CEF Building Blocks: Enabling DIHs to build Europe’s Smart Cities

On 30 April 2020, the European Commission organised a webinar on 'How can Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) help the transition towards smart cities?’.

Digital Innovation Hubs are not-for-profit organisations supporting the digital transformation of SMEs and public sector organisations. They provide access to technical expertise and experimentation (“test before invest”) as well as innovation services, such as financing advice, training and skills development that are needed for a successful digital transformation.

This webinar brought together Living Labs, City Labs, Policy Labs as well as cities and municipalities to share good practices for helping cities develop their digital strategies, establish the foundations of their smart city and start developing concrete services. Together with the Member States, the Commission will invest in DIH capacities through the Digital Europe Programme.

Reusing the CEF Building Blocks

This webinar included a presentation on how the European Commission supports the creation of Smart Cities through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Building Blocks.

What is a Building Block?

A basic neutral and sustainable digital component - based on standards - that help interconnect European digital infrastructure, and help public administrations and businesses comply with existing EU Regulations. This empowers digital transformation and helps build Europe’s Smart Cities.

The Building Blocks consist of Big Data Test Infrastructure, Context Broker, eArchiving, eDelivery, eID, eInvoicing, eSignature and eTranslation. A Blockchain DSI (the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI)) will soon become an operational Building Block and the Once Only Principle (OOP) is a preparatory action under CEF.

A CEF Building Blocks consists of:

• Standards: All Building Blocks are based on standards; any digital service or product using a Building Block will therefore be EU-compliant, interoperable and secure
• Software: A Building Block can also be (sample) software, or software as a service, to be implemented in your project
• Support: A Building Block team helps implement the Building Block in your project, providing training, support and testing your service for compliance so it’s interoperable across sectors and borders

How do I reuse a Building Block?

To implement or reuse a Building Block you can buy a compliant, interoperable solution from the market, reuse a sample software available provided by the Commission or build an EU-compliant solution from scratch based on Building Block standards. Our teams will help you test it for compliance and interoperability.

To learn more about how the CEF Building Blocks support the work of Digital Innovation Hubs and development of Smart Cities download the presentation (below, PDF) and visit the CEF Digital site.

Visit CEF Digital

CEF grant funding for secure data exchange via eDelivery

Apply now More info on eDelivery

The Connecting Europe Facility is making an estimated €900,000 of grant funding available for projects looking to use the eDelivery Building Block to establish, contribute to or improve data exchange systems in accordance with eIDAS requirements.

As more and more public administrations and businesses rely on the digital exchange of data and documents for their administrative activities, these exchanges need to be reliable, affordable and secure. The eIDAS Regulation allows for Electronic Registered Delivery Services (ERDS), a legal framework for this transition. Any data exchange system based on the open technical specifications of the eDelivery Building Block is protected against risks of data loss, damage, theft and unauthorised alteration, and gives users proof that information has been sent and received.

This call for proposals welcomes submissions from projects engaging in one or more of the following activities (see the Call Text on INEA’s website for full details and eligibility criteria):

• Deploying eDelivery Access Point(s) (AS4), allowing the secure exchange of data and documents between Access Point nodes in an eDelivery network
• Deploying a Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) so that different nodes in a network can dynamically discover each other’s capabilities (legal, organisational, technical)
• Upgrading existing open-source or off-the-shelf commercial solutions to make them EU-compliant and interoperable with eDelivery Access Points (includes testing)

eDelivery is already providing organisations with an efficient, secure and inexpensive solution for exchanging digital information. This funding will grow the established network of ERDS, expanding eDelivery’s scope to a variety of policy domains beyond CEF Digital Service Infrastructures and improving the performance of existing solutions.

CEF-funded eDelivery projects will enable an increasing number of public administrations, businesses and citizens to exchange data and documents seamlessly, fulfilling the vision of the Digital Single Market.

Interested in funding for your cross-border eDelivery project? Visit INEA to find out more. Funding deadline for submissions is 25 June 2020.

