CEF makes €3 million available in funding for cross-border eID and eSignatures
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The first 2020 Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Call for Proposals for eID and eSignature opened on 23 March and provides up to €3 million for projects reusing the CEF eID and eSignature Building Blocks.
The presentation on the 2020-1 CEF Telecom eIdentification & eSignature call is now available:
The objectives for eID
CEF eID primarily supports the Member States in the roll-out of the eIDAS Network - the technical infrastructure which connects national eID schemes. Service Providers (public administrations and private sector organisations) may then connect their services to this network, making these services accessible across borders and allowing them to enjoy the legal recognition brought by eIDAS.
For CEF eID, this years €2.5 million budget targets three areas:
- eID Digital Service Infrastructure (Building Block) integration;
- attributes enablement; and
- eIDAS node upgrades.
The eID Digital Service Infrastructure integration budget stream is aimed at supporting existing online services, systems or platforms that want to connect to the eIDAS network. In doing so they can enable users holding any one of 15 different (and growing) eID means available in 13 different EU Member States to securely identify and authenticate themselves when connecting to their service.
The attributes enablement budget stream is aimed at those organisations who want to link additional attributes (e.g. information about academic credentials held) to the eIDAS network. This would enable information about these attributes to be shared over the eIDAS network. This could allow, for example, users with an eID linked to the network to confirm that they have a particular academic qualification using this eID.
The eIDAS node upgrade budget stream is aimed at those organisations currently maintaining an eIDAS node. These nodes are the foundational elements of the eIDAS network, enabling the interconnection and mutual recognition of different national eID means so that eID means issued in one country can be used in other EU countries.
The objectives for eSignature
The CEF eSignature Building Block helps public administrations and businesses accelerate the creation and verification of electronic signature across borders.
For CEF eSignature, this years €0.5 million budget targets the following area:
- Uptake and reuse of eSignature.
The uptake and reuse of eSignature budget stream is aimed at developing systems for Member States and the private sector for the use of electronic signatures and electronic seals. The focus is on demonstrating the use of the eSignature Building Block’s DSS open-source library for the creation and/ or validation of signatures and seals in line with the eIDAS Regulation and related standards. It is possible to address this objective alone or in combination with the first two objectives of eID.
The bottom line
Applicants now have until 25 June 2020 to submit proposals in response to the call. Both eID and eSignature are crucial elements of the efforts to enable citizens and businesses to operate securely in the digital world and build trust in online interactions. The new CEF 2020 call for proposals offers support for organisations working in different ways towards this goal.
New CEF Big Data Test Infrastructure release 1.3.0 has improved security and storage
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The European Commission is happy to announce a new release of the cloud-base data analytics platform offered by the Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI) Building Block, which provides a safe environment to European Public Organisations to experiment with big data technologies. The Infrastructure is provided free-of-charge with the objective of fostering data analytic adoption around the EU and to promote data-driven decision-making.
This new v1.3.0. release of the test infrastructure adds new features to the platform regarding storage and security facilities. These additional features broaden the data analytics use cases that can be run on the BDTI platform by enabling Public Administrations to process more types of data and offering increased flexibility regarding the security and connection options.
Concretely, this release makes available a new type of database, MongoDB, for storing and processing unstructured data. This release also implements three new security features: centralised user management via Active Directory, Hadoop ecosystem enhanced with Kerberos and easier secure connectivity to user environments via OpenVPN connections.
More information about this release is available via the BDTI technical documentation.
If you represent a public Oorganisation interested in running a data analytics pilot project on the BDTI platform, feel free to learn more about the pilot request process in our Get Started page and contact us with any questions you might have.
CEF TELECOM GRANT BENEFICIARY
Poland puts eInvoicing plans into action with the help of CEF tools and services
Quick facts:
- Project: European cross-border e-invoice in local public procurement in Poland (CEF Action No 2016-PL-IA-0106)
- Consortium: Institute of Logistics and Warehousing (ILiM) as the coordinator with the City Hall in Poznan and its IT system provider COIG, the Ministry of Economic Development and its IT system provider QNT, MPK Sp. z o.o.
