eDelivery is finally on social media and the second newsletter is out!

The eDelivery team is stepping up its communication efforts to engage with an increasingly wider community. The released second edition of the eDelivery newsletter aims to become an important communication hub for eDelivery community. To be published every three months, the eDelivery newsletter shines a spotlight on the most relevant events, success stories, news, and technical updates for its stakeholders. The next issue presenting the selected digests of published blog posts is going to be released in January 2023.

In the October’s issue, stakeholders can read about events and other key milestones regarding eDelivery. For example, readers will be able to register for the upcoming webinar on Domibus plugins taking place on the 22nd of November (registration link available here). Similarly, the newsletter will explain eDelivery's vital role in creating the European Health Data Space (EHDS), one of the European Commission’s key priorities for 2019-2025. Last, but not least, the technical updates highlight the key improvements on the technical development side of eDelivery.

If you want to join thousands of existing subscribers and be always up to date with the latest news on eDelivery, register here. Additionally, eDelivery has solidified its online presence with a Twitter account and soon you can expect eDelivery videos to be featured on a YouTube and PeerTube channels. By following the team's activities on Twitter, stakeholders will be able to stay current with all the news related to eDelivery world: updates from the data space and interoperability communities, relevant policy developments and information on events and webinars.  Additionally, webinar recordings will be available on both YouTube and PeerTube channels, to make sure that every member of the eDelivery community stays up to date with our engagement activities.

For more information, do not hesitate to contact us via our portal or by e-mail: EC-EDELIVERY-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu.

The eDelivery Building Block

eDelivery is a building block that provides technical specifications and standards, installable software and ancillary services to allow projects to create a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange.

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 eDelivery AS4 profile, an open technical specification for the secure, web-based, payload-agnostic exchange of data or documents.

DomiSMP is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Publisher for publishing and retrieving data necessary for an eDelivery party to dynamically configure its system for message exchange with counterparties using eDelivery. It is based on the eDelivery SMP profile, an open technical specification for publishing service metadata within a 4-corner network.

DomiSML is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Locator for an eDelivery party to discover the URLs of other counterparties using eDelivery Access Points and their corresponding metadata. It is based on the eDelivery BDXL profile, an open technical specification for locating Access Points within a network, and on the PEPPOL SML Specification, a technical specification defining a BDXL administration API. 

Stay tuned for the latest updates on the eDelivery services by checking the building block's twitter and web page. For more information, do not hesitate to register for personalised news or contact us via our portal or by e-mail: EC-EDELIVERY-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

eDelivery sample software unaffected by Apache Commons Text vulnerability

A vulnerability allowing Arbitrary Code Execution in Apache Commons Text was reported on 17 October 2022. Please refer to the announcement for details.

eDelivery sample software (Domibus, SMP, SML) is not impacted by this vulnerability.

The eDelivery Building Block

eDelivery is a building block that provides technical specifications and standards, installable software and ancillary services to allow projects to create a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange.

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 eDelivery AS4 profile, an open technical specification for the secure, web-based, payload-agnostic exchange of data or documents.

DomiSMP is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Publisher for publishing and retrieving data necessary for an eDelivery party to dynamically configure its system for message exchange with counterparties using eDelivery. It is based on the eDelivery SMP profile, an open technical specification for publishing service metadata within a 4-corner network.

DomiSML is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Locator for an eDelivery party to discover the URLs of other counterparties using eDelivery Access Points and their corresponding metadata. It is based on the eDelivery BDXL profile, an open technical specification for locating Access Points within a network, and on the PEPPOL SML Specification, a technical specification defining a BDXL administration API. 

Stay tuned for the latest updates on the eDelivery services by checking the building block's twitter and web page. For more information, do not hesitate to register for personalised news or contact us via our portal or by e-mail: EC-EDELIVERY-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu.

Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash 

EU Member States moving forward with the Once-Only Technical System

On 14 October 2022, national experts met in the Single Digital Gateway (SGD) coordination group to discuss the implementation of the Once-Only Technical System between the EU Member States. The Once-Only Technical System will connect EU public authorities to allow them to securely share official documents and data at the citizen’s request. It puts into practice the Once-Only concept, which states that citizens and businesses should not be forced to provide information to authorities if another authority already holds that information in digital format.

To support the Member States, an implementing regulation sets out technical and operational specifications of the technical system ((EU) 2022/1463). 

