approved by the European Commission as a CEF Building Block and has since been reused by the first early adopters like cities and regions.
The CEF Context Broker enables organisations to manage and share data in real-time describing “what is currently happening” within their organisations, in the real world they manage or where they run their daily business processes. Thus, for example, Smart Cities can share information about what is happening in streets (e.g. traffic status, quality of air data, available parking slots, location). Similarly, a packet delivery service company may share data about orders (e.g. current location and expected delivery time).
Management of context information within an organisation is key since it allows assembling together information linked to different systems within the organisation, which are otherwise performing as separate information silos. This enables implementation of systems supporting overall governance functions and the exploitation of data with a more holistic perspective.
CEF eInvoicing presented at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)
On 18 October 2019, experts from the European Commission provided a policy update on CEF eInvoicing to members of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC).
Ms Irena Riviere-Osipov (eInvoicing Policy officer, DG GROW) and Ms Caroline Corneau (IT Project Officer, DIGIT) informed the event participants about the considerable benefits of eInvoicing for the European economy. The EC experts also highlighted how the CEF eInvoicing building block actively supports the adoption of eInvoicing using the European standard on eInvoicing.
In addition, Mr Federico Rossi (Head of Unit Human Resources and Finance, EESC) presented the value of adopting eInvoicing in the EESC, both in terms of cost-savings and efficiency gains.
Directive 2014/55/EU on electronic invoicing in public procurement calls for the definition of a common European standard on eInvoicing at semantic level (the core information contained in the eInvoice) as well as a list of syntaxes (the format or language used for transmission of the eInvoice). This standard is a key enabler of the digitalisation of public procurement in Europe.
During the presentation, the Member States' representatives from the social partners expressed their views and asked for further clarifications from the Commission. Mr Pegado Liz (Portugal), Mr De Lotto (Italy), Mr Lohan (Italy) and Mrs Kvedaraite (Lithuania) shared testimonies of their respective countries concerning eInvoicing at the central and sub-central levels.
In response to the main questions raised by the attendees, Ms Riviere-Osipov noted the following:
- The impact on the labor market and the challenges of skill adaptation need to be further evaluated. Stakeholders' contribution and testimonies are a major asset for identifying where the biggest impacts of the implementation of the Directive and uptake of standard are;
- The adoption of the European standard on eInvoicing is mandatory for public administrations. All eInvoicing systems in place at central and sub-central level have to go through an IT adaptation to be compliant. However, operational systems do not need to be re-built from scratch.
- The uptake of the standard enhances cross-border eProcurement, yet requires a change in mentality by many of the Member State public entities.
The Commission supports the standards' implementation through the CEF eInvoicing Building Block. CEF eInvoicing offers public and private sectors on-site eInvoicing Trainings and Workshops; supporting webinars, a User Community hosting online discussions, a Registry of supporting artefacts to implement European standard and a dedicated Conformance Testing Service.
CEF Telecom: Over €16 million EU investment to develop further trans-European digital services in 2019
On 30 October 2019, the Innovation & Networks Executive Agency (INEA), published the results of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF)-TC-2019-1 call for proposals, which include several CEF Building Blocks.
- eTranslation: €4.3 million will be granted to 6 proposals with applicants from 21 EU Member States plus Iceland, to provide solutions to make European digital services multilingual;
- eID & eSignature: the 6 selected proposals, that will receive €2.9 million in funding and including applicants from 13 EU Member States, will address the cross-border authentication of eIDs and the uptake and use of electronic signatures;
- eDelivery: 5 proposals to be granted €1.1 million, including applicants from 8 EU Member States plus Norway, have been selected to enable public administrations and businesses to exchange electronic data and documents with other public administrations, businesses and citizens, in a secure, reliable and trusted way;
- eInvoicing: 8 proposals awarded €5.9 million funding, cover 16 EU Member States and will support the implementation of the European Standard on eInvoicing (EN), allowing electronic invoices to flow seamlessly across the EU;
CEF Telecom funding supports projects of common interest that contribute to increasing the interoperability, connectivity and deployment of trans-European digital infrastructures across the EU, improving the daily life of citizens, businesses and public administrations, and thereby contributing to the development of a Digital Single Market.
eInvoicing and eProcurement session in the EU week of regions and cities
On 10 October 2019, the European Commission organised a dedicated session on "eProcurement and eInvoicing EU policy: implementation and challenges at regional level" in the context of the 2019 Economic Week of Region and Cities.