- Challenge: To automate the e-invoicing process in line with European Directive and standard
- Solution: Upgrade existing IT systems used by public entities and integrate them with the national e-invoicing platform (PEF)
- CEF Building Blocks: eInvoicing and eDelivery (embedded in PEPPOL)
From plan to action
Although Poland was one of the first countries to introduce a legal foundation for the use of e-invoices, their uptake by businesses and public administrations has been slow. In fact, Poland’s legislation covering the issuing, sending and storing of e-invoices was passed in 2005, five years before the equivalent EU regulation. So, when the time came to give e-invoicing a boost in practice, the Ministry of Economic Development decided to create a single national e-invoicing platform (PEF) – just to make sure that the solution would be available to all Polish public entities and in this way, fulfil the obligations imposed by the European Directive on electronic invoicing (2014/55/EU). PEF was launched in April 2019 and before the end of the year, the platform had more than 12,000 registered contracting authorities and 655 suppliers that had sent 1,600 e-invoices.
Despite PEF’s advanced functionalities in sending structured e-invoices, their automated receiving and processing remained a challenge. In order to achieve the first implementation of a fully automated e-invoicing process from sending to the receiving and processing of a European standards compliant e-invoice, a consortium was formed to undertake the task (CEF Action No 2016-PL-IA-0106). The objective was to fulfil the European Directive in a way that would create a national reference model for an advanced automated e-invoicing implementation between public purchasing authorities and their suppliers.
"CEF provides a set of tools and services that helped our consortium upgrade existing IT systems to comply with European standards in a fast and efficient manner. The resulting solution enables participating public authorities to automatically receive and process structured e-invoices. The CEF Action also brought about pioneer experience in e-invoicing, resulting in a new methodology, which will encourage many more Polish public purchasing authorities and companies to get involved and enjoy the benefits of automated e-invoicing". – Tadeusz Rudnicki, Senior Consultant, The Institute of Logistics and Warehousing
Poland steps up with a national solution
The deadline for going digital was set by the European Directive on electronic invoicing, which mandated that as of mid-April 2019, all European public organisations must be able to receive structured e-invoices. In Poland, the implementation of the new law followed two tracks – one legislative, to transpose the Directive into national law; and one technical, to enable the exchange of e-invoices. The resulting Polish Act that entered into force on 18 April 2019 embraces the spirit of the European Directive, as it also encourages public authorities to process structured e-invoices. The Act came into effect for all levels of public authorities at the same time.
On the technical track, Poland decided to go for a single national platform for all public entities and their suppliers. This is because the European standard (EN-16931) on e-invoicing, referred to in the Directive, was new at the time and the local market for compliant solutions still immature.
All public authorities have to register their accounts on the platform, hence every B2G invoice must be sent in the required structured format (XML) through the PEF. Private businesses may use the platform free of charge, however, they are also free to choose any other solution available in the market – this way they do not have to adapt their existing solutions to the PEF standards. In such a case, the company’s service provider will connect to PEF and send the e-documents on behalf of the company.
In addition to e-invoices, PEF also exchanges other electronic documents, such as orders, dispatch advices and receipt advices between procurement parties. Thanks to the structured nature of data, none of them require manual intervention by humans during their exchange, even though manual operations are still possible for less advanced users. End-users can use the PEF through a web service or a desktop application, or opt to exchange e-invoices to or from their own system, thanks to the multi-client API that PEF provides.
How PEF was complemented with CEF
The CEF Action was coordinated by the Institute of Logistics and Warehousing (ILiM), which also served as the technical adviser, supporting the consortium in e-invoicing standards implementation. The consortium achieved its objectives through the following tasks:
- deployment of new functionalities in public entities’ IT systems (at City Hall, the Ministry, MPK),
- implementation of the direct delivery of e-invoices to the City Hall using GLN identifiers delivered by GS1 Poland (as the foundation for e-invoice electronic addressing),
- integration of said IT systems with eDelivery (PEF platform based on OpenPEPPOL Access Points),
- internal technical and functional testing of new solutions and their final validation by CEF,
- training of the staff and preparation of technical documentation.
The consortium employed the PEPPOL network in the e-document exchange component. The PEPPOL network is based on the technical specifications supported by the European Commission’s CEF Building Blocks: eDelivery and eInvoicing. From eDelivery, the consortium used the PEPPOL Access Point specifications and a reference implementation.
From eInvoicing, the consortium used documentation and support services, which helped to implement the European standard faster through workshops and testing. The testing service ensured the solution’s conformance in a fast and efficient manner, thanks to the support team offered by CEF. Also talking with other Member States' e-invoicing teams through the CEF eInvoicing Community was immensely helpful.