The European Commission offers common services as part of the Once-Only Technical Architecture, namely:

• the Data Service Directory (a catalogue of evidence types that can be provided upon request);
• the Evidence Broker (an authoritative system that maps specific data sets as evidence types that prove specific requirements);
• the Semantic Repository (a common service that acts as a data portal for the technical system).

In order to reduce the costs involved in building the Once-Only Technical System, the implementing regulation notes that national implementation plans should, as much as possible, rely on reusable solutions known as “building blocks”. A building block is a digital solution based on open standards that is ready for deployment. It can take the shape of a framework, a standard, a piece of software or software-as–a-service (SaaS), or any combination of these. Reuse saves time, investment and ensures interoperability between IT systems. Notably for the Once-Only Technical System, the Member States will use the eID building block to authenticate users from different countries, and the eDelivery building block for the automated cross-border sharing of data (legally referred to as “evidence”), achieving maximum efficiency games.

In the spirit of large-scale cooperation and co-development, several Member States presented their national implementation plans, including their planned investments and respective strategic approaches. The meeting was also an opportunity to discuss and decide how Member States will test together while building the technical system. Experts, representing the national administrations, expressed their commitment to work together and adopt the approach of large testing events, including Connectathons as practiced in the eHealth sector. The Commission will support the Member States with a dedicated Once-Only Hub website, allowing national teams of implementers to collaborate and co-create the technical system and access testing and support services.

At a strategic level, the creation of the Once-Only Technical System is mandated in Regulation (EU)2018/1724, which establishes a Single Digital Gateway.

Visit here to learn more about the Once-Only Technical System, the Once-Only Principle and the digital building blocks. 

SML 4.2 Release 

The eDelivery team is happy to announce that the final release of SML 4.2 is now available. SML 4.2 is the sample implementation of an eDelivery Service Metadata Locator (SML) maintained by the European Commission. 

The release comes after a month of availability of the SML 4.2 RC1 in the acceptance environment. During this period, the team did not receive any complaints nor detect any issues.  

As for the release candidate, the SML 4.2 includes the following features, improvements, and bug fixes, among which: 

• X.509 certificate policy validation: the SML can now restrict the valid certificates also based on the certificate policy ID. 
• A new report for detecting SMP instances with expired certificates: the SML can automatically detect and, through a new report, warn administrators about SMP instances with outdated certificates. The report can assist with maintaining only the active records in the SML.
• A new web service for checking if a participant identifier is already registered by the SMP: the web service is useful, especially for the SMPs with distributed deployment (microservices) which contain many participant identifiers.
• Support for the creation of the participant identifiers without scheme.
• Support for configuring the regular expression that splits the "URN identifiers" into the scheme and id parts. This new option introduces the possibility to use custom URN identifier schemes.
• Support for quick start-up using Spring Boot: this option is intended only for demonstration and testing purposes.
• Support for limiting the maximum number of participants that can be registered per domain and per SMP instance: when a business domain or SMP exceeds the allowed quota of participant identifiers, the addition of new participants is blocked.
• Various security enhancements. 

SML 4.2 is backward compatible with 4.1.x.

You can find more information about the release here.

For more information, don’t hesitate to contact us via our portal or by e-mail: EC-EDELIVERY-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu. 

The eDelivery Building Block | SML 

eDelivery is a building block that provides technical specifications and standards, installable software and ancillary services to allow projects to create a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange. 

SML is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Locator (SML) for an eDelivery party to discover the URLs of other counterparties using eDelivery Access Points and their corresponding metadata. It is based on the eDelivery BDXL profile, an open technical specification for locating Access Points within a network, and on the PEPPOL SML Specification, a technical specification defining a BDXL administration API. 

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash 

Data sharing through eDelivery in the HealthData@EU

The EU has plenty of digitalised health data, which is not used to its full potential because of legal, interoperability and data quality obstacles. For this reason, the creation of a European Health Data Space has been one of the European Commission’s key priorities for 2019-2025. Such space would further advance digital transformation, optimise and expand the use of health data. Since May 2022 when European Commission published the proposal for a European Health Data Space (EHDS) legislation, the way was cleared for secure use of health data for secondary use - research, innovation, policy-making and regulatory activities. The “MyHealth@EU” infrastructure, already operational in 11 Member States, enables the exchange of e-prescriptions and patient summaries across MS within the EU, becoming the first concrete step into the implementation of the EU Health Data Space.

