Final release of CEF eDelivery's Domibus 4.2 brings extensive technical improvements and new features

We are happy to announce the final release of Domibus 4.2 sample implementation of the eDelivery AS4 Access Point. Domibus 4.2 release brings extensive technical improvements and several new features.

Domibus 4.2 has been achieved through close collaboration between different EU policy projects' IT delivery teams and CEF eDelivery. Highlights of the release include:

• Possibility to define a higher priority for specific messages to be sent
• New isAlive RestService in DomibusCore to add to E2E Monitoring
• Possibility to monitor the connection state between C2 and C3
• API for adding/updating participants
• Extend the retention policy mechanism
• Domibus Support of Oracle Open JDK 11
• Default JMS Plugin – different queues depending on service/action
• Support for WildFly 20
• Support for Tomcat 9
  UI page for changing the Domibus properties at runtime
• Added Foreign Server support in WebLogic

Domibus 4.2 is backward compatible with 4.1.x versions.

Supported platforms:

Application server:

• • WildFly 20.0.x

  • WebLogic 12.2.1.4 (tested version, future versions might work)

  • Apache Tomcat 9.0.x

Database:

• • MySQL 8 (future versions might work)

  • Oracle 12c and Oracle 19c

JAVA:

• • Oracle JRE8 (for WildFly, Tomcat and WebLogic)

  • OpenJDK 11 (only for WildFly and Tomcat, not for WebLogic)

More information about the release is available on this page.

About CEF and CEF eDelivery:

The eDelivery Building Block of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) promotes the use of the AS4 messaging protocol to create a secure channel for the transmission of documents and data by electronic means, over the internet or via a private network.

CEF eDelivery is a network of nodes for digital communications. It is based on a distributed model where every participant becomes a node using standard transport protocols and security policies. AS4 both provides evidence relating to the handling of the transmitted data as well as protecting it against the risk of loss, theft, damage or any unauthorised alterations.

CEF supports multiple digital infrastructure projects which contribute to improvements in the daily lives of Europeans through digital inclusion, the connectivity and interoperability of European digital services, and the development of a Digital Single Market.

EU Commission hosts masterclass on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure

On 15 December 2020, the European Commission gave a Masterclass on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) at the first ebcTALKS about the future of blockchain in Europe, hosted by the European Blockchain Convention. 

The CEF EBSI is helping ensure Europe fully benefits from the blockchain revolution, leveraging on blockchain technology to support the delivery of cross-border digital public services throughout Europe. 

Key insights from the Masterclass

The Masterclass included interactive portions, where we gained various insights, from the numerous participants' general enthusiasm for EBSI to which use cases they were most interested in. 

Over 100 participants actively contributed following an interactive and detailed presentation on the EBSI and were especially enthusiastic about the number of domain of applications and use cases mentioned.

Moving forward, the masterclass participants expressed a special interest in piloting and participate in consultations and called for the construction of an EBSI wallet

You can find the comprehensive learning package on our dedicated Piloting with EBSI, explained page, including explanatory videos, an EBSI toolkit and information on upcoming EBSI piloting webinars. 

If you missed the EBSI Masterclass, you can find out all about we are rolling out the next generation of pan-European, online public services using blockchain by checking out the full presentation below. 

• Video recording:

• Presentation material:

Release of CEF eIDAS-Node software v.2.5

The European Commission is pleased to announce the release of the CEF eIDAS-Node software version 2.5 on 11 December 2020. 

Electronic identification (eID) is a key enabler for secure cross-border electronic transactions and is a prerequisite for both online public services and the digital economy. The eIDAS Regulation provides a foundation for a predictable regulatory environment for secure and seamless electronic interactions between businesses, citizens and public authorities. It provides a framework for the mutual recognition of national eID schemes across the EU.

The eIDAS Network consists of a number of interconnected eIDAS nodes which implement the framework provided by the eIDAS Regulation. The nodes are used to either request or provide cross-border authentication. Thanks to these nodes, citizens and businesses are able to use their (notified) national eIDs to authenticate their identity and access services in other Member States.