Apply now

CEF BDTI allows use of scientific clinical evidence against COVID-19 in Valencia

©Adobe Stock

The Valencian Pharmacy and Health Products authority (Direcciòn General de Farmacia y Productos Sanitarios - DGFyPS) wants to develop a tool to analyse and synthesise the huge quantity of existing scientific evidence and regulation documentation on COVID-19.

The goal of this is to extract the knowledge contained in these documents and provide it to the clinicians and managers in a manageable way by means of advanced data visualization tools.

This Pilot aims at improving the management of COVID-19 crisis at strategic, tactic and operational level.

How CEF Big Data Test Infrastructure helps

The Big data test infrastructure (BDTI) Building Block helps public administrations and projects led by the public sector improve the experience of the citizen, make government more efficient and boost business and the wider economy through big data.

In this way, BDTI will support DGFyPS by launching a six-month pilot and developing an advance tool for systematic review of scientific clinical articles.

This repository will be Machine Learning-ready so to perform advanced text mining tasks. BDTI will collect raw business data from a Covid-19 dataset, producing descriptive graph to support clinical practice and management process.

Building Blocks against COVID-19

BDTI is supporting hospitals and municipalities in fighting COVID-19, with already a number of pilot requests received on this topic.

Belgium's mobile eID scheme is all you need to access online services – thanks to European standards and solutions

©Photo courtesy of Belgian Mobile ID

Easy access to services across borders

On 18 December 2019, Belgium's notification of the mobile eID scheme (FAS/itsme®) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The scheme consists of the Belgian government's Federal Authentication Service (FAS) and a digital identity app called itsme®. In essence, the notification confirms that itsme® complies with the European eIDAS Regulation and can connect to the eIDAS network, enabling it to be used interchangeably with other notified eID schemes all across Europe. In practice, this means that a Belgian student studying in France can now identify themselves using itsme® to enrol to classes. As another example, Belgian companies can submit official tenders for public procurement contracts in other Member States. Cross-border identification in these scenarios and many more is possible as long as the service is connected to the eIDAS network.

Collaboration with private sector

We all have experienced the hassle of navigating different online services with a myriad of passwords, usernames, pin codes, tokens and card readers. This hassle could be eliminated if we had unique, verified digital IDs and even better, if it was available on our smart phones. Luckily, there's an app called itsme® that provides exactly this. itsme® gives Belgian residents a government-backed single digital identity to log in and execute various transactions on numerous different online services. The solution was developed by Belgian Mobile eID, a consortium of leading banks and mobile network operators, and it has been recognised by the Belgian federal government. In fact, a Royal Decree allowed the recognition of private eID solutions in order to foster innovation and control government costs.

itsme® is now integrated into the Belgian FAS and together, the eID scheme operates under the eIDAS Regulation. To expedite solution development and ensure eIDAS compliance, both FAS and itsme® made use of the European Union's readily available specifications and solutions included in CEF eID and eSignature.

itsme® has been quickly adopted by residents, local companies and public sector organisations. Two and a half years after the launch of itsme® and two years after its recognition by the Belgian federal government, the app is now used by 30% of the Belgian population and it facilitates more than five million transactions per month. With itsme®, users can easily log in to submit tax returns, sign off financial transactions, and verify their identities when registering to use a new health insurance portal.

itsme®: single digital identity and qualified electronic signatures

Anyone with a Belgian eCard ID, a SIM card and a mobile phone can create a digital identity with itsme®. itsme® offers the following four main functionalities, which also form a simple, yet effective client journey:

• Sign up – share verified identity data to register for new service or open an account
• Log in – prove identity and authorisation to use an app, online service or IoT device
• Confirm actions – give consent to online transactions, such as payments and orders
• Qualified electronic signature – replaces paper-based handwritten signatures

When logging in to public services, itsme® works through FAS, which is operated by the Belgian national agency for Public Service Policy and Support (BOSA). FAS is a gateway that supervises the identification and authentication of users, without interacting with the app's internal processes. The Belgian eIDAS node is implemented as part of FAS according to the specifications defined in CEF eID Building Block, and using the CEF eID sample implementation. This means that users can use itsme® to authenticate and login to other Member States' online services, as long as the services are also connected to the eIDAS network. Together, the Belgian mobile eID scheme, consisting of FAS and itsme®, provides a "high level of identity assurance", as defined in the eIDAS Regulation. The illustration below shows itsme® in action. 