Presentations by EU and national experts provided guidelines, good practices examples of different national strategies, helping participants realise the adotion of eInvoicing at the sub-central level.
Irena Riviere-Osipov (eInvoicing Policy officer from DG GROW) noted that public procurement is a core part of public sector activity and provided significant market opportunities for businesses. "Accounting for a trading volume of EUR 2,448 billion (approx. 16% of the 2017 EU GDP), European public procurement is a major driver for economic growth, job creation, and innovation" (from a study of the Policy Department of the European Parliament, January 2019). The digitalisation of public procurement processes, and adoption of widespread eInvoicing, play a significant role in the efforts to ensure environmental sustainability, deliver public sector fiscal savings and maximise efficiency.
eProcurement & eInvoicing EU policy: implementation and challenges at regional level
This session subsequently included the sharing of best practices of five speakers including four EU Member State representatives. The experts shared their first-hand experiences in implementating eInvoicing particularly at sub-central levels. This included strategies used, monitoring tools applied and providing examples of concrete impacts from the uptake of eInvoicing.
- Marc Christopher Schmidt (DG GROW) stated that "Today, emerging technologies are transforming the way public procurement works. Public procurement became Public e-Procurement offering new services, products and more efficient and innovative business models".
Within the three last years, the digital capabilities gained in Member States increased considerably, but there is still room for improvement in order to benefit fully of the digitisation of the different procurement phases. - Kerstin Wiss Holmdahl (Legal adviser, Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), Sweden) highlighted that "With Information and Communication Technologies and a new way of working we can save money. It gives more resources for the core public activities (i.e. schools, hospitals, elderly care etc. in municipalities)". In response to a survey aiming to evaluate the impact of eProcurement transformation at the sub-central level, 94% of the respondents consider the invoicing process as more efficient than before the take-up of the eInvoicing.
- Declan McCrormack (Principal Officer - eInvoicing Ireland Programme and eTenders Platform Project, Office of Government Procurement, Ireland) presented the Irish "strategy to enhance the communication and the collaboration between the government and local levels by minimising the technological dependencies". The Irish office of Government Procurement has set national agreements with selected vendors in order to simplify procurement of compliant solutions of local public entities.
- Ana Ramos (Coordinator - Directorate of shared finacial services, ESPAP - Entidade de Serviços Partilhados da Administração Pública, I.P, Portugal) stated that"The eInvoice is the element that allows us to create a traceability, interoperability, quality data driven integration and further possibilities throughout the eProcurement chain". At local level in Portugal, the implementation of eInvoicing strategy gathers five elements: the standardisation of processes, the adaptation of technologies, elaboration of an eInvoicing program and good practices, and organisation of a dissemination campaign.
- Justin Jager (Policy Adviser, Ministry of Interior, Netherlands) noted that "the goal is to maintain monitoring tools and a close follow up with local bodies to evaluate the Directive implementation impacts". In the Netherlands, already 95% of the sub-central government entities have implemented a technical solution, mainly using PEPPOL.
There seems to be not one ideal and unique for implementing the eInvoicing and for modernising the eProcurement value chain. However, the interoperability and exchange optimisation require uniformity among Member States and trigger these questions:
The European Commission supports the uptake of eInvoicing respecting the European standard and Directive 2014/55/EU (on eInvoicing in public procurement) with the CEF eInvoicing Building Block . CEF eInvoicing currently offers public and private sectors on-site eInvoicing Trainings and Workshops, supporting webinars; a User Community hosting online discussions, a Registry of supporting artefacts to implement European standard and a dedicated Conformance Testing Service.