Although each country is responsible for implementing their own eIDAS node, each node is based on common European technical specifications. In order to support Member States in developing their node, the Commission provides a reference implementation of the eIDAS Node, which many Member States choose to adapt and reuse.

The latest version of this reference software is the CEF eIDAS-Node software version 2.5. This release is the first to be based on version 1.2 of the eIDAS technical specifications. It incorporates the feedback provided by Member States in response to the pre-release of the node software already shared.  The latest release of the node software incorporates the following main updates:

• Technical Specifications 1.2:
  • Extension of Connector’s and Proxy-Service LOA validation to non-notified scheme LOAs
  • Extension of  Simple Protocol request to allow support to non-notified scheme LOAs
  • Implementation of support for 1.1 and 1.2 eIDAS specification for Gender attribute
  • Align allowed signature algorithms to eIDAS specification 1.2
  • Appropriate extensions to support RequesterID
  • Restriction of the node configuration to the use of TLSv1.2
  • Publication of the NodeCountry
  • Remove “Unspecified” from Gender possible values
  • Extend Light Response to allow support of SAML consent values
• Break of the LightRequest / LightResponse interface:
  • Add SP Country Code to Light Request interface
  • Generation of LightMessage model  from XSD
  • Extend Light Response to allow support of SAML consent values
• eIDAS Default parameters configuration
• Jcache support for the eIDAS Node
• Logging of messages eIDAS Node 2.x branch
• Bug fixes
• Security fixes
• Source code fixes
• Documentation fixes

This release has been successfully tested for interoperability with previous releases of eIDAS-Node versions v2.4.0 and v1.4.5. It was successfully tested and works with Middleware version 2.0 (2.0.1).

For a more detailed description of the changes introduced with this release please consult the release notes and section 3 "Changes” found in the eIDAS-Node Migration Guide.

eIDAS-Node release v2.5

Hello everyone!  2020 was a challenging year; nevertheless, we've seen an increase in the deployment of CEF's Building Blocks. Therefore, we thought it would be appropriate to do a little recap of the most interesting European projects carried out with their help. In no particular order, they are:

eArchiving lends a hand to the preservation of Italy's historical documents

Italy’s Central State Archive (ACS) has been looking after the country's most important documents for the last 150 years.

To make this precious heritage  accessible to future generations, ACS was tasked with building a digital national platform. After looking for solutions both in and outside Italy, ACS found in eArchiving the answers it was looking for.

Italy’s archiving responsibilities are shared among the ACS and a network of provincial State Archives. The ACS has always enjoyed a special role in the preservation of historical documents produced by Central State Administrations. In 2008, however, an internal regulation determined that the ACS would be the main agency in charge of keeping a historical digital archive. In 2019, the ACS was instructed to start building a national platform for the permanent preservation of the Central State Administrations’s digital archives.

The ACS started by creating an internal service dedicated to permanent preservation, called the ‘Digital Archive of the Italian State’. Before that, there was no consolidated concept for permanent preservation, which tackles a whole different set of challenges compared to short and medium-term archiving. 

Read the full story

ISO approves AS4 as an International Standard

The ISO (International Organisation for Standardization) approved ebMS3 (ebXML Messaging version 3.0) and AS4 (Applicability Statement 4) as International Standards. 

AS4 is the message exchange protocol promoted by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eDelivery Building Block. This approval represents an opportunity to increase confidence in eDelivery and can potentially lead to the scale-up of AS4 adoption by projects across the EU and beyond. This decision was made at Technical Committee level, specifically within TC 154 on "Processes, data elements and documents in commerce, industry and administration". The standards will become the new part 1 and part 2 of the ISO 15000. The ISO standards are recognised in legislation within Europe and internationally, and are known and trusted by public administrations, IT experts and business stakeholders outside the IT domain.