©Illustration courtesy of Belgian Mobile ID

In addition to providing high-assurance identity verification, itsme® is also officially accredited as a Qualified Trust Service Provider for the validation of e-seals and e-signatures.  The accreditation is also governed by the eIDAS Regulation, and it allows the app to be used for securely signing documents electronically. Qualified Electronic Signatures hold the same legal value in all EU and EEA Member States as handwritten signatures. For developing this service, the consortium followed European standards and specifications that are part of the CEF eSignature Building Block.

The result? A digital identity for a modern digital society

For the consortium behind itsme®, mobile digital identity presented an attractive opportunity that combines two hot topics: digital identity and mobile access. It is a novel service offering with a lot of demand, and an opportunity for all partnering companies to improve customer experience. Before itsme®, the de facto digital identification solution was based on the Belgian eCard and a card reader. Therefore, itsme® offers a mobile digital identification alternative for both public and private sector services, such as insurance, retail, banking, healthcare and more. Today, itsme® has 1.6 million users. Around 30 % of all public administration transactions happen through itsme®, connecting the user to more than 2,000 public service applications. The benefits of itsme® for users include:

• One single application for logging in
• Always the same easy process
• No more card readers
• Strong and secure authentication
• Verified identification without sharing all personal data
• One of the first Qualified Trust Service Providers for the validation of e-seals and e-signatures on a smart device
• As a Trust Service Provider, personal data is protected in line with the European privacy directive (GDPR)

How can CEF help you?

Our website CEF Digital provides details on the building blocks with accompanying technical documentation and support services that are available to all. We would be happy to help you get started, visit us at the links below to learn more.

eID on CEF Digital

eSignature on CEF Digital

Building shared consensus on data - €3million in CEF grants for Blockchain

Apply now More info on Blockchain

The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) is making €3 million grant funding available for projects looking to contribute to the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI).

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies have enormous potential to radically change the way public administrations operate, helping realise the digital single market in the process. With increased data security, shared consensus on the state of data, distribution of data resources and near real-time data updates to connected parties, blockchain technology is ideally placed to deliver secure, efficient public services that citizens can trust.

This funding is intended for projects with at least two of the following objectives (see the Call Text on INEA’s website for full details and eligibility criteria):

• Developing the EBSI infrastructure by either setting up new EBSI nodes in countries in the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) to support selected cross-border projects using EBSI, or enhancing the cybersecurity, performance and privacy features of existing nodes in the EBSI network;
• Acquiring services and ICT applications necessary to connect an existing public service to an EBSI node;
• Helping public entities to connect their digital services to an EBSI node by delivering user-focused training programmes, specific tools, technical resources and a national helpdesk.

Different members of the European Blockchain Partnership will be able to securely share data, such as citizens' identification numbers, through the EBSI network. This will reduce administrative burden and create a more seamless experience for citizens looking to study, work, run a business or pay taxes in another Member State. The security, transparency and traceability inherent to how distributed ledgers record transactions will also facilitate compliance with EU Regulations on information systems, trust services and personal data (NIS, eIDAS, GDPR).

Most importantly, blockchain services inspire trust, putting citizens back in control of how their own data is used, and making public sector information more openly accessible. By establishing a European-wide network of blockchain nodes, EBSI is opening up new possibilities for cross-border and cross-sector cooperation. This funding will help create an environment where digital services can flourish, providing national administrations with a fully compliant blockchain solution to deploy various cross-border public services. 

Blockchain puts citizens back at the heart of this process, and we are only just beginning to realise its full potential.

Interested in funding to help build a European-wide network of blockchain services? Visit INEA to find out more. Deadline for submissions is 25 June 2020.