In the end, the public authorities engaged in this Action can now receive e-invoices, as long as the invoice is EN-16931 and PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 compliant. Guidelines for implementing the PEPPOL BIS specifications (also chosen as CIUS) and related technical services are available to all on a dedicated website eFaktura.gov.pl. No significant changes were made to the CIUS, hence the website merely explains the specification in Polish business terms and interpretations.
Benefits
The main benefits of centralised e-invoicing for Polish public entities are cost and operational savings, the automation of the invoicing process, the reduction of manual administrative burden, the optimisation of payment times and the facilitation of cross-border e-invoicing. E-invoicing is also expected to help the Polish tax authorities collect VAT more efficiently, thereby closing the current VAT gap.
CEF tools and services helped the Polish public sector consortium members to establish new and advanced standards-compliant functionalities faster and in a sound approach. Here are the benefits of CEF support to the consortium:
- CEF eInvoicing: fast and efficient implementation through readily available specifications, workshops, conformance testing services and peer support (the eInvoicing Community)
- CEF eDelivery: testing time was cut down by a few months, thanks to the CEF support team and a reference implementation
- CEF Grant: support for upgrading and adapting IT systems to the new European standard, which also covered dissemination activities, such as training and seminars
By using the common CEF supported standards and specifications, the Polish public authorities can now exchange e-invoices and e-documents across the borders with any other entity using the same specifications in Europe. This realises the CEF objective of digitally connecting Europe, as well as the European Commission’s policy of creating a Digital Single Market.
Next step: Private sector
Electronic invoicing is yet to be made mandatory in the private sector. It would be a natural step to introduce this obligation to economic operators – the invoice issuers in public procurement – however, the date for such an obligation is currently not decided. Before extending legislation to businesses, the Polish government wants to first assess how other EU Member States plan on approaching this. Poland also seeks to involve industries in defining additional sector-specific CIUS extensions to better meet the e-invoicing needs in areas, such as telecommunications, energy and gas.
How can CEF help you?
At the Connecting Europe Facility, we give you access to free tools, support and funding to help you build your digital services.
New fixes and features make CEF's eSignature DSS more user-friendly
The new DSS v5.6 features independent document timestamping, a complete rewriting of major components and several fixes.
The newest release, available as of 2 March 2020, brings new exciting opportunities to use the Digital Signature Services (DSS) beyond its former scope. The framework now allows independent documents without a signature, such as PDFs, to be also timestamped. The new version features a complete rewriting of the TL and LOTL loading with improvements including multi-lingual support in trust service matching, as well as an online/offline refresh. Furthermore, issues reported during the vulnerability and conformance testing are now fixed. Detailed release notes are available at the download link above.
For those unfamiliar with the DSS, it is an open-source software library intended for Service Providers active in the implementation electronic signature solutions. Its main functionalities support the creation and validation of electronic signatures in line with European legislation; and its development closely follows the eIDAS Regulation and related standards.
The CEF eSignature Building Block maintains a DSS demonstration tool that is available to anyone interested in test running its functionalities. For more information on the DSS, what it is and how it can be used, visit our website:
The DSS roadmap and previous releases can be found here:
CEF eInvoicing: CEN/TC 434 validation artefacts updated in release 1.3.1
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The CEN/TC 434 validation artefacts release 1.3.1. supports the validation of UBL 2.1 and Cross Industry Invoice D16B.
Release 1.3.1 contains the validation artefacts source Schematron, as well as a single pre-processed Schematron (.sch), and as pre-compiled XSLT versions of them (.xslt).
Aside from the updated code lists, release 1.3.1. also holds the corrections for the known issue with validating VAT calculations in an invoice when the VAT rate has a fraction, as well as a resolution to other reported issues that have been processed and resolved by CEF priror to 15 February 2020 (the code freeze date).
The European eInvoicing standard is a semantic specification for the content of an invoice that is then bound to several syntaxes. When an invoice document is created in a particular syntax that syntax message must comply with the Semantic specifications of the EN and to the syntax binding for the relevant syntax.
This set of validation artefacts assist in testing whether individual electronic invoices comply with the standard. They are built by using Schematron, which is a rule-based validation language for making assertions about the presence or absence of patterns in an XML tree.
For more information, you can visit validations page the CEF Digital site.