AS4 is a Conformance Profile of the OASIS ebMS 3.0 specification. AS4 is typically used for the secure and reliable exchange of documents, attachments to these documents and data in general, and can be used in Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Administration (B2A) and Administration-to-Administration (A2A) exchange contexts in every sector or business domain. AS4 condenses in a single specification a series of well-known web-services specifications, such as WS-Security and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) with attachments. AS4 both provides evidence relating to the handling of the transmitted data as well as protecting it against the risk of loss, theft, damage or any unauthorised alterations. 

Read the full story

Pre-Release of CEF eIDAS-Node software v2.5

The European Commission is pleased to announce the pre-release of the CEF eIDAS-Node software version 2.5 on 29 September 2020. 

Electronic identification (eID) and electronic Trust Services (eTS) are key enablers for secure cross-border electronic transactions and prerequisites for both online public services and the digital economy. The eIDAS Regulation is a foundation for a predictable regulatory environment for 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.

Pre-release 2.5 of the eIDAS sample implementation for Member States is an all-in-one package for the Java platform. It is based on version 1.2 of the eIDAS technical specifications. The pre-release has been provided in order to validate the implementation of the Technical Specifications 1.2. 

Read the full story

Poland puts eInvoicing plans into action with the help of CEF tools and services

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.

Read the full story

eSignature service used to sign World Bank agreement

On July 8 2020, the European Commission and the World Bank signed electronically a Financial Framework Partnership Agreement, which guides the terms under which the Bank Group will use EU funding for development projects across the world. 

This is the first international document the Commission signs using its own Qualified Electronic Signature service, EU Sign, an implementation of the eSignature Building Block.  It was also the first time the Commission made use of EUSign's newly introduced cloud-based qualified digital certificates.

In a Twitter post on the same day, the Commissioner for Budget and Administration, Johannes Hahn, described the e-signing of the agreement "a huge leap forward" in the Commission's target to become fully digital by 2024. 

EU Sign was launched four years ago as an additional effort to further digitise Europe and decrease its dependence on paper. 

Available to a number of European Institutions, bodies and agencies (EUIBAs), the service provides the possibility to electronically sign, validate and seal documents.

Read the full story

CEF eTranslation now includes Simplified Chinese Mandarin (Chinese)

The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eTranslation Building Block can now process requests in Simplified Chinese Mandarin (Chinese).

You can access this service on the eTranslation web-browser page (first time users can register here). Select the “General Text” domain in “Advanced options”. Please note that for whole-document translations, PDF is not supported.

During 2020, collaborative language resources and tools projects will also cover the take-up of language tools and resources for the following economically, scientifically and socially relevant non-EU languages: Arabic, Japanese, and Turkish. Russian became the first such language to go-live in December last year.

This notable upgrade comes as Europe’s SMEs and startups can join public administrations in benefiting from this state-of-the-art online machine translation service, which guarantees the confidentiality and security of all your translated data.

Read the full story

Piloting with EBSI explained, how to benefit from Europe's blockchain infrastructure

The European Commission is excited to announce the launch of the “Piloting with EBSI, explained” learning package and the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) user community.

The “Piloting with EBSI, explained” learning package aims to further facilitate and accelerate the implementation of EBSI. It features a set of five, friendly, funny and unmissable video tutorials, a toolkit, and a series of webinars (registration form is available on the website) designed for EBP members and EBP-endorsed public administrations. The materials will guide you through the piloting journey with a carefully structured framework.

Read the full story

How Context Broker is helping Europe in its quest for smarter energy solutions

Digital innovations are redefining the energy sector, encouraging a move away from large-scale and centralised power plants to more local and personalised sources of energy.

All around the world, governments are building more solar parks, wind farms, and hydroelectric plants to generate power. In Europe, the EU is aiming to become the first climate-neutral economy by 2050, one of the cornerstones of the European Green Deal.

Over the last few years, Member States have been striving to integrate Renewable Energy Sources (RES) into their national energy grid. But doing so is no simple task. Before solutions can be rolled out onto the mass market, many challenges, both at the commercial and scientific level, need to be overcome.

Because renewable energy is one hundred percent dependent on the elements (sun, wind, rain, biomass), supply fluctuation is a common problem. Imagine a drought rendering a dam useless and taking away a whole country's energy supply? Or intermittent energy from wind or solar sources. What then? That's where innovation and new technologies kick in.