Apply now

CEF Context Broker helps turn data into action plans to fight COVID-19

©Adobe Stock

EU governments have taken exceptional measures to protect the public health. When preparing a plan of action against a highly contagious disease like COVID-19, fast and accurate information processing plays a critical role. CEF Context Broker provides the technical capabilities needed to turn widely collected data into real-time patient tracking, contagion maps and predictive analyses. Read more to learn how Italian authorities collaborated with a local service provider to benefit from CEF Context Broker. You can also join our upcoming webinar 'Empower Your City with Data' on 23 April 2020 to see the system for yourself and start on a solution of your own – we are here to help.

Register for webinar

Informed decisions with real-time data

To get access to the data needed, when needed, a number of Italian regional governments particularly hard hit by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are now using a data management tool supported by the European Commission, called the CEF Context Broker. Context Broker is used to feed data into a computerised bio-surveillance system, Eng-DE4Bios built by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica Spa, to help get the virus under control with advanced analytics and real-time monitoring.

This helps front-line workers, such as medical doctors and the COVID-19 Crisis Units to follow up and track the infected population, as well as epidemiologists in studying the prevalence and possible methods of controlling of the virus. Data-driven epidemiological models can be used to better manage and predict the possible evolutionary pathways of epidemics, including those that have grown into global pandemics (COVID-19).

Bio-surveillance in medicine refers to the detection and regular monitoring of pathogens and resistance to pathogens, especially for understanding epidemic evolution. It involves activities, such as collecting, integrating and interpreting data in order to identify early signs of threats and ongoing disease activity affecting the health of humans, animals and plants. 

One system for all

Context Broker consolidates heterogenous data from different data sources and facilitates building databases allowing for advanced data analytics. Thanks to Context Broker, Eng-DE4Bios can then use the organised, easily accessible data to create epidemiological models, predictive contagion maps and real-time geolocation tracking of infected individuals. Context Broker’s open source tools are based on European standards and available for both public and private sector organisations free of charge.

Eng-DE4Bios not only provides real-time information on the status of the infected population, but it also enables contact tracing. Contact tracing identifies exposed persons that have come in contact with an infected patient, especially for reaching out to non-tested, high-risk individuals. The system reconstructs a network of infected and potentially infected individuals based on factors, such as place of employment and domicile.

Context Broker for Eng-DE4Bios

Eng-DE4Bios is an implementation of the data management platform, Digital Enabler^TM, developed by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica Spa. It is a cloud-native platform made of an ecosystem of standards-based open software components, including the FIWARE Foundation’s Generic Enablers for developing sustainable smart solutions. At the heart of the system is the Context Broker, also developed by FIWARE and supported by the European Commission, which provides an open API to connect to different data sources.

The Digital Enabler^TM features a user-friendly interface editor, making it fast and easy to go from mock-up to published app. Eng-DE4Bios then displays the data collected by Context Broker in visual dashboards and allows for queries, notifications and alerts. The solution also provides automatic simulation and calibration of the epidemic, and the possibility to forecast scenarios when parameters change.

Data sources

The data sources that were integrated using Context Broker are:

• Test results from microbiology labs, integrated with personal data
• Regional and national health registries to match data with microbiology labs and to gather missing data
• Population registry to assess exposure by identifying people living together
• Status of the infected population:
  • Statistics for infected and healed are automatically gathered from test results
  • Statistics for deceased, hospitalised and hospitalised in intensive care are provided through ad-hoc integrations or web applications
• Administrative flows from hospitals and emergency rooms for the number of intensive care beds
• Company registry or social security database for data on employers and contact details for positive cases
• Personal Health Records (PHRs) for real-time clinical data and documents

Gallery of dashboards from DE4Bios

eInvoicing reaches Europe's regional and local levels

Six years after the publication of the Directive 2014/55/EU mandating eInvoicing and the usage of the European standard by Europe's public authorities, we have reached together the 18 April 2020 deadline for implementing eInvoicing at the sub-central level.  This standard is a key enabler of digital public procurement, allowing increased cross-border economic activity. eInvoicing also drives wider automation, improved public finances and encourages innovation.

The European Commission has invested over €35 million in Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) grant funding to support the uptake of eInvoicing and procurement solutions for both Business to Government (B2G) and Business to Business (B2B) transactions. The CEF programme has allowed early payment systems in Belgium, enabled the first step toward Real-Time Economy through eInvoicing in Estonia, and provided tools and support to upgrade existing I.T. infrastructure in Poland, to name just some success stories.