CEF eArchiving Webinar on CSIP, slides and Q&A published
On 27 February 2020, the European Commission organised a live Webinar, followed by an interactive Q&A session, provided information on the Common Specification for Information Packages (CSIP) of the CEF eArchiving Building Block.
In the first of the CEF eArchiving Building Block’s training webinars, Karin Bredenberg introduced the Common Specification for Information Packages (CSIP). This is the foundation of archival interoperability in the Building Block. The OAIS-compliant specification provides a unified set of rules for packaging any data and metadata into a single conceptual package that can be seamlessly transferred between systems, preserved and reused in the long term.
Financed by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the eArchiving Building Block provides specifications, reference software, training and service desk support for digital archiving, including digital preservation. In order to help users benefit from the features of the Building Block, CEF is running a series of training Webinars that will cover its core functionality and other relevant CEF eArchiving content.
You can download the Presentation and see written responses to the Q&A on the event page.
Upcoming webinars
This webinar looking at the Common Specification for Information Packages is the first in a series of webinars looking at the CEF eArchiving Building Block. Below is the tentative calendar for the next instalments.
| Webinar | Presenters | Title | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Andreas Segerberg | Introduction to ESSArch – an open source-based solution for long-term preservation of digital information |
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| 3 | Gregor Završnik | Preserving digital geospatial records |
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| 4 | Katja Suomilammi | The digital preservation service process |
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| 5 | Hélder Silva | RODA – an end-to-end solution for digital preservation |
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| 6 | Luis Faria | DBPTK – an eArchiving solution for database archiving | TBC |
About the CEF building blocks
The CEF building blocks provide basic services which can be reused to enable more complex digital public services offered to citizens, businesses and public administration. They provide reusable tools and services helping to underpin the Digital Single Market, that aims to remove digital regulatory barriers, contributing as much as EUR 415 billion per year to the European economy. The CEF Digital Portal is the home of the CEF building blocks (Big Data Test Infrastructure, Blockchain, Context Broker, eArchiving, eID, eDelivery, eInvoicing, eSignature, eTranslation and Once Only Principle). It is the one-stop-shop for information about the building blocks.
Over €10 million in grant funding available to deploy CEF Building Blocks
The 2020-1 Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Telecom call for proposals opened on 28 February 2020. This followed the publication of the 2020 CEF Telecom Work Programme.
This call offers co-funding to stimulate and support the deployment of the eTranslation (€4 million), Blockchain (€3 million), eDelivery (€0.9 million), eID & eSignature (€3 million) Building Block Digital Service Infrastructures (DSI).
In addition, this call makes available €6.5 million for European Platform for Digital Skills and Jobs, €3 million for Europeana and €11 million Safer Internet. This means a grand total of up to €31.4 million to create full cross-border digital infrastructure, in areas of public interest by triggering the digital transformation of public sector services in the Member States for the benefits of citizens and businesses.
The deadline to submit your proposal is 12 May 2020. Corrigendum: the 2020-1 CEF Telecom call deadline has been extended to 25 June 2020.
The Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) is the EU agency supporting the European Commission by organising CEF calls for proposals. You can find all the information you need to apply on INEA's website.
To build a Digital Single Market, the CEF programme funds a set of generic and reusable Digital Service Infrastructures (DSI), also known as Building Blocks. The CEF Building Blocks offer basic capabilities that can be reused in any European project to facilitate the delivery of digital public services across borders and sectors.
2020-1 CEF Telecom call Virtual Info Day
INEA will organise a CEF Telecom virtual info day on Wednesday 11 March 2020 between 09:30 and 14:15 to outline the seven priorities of the first 2020 CEF Telecom call.
The Virtual Info Daywill present the funding opportunities under the following priorities of the 2020 CEF Telecom calls:
- Automated Translation
- Blockchain
- eDelivery
- eIdentification & eSignature (coming soon)
- European Platform for Digital Skills and Jobs
- Europeana
- Safer Internet
The event will also explain the policy context of the calls. It will give information about the evaluation process and will provide valuable tips & tricks on writing a good proposal.
Participants can send their questions by email in advance to INEA-CEF-Telecoms-Infoday@ec.europa.eu. During the event it will also be possible to send questions on Slido using the hashtag #CEFTelecomDay. Questions received before and during the event will be answered immediately, and written replies will be available on the FAQ page after the event.
The event will take place via live webstreaming and participants can register here