Solar panels and wind turbines are the most obvious signs a major change is afoot in the energy sector. But behind the scenes there is a whole digital architecture in place, making renewable energy sources work more effectively for both consumers and producers. CEF's Context Broker Building Block is at the heart of that digital architecture.

Read the full story

Norwegian Digitalisation Agency uses Commission's Big Data tool to optimise public procurement

Digdir, the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, is using the Connecting Europe Facility's (CEF) big data tool, the Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI), to help optimise public procurement in Norway.

Digdir has been helping Norwegian public administrations in their digital transformation for six years. They have already implemented a PEPPOL network, based on the eDelivery and eInvoicing building blocks, to digitalise invoicing in public procurement. This network allows public and private organisations to seamlessly exchange and automatically process digital invoices.  

Now, Digdir is looking to help improve digital public procurement, or eProcurement, even further by gathering and analysing big datasets on transactions in this area.

Read the full story

The Once Only initiative – a stepping stone to Europe’s recovery

The strains and difficulties of the novel Coronavirus pandemic are challenging every person, business and administration in Europe like never before. From this however, Europe is already emerging stronger.

The current pandemic has shown the importance of having administrative procedures online, which allow citizens to request a proof of residence, apply for a study grant or submit a corporate tax declaration without needing to leave their homes.

The Once Only Principle (OOP), means that citizens and businesses provide their data only once to public administrations. Those public administrations will then share and reuse data the data among themselves, even across borders, according to data privacy regulations.

The Once Only Technical System, hereafter referred to as ‘the OOP system’, is the technical system currently being built by the European Commission and the Member States to make the OOP a reality at European level. The OOP technical system is an EU-wide initiative stemming from the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR) (Article 14 thereof) that will make the principle of once only a reality for key public services, businesses, and citizens across the EU.

By December 2023 the OOP system will be able to simplify access to cross-border administrative procedures initiated online by citizens or companies based in another EU country. In other words, the OOP system will enable competent authorities in a Member State to share data with their counterparts in other Member States in real-time.

Read the full story

And voilà, these are  just some of the projects that made a splash in 2020 with the help of our Building Blocks. If you would like to share your views, please don't hesited to leave a comment on our Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook pages. We wish you all a great 2021.

Building a Digital Europe together with the CEF Building Blocks and Horizon 2020 eGovernment Projects

On 9 December 2020, experts from the European Commission presented the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Building Blocks to eGovernment projects financed under the Horizon 2020 programme.

Visit the CEF Digital site to see how you can get started reusing one or more CEF Building Blocks.

Visit CEF Digital

The CEF Building Blocks are, open and reusable, standards-based solutions, which interconnect Europe's varied national I.T. landscapes. Thanks to the international standards they are based on, any system built with them can interconnect with others, so public administrations and companies can easily open up their services across sectors and borders.

The CEF Building Blocks offer basic capabilities, reusable in any European project to facilitate the delivery of digital public services across borders and sectors. Currently, there are eight Building Blocks: Big Data Test Infrastructure, Context Broker, eArchiving, eDelivery, eID, eInvoicing, eSignature and eTranslation.

A Blockchain infrastructure (the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure) will soon become a fully operational Building Block, and the Once Only Principle is a preparatory action under CEF.

H2020 eGovernment projects

Delivering innovative eGovernment solutions and applying the principles put forward in the eGovernment Action Plan and Tallinn Declaration are some of the goals of the projects supported by the EU. By funding research, whether it is putting in place technical solutions or encouraging citizen participation, the EU is bringing down the barriers that currently prevent us from exploiting digital technologies to their full potential.

Under Horizon 2020, the European Commission funded 56 projects on the topic of eGovernment.  All these projects have been working to bring eGovernment closer to the citizen, supporting the modernization of public administrations, by the use of digital tools.

Getting access to standardised and secure tools, which are automatically complying with the EU regulation, is a great way for projects to save time, avoid replication benefit from an emerging pan-European legal and technical infrastructure. The need of CEF Building Blocks looks to increase in the future, and these tools will be essential for public administrations’ transition to the digital era.