CEF eInvoicing Workshop at Exchange Summit 2019
The Exchange Summit 2019 took place from 30 September – 2 October 2019 in Vienna, Austria, and provided a platform to get in-depth information about recent developments and future trends from cutting edge keynote speeches, with panels and round tables covering interoperability and public procurement and discussions with global thought leaders.
The event included discussions and a workshop on the European standard on eInvoicing and the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eInvoicing Building Block – the tool with which the Commission is supporting the adoption of the standard in the European economy. Two of the events’ highlights looked at Europe's eInvoicing and eProcurement policies.
On Tuesday 1 October 2019, David Blanchard, Head of Unit (Acting) for Innovative and E-Procurement, DG GROW, European Commission was interviewed by Charles Bryant, Secretary General of the European E-Invoicing Service Providers Association (EESPA) . “What´s Next on the EC´s Agenda Regarding E-Invoicing and E-Procurement?” presented a great opportunity for participants to learn how European eInvoicing and eProcurement policies are set to evolve. David Blanchard has emphasised his optimism regarding the Digital Europe programme, which will be the new instrument supporting eInvoicing, eDelivery and eProcurement, and which has as main goal to facilitate the wide deployment of digital technologies across the European Union.
On Wednesday 2 October 2019, experts from the European Commission's CEF eInvoicing team facilitated an eInvoicing implementation workshop. Participants learned about implementation roadmaps for the European standard, best practices for the handling of eInvoices and got first-hand knowledge on the latest development in the EU Members States and much more.
Participants at the CEF eInvoicing workshop, Vienna
The European Commission currently supports the uptake of eInvoicing respecting the European standard and Directive 2014/55/EU (on eInvoicing in public procurement) with the CEF eInvoicing Building Block. CEF eInvoicing currently offers public and private sectors on-site eInvoicing Trainings and Workshops, supporting webinars; a User Community hosting online discussions, a Registry of supporting artefacts to implement European standard and a dedicated Conformance Testing Service.
Release of CEF eIDAS-Node version 2.3.1
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The European Commission is pleased to announce the release of the CEF eIDAS-Node software version 2.3.1 on 29 October 2019.
Electronic identification (eID) and electronic Trust Services (eTS) are key enablers for secure cross-border electronic transactions and central building blocks of the Digital Single Market. The Regulation (EU) N°910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (eIDAS Regulation) is a milestone to provide a predictable regulatory environment to enable secure and seamless electronic interactions between businesses, citizens and public authorities.
The eIDAS Network consists of a number of interconnected eIDAS nodes, which can either request or provide cross-border authentication. It is the responsibility of each country to implement their eIDAS node.
Release 2.3.1 of the eIDAS sample implementation for Member States is an all-in-one package for the Java platform including binary distributions for Glassfish, WildFly, Tomcat, WebLogic, WebSphere and the source code (Maven project). This release is based on version 1.1 of the eIDAS Technical Specifications.
The main change in release 2.3.1 is the added fix for a reported vulnerability. The CEF eID Team informed the Member States and closely collaborated with those which were known to run a version of the node with the identified vulnerability to put the right precautions in place.
Finally, this release was successfully tested for interoperability with previous releases of CEF eIDAS-Node v2.3 and v1.4.5, and with the German Middleware v1.1.0
For a more detailed description of the changes introduced with this release please consult the release notes and section "3. Changes” of the eIDAS-Node Migration Guide.
Member States can use this release as a sample implementation for demonstration purposes or they can adapt it as a basis for their own eIDAS scheme.
The testing tools (demo SP, demo IdP), the supplied Specific part and the Simple Protocol, should be used for demo purposes only on your local machine, and should not be deployed in your infrastructure.