The European Commission would like to thank all the stakeholders who actively participated in the adoption of eInvoicing and the implementation of the standard in European public procurement. Invoicing has driven forward electronic invoicing in B2G transactions and now impacts B2B transactions. Aiming to build a Digital Single Market, the priorities are now moving from public procurement towards private enterprises and businesses.  

In line with the EU's wider strategy, the CEF eInvoicing Building Block's next steps now focus on co-developing the future of eInvoicing by generating policy discussions and encouraging B2B digital procurement. 

In this new eInvoicing context, we ask for your contribution! Share your ideas, needs, experiences and projects on eInvoicing via the eInvoicing User Community. Our goal is to adapt the European Commission policy objectives and improve how the Commission's support public administrations and businesses, namely through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eInvoicing Building Block.

Based on your contribution, CEF eInvoicing is organising an online Open Session, on 9 June 2020.

More information is coming soon!

Join #EUvsVirus Hackathon - 24 April 2020

To complement hackathons taking place at global and member state level, the European Commission - in close collaboration with EU member states – will host a pan-European hackathon to connect civil society, innovators, partners and buyers across Europe to develop innovative solutions to coronavirus.

Hack the virus!

The #EUvsVirus Hackathon will take place on 24, 25 and 26 April and address approximately 20 imminent coronavirus challenges (e.g. fast production of equipment, scaling up production capabilities, knowledge and solutions transfer from one country to another), to be quickly developed and deployed across the EU Single Market.

Challenges to be hacked, and the opening of registration to hack the challenges, will be announced soon.

Change Requests to the European standard on eInvoicing through CEN

©Adobe Stock

The European Commission would like to note that Requests for Change to the European standard on eInvoicing may be addressed directly through the procedure set out by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN).

CEN procedure for maintaining deliverables

The European standard for eInvoicing (EN16931) was developed and published by CEN at the request of the European Commission. The European standard makes it possible for sellers to send electronic invoices to many customers using a single eInvoicing format. This means they do not have to adjust their sending or receiving parameters to connect with individual trading parties, increasing efficiency and saving time and money.

You can contribute to the European standard on eInvoicing by making requests for potential changes to the standard, which will then be reviewed.

All requests to change the European standard or its supporting documents are not in the remit of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital team and are dealt with directly by CEN.

If such requests are made via CEF Digital’s service desk, they will be forwarded to CEN (which may delay the processing of any such Requests for Change).

The European Commission and EU Member States promote the use of eInvoicing through the CEF eInvoicing Building Block. CEF eInvoicing supports public administrations implement the European standard in-line with EU legislation, and helps private sector providers align their services accordingly.

To see how electronic invoicing is connecting Europe, visit CEF Digital.

CEF eInvoicing

2020 CEF funding for multilingual online services - including SMEs

Apply now More info on eTranslation

The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) is making up to €4 million of grant funding available for multilingual, digital projects that want to use or contribute to the CEF eTranslation Building Block!

Multilingualism is both a powerful symbol of the EU’s unity in diversity, and one of the most complex challenges facing the full integration of the digital single market. The European Commission is committed to promoting the equality of all languages and protecting linguistic diversity, while making the EU more integrated and connected than ever. Secure and accurate machine translation is key to this process, and the eTranslation Building Block is making this possible in a way previously unimaginable.

This call for proposals welcomes submissions from projects involving at least two different languages spoken in EU Member States, Icelandic and/or Norwegian. These grants are intended for projects with just one of the following objectives (see the Call Text on INEA’s website for full details and eligibility criteria):

• Contributing language resources to CEF’s Automated Translation tool through the European Language Resource Coordination repository (ELRC-SHARE)
• Making existing, language-specific tools with multilingual capabilities freely and openly available through ELRC-SHARE
• Integrating CEF’s Automated Translation tool into existing online public services, public administrations or SMEs

The more linguistic resources eTranslation has at its disposal, the better it translates. This will improve the quality of the machine translation offered by the eTranslation Building Block, particularly in under-resourced languages and domains of public interest (e.g. scientific research, health, tax, cultural heritage).