The Research Executive Agency (REA), the European Commission’s Directorates-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (CNECT) and Informatics (DIGIT) jointly organised this presentation for assorted project managers from leading EU eGovernment projects.

With a large number of participating project managers, the session showed the value of the CEF Building Blocks for pan-European projects. Questions concerned technical aspects of cross-border interoperability, learn more about the relevant European legislation and how to concretely implement one or more Building Blocks. All this information is provided on the CEF Digital site.

You can find the slides from the session below and are warmly welcome to contact CEF Digital directly or email us to get started reusing the CEF Building Blocks.

See the slides:

Podcast explores how CEF Building Blocks are helping Smart Cities flourish in Europe

©Adobe Stock

Joao Rodriguez Frade, from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT), spoke at the Smart and Sustainable Cities podcast about how the Connecting Europe Facility's (CEF) digital Building Blocks are helping cities and municipalities all over Europe accelerate their digital transformation.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

Digitalisation of services, whether from public administrations or private companies, is a trend that was on the rise even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which is now pushing organisations to adapt even faster so they can offer online services to citizens. As Head of Sector for the Building Blocks, open digital solutions that can be reused in any cross-border or cross-sector European digital project, Joao had the opportunity to explain just how the CEF Building Blocks are helping create "Smart Cities". 

Smart Cities

Smart Cities look to leverage on the array of data and digital technology available to run a city more efficiently and sustainably, and to provide citizens with better online public services. 

The Building Blocks are helping cities all over Europe do just this, in particular by helping municipalities and businesses to create solutions that extract maximum value from open data to inform policy- and decision-making and create innovative new services for citizens. This ranges from city-wide open-data platforms so citizens and businesses have access to important information in real-time, to improving efficiency and reducing waste and pollution, for example by monitoring weather or traffic congestion hotspots and altering city services accordingly.

Thanks to their international standards and specifications, digital systems and services built with the Building Blocks have guaranteed interoperability, ensuring connectivity with other systems across sectors and borders, for networked cities and a truly interconnected Europe. 

This edition of the Smart and Sustainable Cities podcast is also available on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Apple Podcast, Radio Public and Spotify.

How the the Digital Innovation Challenge winners are using the building blocks to make their projects a reality

Connecting national digital infrastructures so that EU citizens can enjoy online public services across borders is a priority for the EU. One way the Commission is helping achieve such cross-border connectivity is through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital and ISA² (Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens) programmes.

The CEF Digital building blocks are free, open and reusable solutions helping connect Europe's varied national I.T. landscapes. Thanks to the international standards they are based on, any system built with them can interconnect with others, so public administrations and companies can easily open up their services across sectors and borders. However, we found that these solutions are much better known by public administrations and big industry players than SMEs. 

This is why the Commission wanted to actively help SMEs digitalise on a wider scale, while also leveraging on their enormous potential as multipliers to increase the uptake of these open solutions and help connect different I.T. landscapes on a more local level. 

This is where the Digital Innovation Challenge comes in.

The Digital Innovation Challenge

At the Web Summit in Lisbon in 2019, the European Commission launched a challenge for European SMEs and startups to grow their business by coming up with new digital services based on CEF and ISA2’s open and reusable solutions. This was a chance to stimulate awareness of these solutions and increase their reuse, for a truly connected Europe at national, regional and local level.

We talked to hundreds of companies and 49 participants, from 17 countries, made it through to the second round. Of these, the 10 best candidates were invited to pitch their ideas at a (virtual) co-creation bootcamp to workshop their ideas, followed by pitches in front of a jury of senior EU officials working in digital. The final step was an award ceremony at the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit 2020, where the three winners were announced.

But how do the CEF building blocks actually fit into these SME's innovative services? Take a closer look at the three winners' projects below to find out.