With each release, the CEF eID Team strives to improve users' CEF eID experience. Feedback received on this version will be used as a basis for updating future versions of the eIDAS node software and the technical specifications.
CEF eSignature training on Trusted List Manager 5.6
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On 23 October 2019, the European Commission organised a training for Trusted List Scheme Operators (TLSOs) in Brussels, Belgium.
The training included 16 participants from 14 EU Member States. The eSignature technical team taught those present how to set-up and maintain trusted lists.
Qualified trust services provided in Europe (e.g. issuance of qualified certificates for electronic signatures or seals, qualified timestamping services) are listed in national trusted lists in all EU and European Economic Area Member States.
The trusted lists can include both qualified trust services and non-qualified trust services. Qualified trust services must be included on a national trusted list to be qualified, while it is up to each Member State whether – and which – non-qualified trust services to include in their trusted list.
The Member States' TLSOs can create and edit a trusted list in a standard, machine-readable format using the Trusted List Manager, a service of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eSignature Building Block.
The training concerned Trusted List Manager 5.6. It is used for:
- Editing my Trusted List
- Browsing any Trusted List
- Monitoring my Trusted List
- Trusted list availability
- (ETSI) Trusted List Conformance Checker
- Sending a Member State notification to the European Commission
- Trusted list -signing certificates and trusted list location
- Member State contact list
- EU Login user access
- Alerting Member State about:
- New publications
- Trusted List unavailability
- Signing certificate about to expire
- TL about to expire
For this training, the CEF eSignature team prepared a dedicated test environment. Participants undertook hands-on exercises resolving technical issues in real-time.
On the basis of positive feedback, another training is foreseen looking into more specific topics relating to maintenance of national trusted lists.
The team established that a second TL-Manager training should soon be organised
The CEF eSignature Building Block helps public administrations and businesses to accelerate the creation and verification of electronic signatures across borders. It provides the DSS open-source library for the construction of signing solutions; the Trusted List Browser, helping you find a Trust Service Provider; e-signature validation tests and a dedicated service desk (including a support desk for the closed community of national TLSOs).
EBSI - Joint User Group’ Workshop, October 2019
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On 22-23 October 2019, the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) joint user group workshop brought together experts working on the current EBSI use cases: European Self-Sovereign Identity (ESSIF), diplomas, notarisation and the Technical Infrastructure group.
The European Commission organised the workshop to finalise and validate the analysis and architecture phase of EBSI in order to continue the development of EBSI 1.0 in November 2019. The workshop was also an opportunity to prepare the upcoming European Blockchain Partnership Policy and Technical groups quarterly meeting, scheduled to take place during the “Convergence” on 11-13 November 2019 in Malaga, Spain.
During the workshop, the assembled experts presented their work to date which then provided room for discussion and input from the Member States
Discussions focused on how the Member States can contribute by hosting an EBSI node in their respective countries, with several Member States having expressed great interest in doing so.
The EBSI is a joint initiative from the European Commission and the European Blockchain Partnership to deliver EU-wide cross-border public services using blockchain technology. The EBSI will be materialised as a network of distributed nodes across Europe (the blockchain), leveraging an
increasing number of applications focused on specific use cases. In 2020, EBSI will become a Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Building Block, providing reusable software, specifications and services to support adoption by EU institutions and European public administrations.
To keep up to date with the latest EBSI news, subscribe to the newsflash.
Update to CEF eInvoicing Conformance Testing
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As of 31 October 2019, users can access the Conformance Testing services of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eInvoicing Building Block via EU Login, the single access point for European Commission services.
The Conformance Testing service allows solution & service providers and public entities to check conformance of their eInvoicing solution against the European standard on eInvoicing (EN16931) in a specific syntax (the structure of the electronic message containing the invoice).