This funding also aims to empower both public entities and SMEs to integrate CEF’s machine translation tool into existing online services: as of this March, eTranslation has been made available, free of charge, to any European SME. These grants will help SMEs with multilingual, cross-border business activities to integrate eTranslation’s state-of-the-art, neural machine translation capabilities into their workflow.

The eTranslation Building Block is already lowering linguistic barriers all over Europe, realising the vision of the multilingual Digital Single Market. With the collaboration of CEF-funded multilingual projects, this machine translation tool will become not only more effective but also more widespread. Together we are fostering the emergence of pan-European, interoperable public services.

Interested in funding for your multilingual, cross-border digital project? Visit INEA to find out more. Funding deadline for submissions is 25 June 2020.

Apply Now

Six new CEF grant-funded projects reusing eTranslation in 2020

©Adobe Stock

The European Commission is happy to announce five new CEF grant-funded projects reusing the CEF eTranslation Building Block will start in 2020.

• Multilingual Anonymisation toolkit for Public Administrations, which will introduce Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools and develop a toolkit for effective and reliable text anonymisation in the legal and medical domain.
• CEFAT4Cities, aiming to develop a “Smart cities natural language context”, providing multilingual interoperability of the Context Broker DSI and making public “smart city” services multilingual.
• Unsupervised MT for Low-resourced language pairs (MT4All), which focuses on the collection of language resources to generate bilingual resources for language pairs that are lacking sufficient parallel corpora.
• Curated Multilingual Language Resources for CEF AT which aims to compile curated (monolingual) data sets in domains that are relevant to the European DSIs.
• User-focused Marian, which was initiated to improve the pre-existing neural machine translation toolkit “Marian”.

• Federated eTranslation TermBank Network which aims at developing a Federated eTranslation TermBank Network to allow organisations and institutions in Member States to locally deploy individual eTranslation TermBank federated nodes.

eTranslation, provided by the European Commission, is a state-of-the-art online machine translation service. The eTranslation service is free of charge and will help you save time and money to translate your documents and text between any two official EU languages, and more! eTranslation guarantees the confidentiality and security of all your translated data.

This CEF Building Block is now available to European small & medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can translate any document or plain text in an EASY, FREE and SECURE way.

use cef etranslation

From February until 12 May 2020, €4 million is available in grant funding for organisations to use – or contribute to – CEF eTranslation (Automated Translation). Visit INEA to find out more.

Blockchain and DLT in Europe: #DLT4Good #DLT4EU

©Adobe Stock

Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies are having a resounding impact on how we can conduct business online. Especially as trust and certainty in digital processes remains a priority for services designers and users.

The European Institutions and Member States are therefore striving to ensure that Europe fully harnesses the transformative power of Distributed Ledger Technologies.

In this context, the European Parliament and Commission are supporting the #DLT4Good project, co-creating a European Ecosystem of DLTs for social and public good. Specifically, the project aims to establish forward-looking approaches to stimulate the production, uptake and scaling up of Distributed Ledger Technology solutions suited to specific challenges of organisations in public or third sectors at local, regional, national or supranational levels.

Visit #DLT4Good to see how this exciting project will use qualitative explorations via co-creation and stakeholder-centric frameworks to best leverage on Distributed Ledger Technologies in Europe.

Within the framework of the pilot project, there is also DLT4EU: an accelerator program promoting the development of projects that use blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies.  Through DLT4EU, the European Commission supports a pilot accelerator that uses blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies for public good.

Via the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the European Commission and the European Blockchain Partnership (consisting of the 27 EU Member States and Norway) are building an European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI).

The EBSI will be materialised as a network of distributed nodes across Europe, leveraging an increasing number of applications focused on specific use cases. Members of the European Blockchain Partnership requested 20 nodes, all of these will be connected by Q3 2020.

€3 million in CEF funding is currently available as grants building the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure. The deadline for applications is 12 May 2020. You can apply from the Innovation and Networks Agency (INEA) site.

Visit INEA