1^st place: CleverBooks (€50,000) - Sustainable Digital Education

CleverBooks' proposed service platform transforms existing learning materials into reusable, online text- and workbooks for schools by providing a centralised solution for all schools in Europe, all while integrating Augmented Reality technology. The aim is to make education more personalised, engaging and accessible for all kids in the digital age, with a particular focus on nurturing digital literacy and skills in young people. It will allow for distanced education and accessibility to educational resources at anytime, anywhere, regardless of who you are or what educational system you are in. 

So how do our building blocks help CleverBooks realise their project?

• With eIDand eSignature, the platform will allow users to manage their education credentials by electronically identifying themselves and signing documents across borders; 
• By integrating with the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), the platform can put control of education credentials back in the hands of users rather than a centralised authority, thanks to blockchain's distributed ledger system; 
• eDelivery's AS4 message exchange protocol for secure and reliable message exchange channels will let different users exchange educational documents and data through the platform with ease;
• eArchiving will allow the platform to store results and the educational progress of users in a digital repository, making archived data secure and reliable over a long period of time;
• With Context Broker's data aggregation capabilities, the platform will be able to gather any data resulting from user input, classes/tests taken, etc., and display it in real-time in a progress dashboard. 

2^nd place: Latitudo40 (€20,000) - Earth Analytics 

The Latitudo40 platform aims to become the reference point for geoinformation in Europe, turning satellite imagery from the EU's Copernicus constellation and commercial satellites into geospatial information, whether physical, chemical or structural. This information will be made available through a cloud platform allowing organisations and businesses to perform geospatial analytics for better decision-making, particularly in the areas of urban monitoring, infrastructure development and agriculture. This platform will also be able to integrate into any existing I.T. architecture thanks to the building blocks' open standards and specifications.

So how do our building blocks help Latitudo40 realise their project?

• eID's cross-border electronic identification capabilities make it safer and easier for users to register and to manage user accessibility;
  
• eDelivery's AS4 message exchange protocol for secure and reliable message exchange channels makes access to the platform's data more secure;
• By integrating with the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), the platform's data will be more transparent, reliable and immutable over time thanks to the blockchain's distributed ledger system.
• Context Broker will support the platform's data acquisition module through its ability to collect a vast amount of data from a variety of sources, automatically organise it and display it through an interface, all while ensuring the scalability of this modular solution so that more and more modules, or "blocks", of analytical capabilities can be added. User can recombine these modules in any way for an endless number of potential applications. 

3^rd place: OpenContent (€10,000) - eGovernment

OpenContent's platform, OpenCityPlus, is already used by over 300 local authorities, helping small and medium municipalities in Europe integrate into the Single Digital Gateway (SDG). The SDG's aim is for Member States to make the information, administrative procedures and assistance services that citizens and businesses need to get active in another EU country easily accessible and understandable online. 

The OpenCityPlus platform makes it easier for public administrations to manage their public services with intuitive, accessible dashboards that hide the technical complexity of underlying solutions - separate but interoperable modules can be progressively activated to provide more and more services according to an organisation's needs. On the user's side, the platform guides citizens and businesses through the administrative procedures they need to perform, allowing them to complete these seamlessly online and authenticate themselves to check a procedure's progress through a dashboard updated in real-time.

So how do our building blocks help OpenContent realise their project?

• eID will allow users to access the platform by authenticating themselves through eIDAS or SPID;
• eArchiving's international standards and specifications will help public administrations comply with regulations regarding the processing and storing of personal data;
• By integrating with the EBSI, the platform will be able to simplify administrative processes and increase efficiency in cross-border public services while complying with the relevant regulations. 

Looking forwards

We accompanied these SMEs on their journeys from initial pitches to detailed plans, and dedicated onboarding teams are now helping them implement the building blocks in their solutions, with services ranging from integration and technical support to conformance and interoperability tests. 

The EU will continue to invest in SMEs' digital transformation and the creation of brand-new, exciting services. Stay tuned for a more detailed recap of these ambitious SMEs' journeys with the Commission's open and reusable solutions, coming soon. 

Follow the links below to learn more about the building blocks and get started with your cross-border digital project! 