If you are a solution & service provider or public entity, this service helps you ensure compliance with the European standard on eInvoicing, mandatory since 18 April 2019.
The European Commission funds the Conformance Testing service through the CEF eInvoicing Building Block. In addition, CEF eInvoicing currently offers public and private sectors on-site eInvoicing Trainings and Workshops; supporting webinars; a User Community hosting online discussions, a Registry of supporting artefacts to implement European standard.
Until now, users of the Conformance Testing service received a specific user-account from the CEF eInvoicing Service desk. As from 31 October 2019, users can authenticate with EU Login. EU Login is the authentication service of the European Commission and other EU Institutions that is secure and ensures the confidentiality of the user credentials.
You can swiftly create your EU Login here: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/cas/eim/external/register.cgi
The European standard on eInvoicing supports the internal market by making it possible for sellers to send invoices to many customers by using a single eInvoicing format and thus not having to adjust their sending and/or receiving parameters to connect with individual trading parties.
The mass adoption of eInvoicing within the EU leads to significant economic benefits and an increase in European business competitiveness. Supported by European legislation, acceptance of eInvoices by governments makes it easier to do business with the public sector and supports the wider digitalisation of the procurement process.
CEF eInvoicing Readiness Checker Decommissioning | See the current service offering
The CEF eInvoicing team hereby announces the decommissioning of the eInvoicing Readiness Checker tool.
The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eInvoicing Building Block provides a broad selection of services to support the adoption of the standard, especially at the regional and local level ahead of 18 April 2020, the deadline for sub-central actors in certain Member States. These services include:
Registry of supporting artefacts
The registry of supporting technical artefacts to implement the European standard is the main reference point of access to the European standard itself, code lists (country, currency etc.), validation artefacts, and the Core Invoice Usage Specifications (CIUS) and extensions. It supports users in implementing eInvoicing according to the European standard. This registry allows you to submit requests for change and contribute to the technical artefacts’ evolution to suit market needs.
A test infrastructure allowing you to check the conformance of your eInvoicing solution against the European standard in a specific syntax.
Implementation workshops: on-site workshops provided to public entities and policy makers.
Remote trainings: live open online sessions focused on eInvoicing topics for specialised target audiences.
Webinars: series of nine one-hour long webinars on eInvoicing topics open to all audiences.
Every European Union Member State has a unique approach to dealing with eInvoicing.
For each country, you can find out more about their policy framework, eInvoicing platform (if existing) and approach for receiving and processing eInvoices.
An easy reference repository for eInvoicing-related information. It includes information about access to the different code lists, codes used and their meaning and a glossary of elements used in the
European eInvoicing standard.
The Knowledge base provides information on EU and country specific levels
Offers support to users of any of the CEF eInvoicing services. It is a Single Point of Contact to address questions, incidents, requests and changes reported by the users
Latvia contributes language data for eTranslation
@ELRC
During a formal ceremony at the second European Language Resources Coordination Activities (ELRC) seminar in Latvia, the parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Eva Juhņēviča, contributed the open language data generated by the Latvian state administration language technology platform Hugo.lv to the representative of the European Commission, Ainārs Freimanis. Seminar was held on September 26.
This contribution demonstrates the successful cooperation between Latvia and the European Commission in the development of automated translation systems, thereby ensuring equal opportunities for every citizen of the European Union in communication with the State Administration and in obtaining information.
“The discussion on the importance of multilingualism and language technologies for bringing down language barriers in the European Digital Single Market was already underlined at the Riga Summit in 2015. Many important results have since been achieved, highlighting multilingualism as key enabling factor in the development of this market,” features Ainārs Freimanis.
The open language data deliverable includes 318 million words monolingual corpora, 15 million words parallel corpora and 19 000 Latvian terms.
“This will be a mutual benefit for both the European Union and the Latvian State, as it will both complement the eTranslation platform with high-quality language resources and ensure a more accurate and high-quality use of the Latvian language in European automatic translation systems,” Eva Juhņēviča said during the ceremony.