Context Broker eArchiving eID eSignature

eDelivery European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI)

Release of eDelivery's Domibus 4.2 sample delayed

We would like to inform you that the final release of Domibus 4.2 sample implementation of the eDelivery Access Point, originally planned for 10 December 2020, has been briefly delayed. A new release date will be communicated as soon as possible.

The Domibus 4.2 release is the result of a close collaboration between the IT delivery teams of different EU policy projects and the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) eDelivery Building Block.

The Domibus 4.2 release includes a number of new features, improvements, and bug fixes, including:

• The possibility to define different priorities for messages based on service/action

• New isAlive REST service in Domibus core to support end-to-end monitoring

• The possibility to monitor the connection state between C2 and C3

• New REST API for adding, updating or deleting participants in the PMode file

• An extension of the retention policy mechanism to allow the deletion of message metadata in addition to message payload

• Support for Oracle OpenJDK 11

• Support for WebLogic 12.2.1.4, WildFly 20 and Tomcat 9

• Support for WebLogic Foreign Server
• Default JMS Plugin – support for configuring different queues depending on service/action

• New UI page for changing the Domibus properties at runtime

Domibus 4.2 is backward compatible with 4.1.x versions.

Consult CEF Digital to keep informed about the latest news on Domibus and CEF eDelivery.

EU Blockchain pre-commercial procurement call for tenders launched

©Adobe Stock

The European Commission has launched the call for tenders for the EU blockchain pre-commercial procurement (PCP). The PCP will be carried out in cooperation with, and build on the work of, the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP), which is helping establish the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). The EBSI is a European-wide blockchain network for delivering online public services to EU citizens.

The deadline for interested bidders to submit offers is 28 January 2021. 

The purpose of the call is to develop new technical capabilities for the future version of EBSI that go beyond what current blockchain solutions can offer. This will support the implementation of various new use cases with high-volume and velocity requirements while improving the sustainability, interoperability and robustness of the EBSI.  

Read more about this call for tenders here. You can find more detailed information on the full tender package and Q&As about the call here. 

New Domibus software for CEF eDelivery will require some users to update plugins

©Adobe Stock

The European Commission is planning to release a new version of the CEF eDelivery Access Point sample software, Domibus 5.0, on 29 April 2022*. Existing or prospective users of the sample software should take into account key changes in this upcoming release when planning their project’s (maintenance) roadmap for 2021-2022. 

Please note that these changes will only have a potential impact on users of the Domibus product, not on those using other CEF eDelivery AS4-conformant software.

Domibus version 5.0 will contain several changes that will impact the compatibility of the plugins developed before Domibus 5.0. This means that previously developed plugins will have to be adapted to be compatible with version 5.0 and onwards. This will affect projects relying on: 

1. Custom plugins and/or;
2. The standard Domibus Web Service (WS) plugin.

The new plugin API, as well as any changes needed to migrate from the old API to the new one, will be documented in the Plugin Cookbook for the upcoming Domibus 4.2, the planned release date of which is 10 December 2020. 

As Domibus 4.2 is foreseen to be supported until 31 March 2022, it is advisable that projects impacted by this change plan to adapt their plugin(s) no later than this date.

Domibus 5.0 will also come with a modified WSDL interface of the standard WS plugin. The current interface will be deprecated so that an eDelivery-specific namespace can replace the legacy ‘ecodex’ one. This means that backend applications using the standard WS plugin will have to be adapted to use the new interface.

Domibus 5.0 will ship with both WS plugins, the one offering the new interface and the one offering the legacy one. As this version will be supported for at least one year, i.e., until December 2022, it is advisable that projects impacted by this change plan to adapt their backend application(s) no later than this date.

*The release date is tentative, subject to confirmation following the adoption of the DEP Work Programme 2021-2022 (which is currently expected by October 2021). The release date may be postponed further at that time.

CEF eDelivery

Domibus is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery AS4 Access Point for the interoperable, secure and reliable exchange of data. It is based on the AS4 profile developed by e-SENS, an open technical specification for the secure, web-based, payload-agnostic exchange of data or documents.

Discover eDelivery