The second ELRC Seminar was opened by the Latvian President's external advisor on Smart Technology, Roland Lapiņš, who affirmed the need for political will to increase support for the development of automatic translation and promised the involvement and support of the President's institution.
The seminar was attended by language and translation specialists, officials who use foreign languages in their work, as well as experts from the European Union. Participants discussed automatic translation capabilities in public administration, defined daily work requirements and identified relevant sources of multilingual resources as well as reviewed technical and usability issues related to the use of data for automated translation.
“Hugo.lv, since it was created five years ago as an automatic translation system, has taken a major step forward in its development, becoming a multifunctional platform, thereby ensuring successful communication with the public administration,” noted Janis Ziediņš, project manager of the Culture Information Systems Centre project - Hugo.lv
With a population of more than 500 million people who speak approximately 80 different languages, Europe is unique in its aim to create equal opportunities for everyone, regardless of the language of communication. Multilingualism is one of the leading values of Europe, but it is also a challenge confronting many institutions in their daily work. Language technologies facilitate multilingual communication and the exchange of documents between public authorities in European countries. To ensure equal opportunities, the European Commission and the Latvian government institutions create technology platforms for automated translation.
"The long-term objective is to ensure that every European citizen can use any e-service in his or her mother tongue. Latvia shows a good example of how to develop its language by introducing the latest language technologies in national information systems and helping to build Europe-wide solutions," emphasizes the Coordinator of the ELRC DATA, Chairman of the board of the technology company Tilde, Andrejs Vasiļjevs.
The European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation has developed the public administration machine translation system eTranslation, while the Latvian translation service HUGO.LV is provided by the Latvian Cultural Information System Center. It is part of the Latvian e-service infrastructure and provides instant, free translation in Latvian, English and Russian for institutions, individuals and publicly available online services.
The seminar is organized in cooperation with the ELRC Consortium and the Cultural Information Systems Center; the local organizer is Tilde.
The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eTranslation building block is continuously improved through the European Language Resource Coordination (ELRC) effort, which identifies and gathers language and translation data relevant to national public services, administrations and governmental institutions across all 30 European countries participating in the CEF programme.
In addition, the more translations fed into the system, the better the translations get.
eTranslation excels at WMT 2019
eTranslation amongst top ranking engines in a competition with over 150 other machine translation systems
Screen capture of eTranslation's browser user interface
Quick facts
- Event: The fourth Conference on Machine Translation (WMT 2019)
- Organisation: European Commission’s CEF Telecom Automated Translation programme with DGT, DG CNECT and DIGIT
- Objective: To experiment and validate ideas for eTranslation’s future development
- Outcome: Promising results in all categories participated
- CEF Building Block: eTranslation
eTranslation tops the charts
This year’s Conference on Machine Translation (WMT 2019) took place in Florence, Italy, between August 1-2, 2019. During these two days, 153 systems from more than 40 groups competed on translation tasks and for the first time, the European Commission’s eTranslation solution was among them. Despite the strong competition, eTranslation achieved very good results in all featured translation categories, including French to German, Russian to English, English to German and English to Lithuanian.
For the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation (DG T), the WMT was an opportunity to challenge its translation engines in order to improve the services offered to European Union institutions and Member State public authorities. The primary objectives of the WMT are to evaluate the state of the art in machine translation, to disseminate common test sets and public training data, and to refine evaluation and estimation methodologies for machine translation.
From novice to notable
eTranslation, formerly a novice in machine translation competitions, proved to have very promising capabilities. The tool ranked second in French to German, third in Russian to English, and placed among the top ten in English to German and in English to Lithuanian. The pan-European effort to break down language barriers have paid off, as eTranslation compared favourably with many global corporate giants, research centres and leading universities.
What makes eTranslation's results even more remarkable, is that it had very few computational resources to spare for the competition. Detailed information on eTranslation’s submissions, including information on data preparation, trainings and translation results, are available at the link below. The complete WMT 2019 findings are also available for download.
How was the assessment done?
To prepare for the WMT, the eTranslation team customised the machine translation engine to focus on translating news and more generic web content. This is because eTranslation used by public administrations to communicate across borders is specialised in formal, technical and academic language styles and subjects, such as legislation, public health, finance and cultural heritage. Therefore, the system had to be tweaked to handle the everyday language of journalists.
The test data for the 2019 translation task was selected from online news sources, with the exception of the French-German set. The latter consisted of translating news texts between French and German (in both directions) on the topic of the European elections. To achieve higher quality results in this task, the eTranslation team used a method called ‘guided topic modelling’ in order to select additional training material for the machine translation system. As in previous years, translations were produced in specific for the challenge.
All systems were evaluated using the so-called ‘direct assessment’ procedure, where human assessors rate the machine translation output on a scale from 0 to 100. In order to ensure comparability of results, system parameters were tuned with a common set of parallel and monolingual corpora for training translation models and development sets.
What’s next?
By participating in the WMT, the eTranslation team was able to experiment and validate ideas in a competitive environment. The results and findings of the competition will go towards the development of new machine translation engines, as the eTranslation team envisages further expanding to new languages and domains. These new developments are supported by the European Language Resource Coordination (ELRC) that facilitates the collection of language resources under the Connecting Europe Facility - Automated Translation programme.
How can CEF eTranslation help you?
Just log in to translate texts or integrate the tool into your digital public services to create multilingual content.
eTranslation is available for all European Union institutions, Member State public authorities, as well as public sector officials. It is a digital building block offered for free by the European Commission's Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme and it covers all EU official languages, including Icelandic and Norwegian. When it comes to intellectual property rights, eTranslation passes the rights of the translation back to the owner of the original text submitted for translation.
We would be happy to help you get started, visit us at the link below to learn more.
Emanuele Baldacci presents EU reusable solutions at eFörvaltningsdagarna 2019, in Stockholm
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On 7 October 2019, Emanuele Baldacci, Director of Digital Services in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT), presented on the “Bigger Picture of Single Market Digitalisation” during the eFörvaltningsdagarna 2019
The Förvaltningsdagarna (“eAdministration” Days) is Sweden’s largest eGovernment conference and a key meeting place for representatives from eGovernment and digital transformation in national, regional and local administrations, as well as business and civil society.
Mr Baldacci explained that one of the European Commission’s key priorities is building a Europe fit for the digital age, providing the opportunity for governments – at all levels – to better serve their people.
At the European level, this means establishing legal frameworks. On one hand, this might be a “hard” framework, such as the eIDAS Regulation on Trust Services and Authentication in the Internal Market. Alternatively, they may be “soft”, such as the European Interoperability Framework (EIF).
To support the implementation of such frameworks, the Commission provides technical enablers to build digital services that work across sectors and borders. This includes the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Building Blocks, key standards-based digital infrastructure, which can support digitalisation in different areas, from authentication to procurement or from machine translation to secure data exchange. This also includes dedicated interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens under the ISA² programme.
Projects across sectors use such building blocks to deliver secure, cross-border digital services in domains such as health, justice, commerce and social security. In tandem, the Once Only Principle proposes that citizens and businesses should only provide their data to the public sector only once.
The Digital Europe Programme will ultimately realise the Once Only Principle architecture in a Government Interoperability Platform, which will help Member States push forward their own digital transformation.
Via the Digital Europe Programme, Commission is proposing €9.2 billion investment in Europe’s first ever digital programme.
Mr Baldacci concluded that the Digital Europe Programme will support investments made by EU Member States and industry in the key areas of artificial intelligence, advanced computing & data handling, cybersecurity and help people develop the digital skills necessary to deploy them.
Download the slides to see the presentation