The above picture portrays the composition of the critical components of the EHDS, including MyHealth@EU and the new infrastructure HealthData@EU to support secondary use of health data.

The HealthData@EU infrastructure will be piloted by a 2-year project facilitating the cross-border use of health data for secondary purposes like research, policy making, regulatory activities and innovation. The HealthData@EU will take full advantage of the eDelivery Building Block services and reference implementations. The European Commission will provide the central services for the pilot project while the end users and health data access bodies' responsibilities will be supported by grants to national authorities. The pilot will design, develop, deploy and operate a network of nodes (representing different data brokers, holders and data consumers) supported by central services that will be provided jointly by the Member States and the European Commission.

How will eDelivery enable the creation of the EHDS? According to the blueprint for the HealthData@EU infrastructure, the HealthData@EU nodes (shown in yellow in the picture below) will use eDelivery AS4 Access Points to ensure interoperability for cross-border data sharing. The data space will also use the eDelivery PKI service to obtain the certificates that will be used by the HealthData@EU nodes to establish trust and ensure security. Information about the participants in the data space – data users and data holders – will be managed in a dynamic manner by publishing it in the (central) eDelivery SML service rather than encoding it on all HealthData@EU nodes. Given the large number of participants expected in the data space, a "dynamic discovery" model has been selected as more scalable. Publication of data about participants in the SML service will be done through an eDelivery SMP server that the European Commission will also operate as part of the planned central services. Once Member State administrators publish metadata about the participants in their Member State, all HealthData@EU nodes will be able to search and retrieve the metadata about the participant they need to contact (e.g., to find the HealthData@EU node through which they can send a request to that participant and the encryption key with which to secure it). As HealthData@EU is one of the first data spaces that will use eDelivery for data sharing, the eDelivery team will be closely involved to provide consultancy for how to best integrate eDelivery in this new context. For the duration of the pilot, the eDelivery team will assist DG SANTE by taking part in the HealthData@EU Advisory Board, formalising the technical assistance at the policy level.

Currently, the pilot covers the creation of infrastructure for secondary use of health data in eight EU Member States. It also assesses the scaling ability towards a Union-wide infrastructure as a core component of the European Health Data Space. Moreover, this pilot brings together key actors, such as existing health data authorities (i. e. national authorities empowered by national mandate and legal basis to enable access to health data) and other international or EU-level organisations (e.g., European research infrastructures, European health related agencies).

Once operational, the HealthData@EU pilot project will bring increased competitive advantage, greater international resilience, impact and visibility making large-scale collaborations possible in the European Union. The potential linkage between health and non-health data will promote timely and real-time assessment using new digital technologies. After the end of 2-year pilot, the EHDS is planned to be scaled up to cover all 27 Member States of the European Union.

The eDelivery Building Block

eDelivery is a building block that provides technical specifications and standards, installable software and ancillary services to allow projects to create a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange.

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 eDelivery AS4 profile, an open technical specification for the secure, web-based, payload-agnostic exchange of data or documents.

DomiSMP is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Publisher for publishing and retrieving data necessary for an eDelivery party to dynamically configure its system for message exchange with counterparties using eDelivery. It is based on the eDelivery SMP profile, an open technical specification for publishing service metadata within a 4-corner network.

DomiSML is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Locator for an eDelivery party to discover the URLs of other counterparties using eDelivery Access Points and their corresponding metadata. It is based on the eDelivery BDXL profile, an open technical specification for locating Access Points within a network, and on the PEPPOL SML Specification, a technical specification defining a BDXL administration API. 

Stay tuned for the latest updates on the eDelivery services by checking the building block's twitter and web page. For more information, do not hesitate to register for personalised news or contact us via our portal or by e-mail: EC-EDELIVERY-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

eDelivery updates: webinars and events of this summer  

This summer, the eDelivery team welcomed participants from all over Europe in several online webinars ad events. 

In July and September 2022, the “eDelivery Live Hands-on Webinars: Send your first AS4 message!” hosted  technical representatives of projects interested in reusing eDelivery, and in particular Domibus, the sample implementation of an eDelivery Access Point maintained by the European Commission, for exchanging electronic data and documents among public administrations, businesses and citizens, in an interoperable, secure, reliable and trusted way. In these hands-on sessions, participants practiced sending their AS4 message; they also learned how to launch Domibus Docker instances, discovered the PMode and security file configuration. Slides and other relevant webinar materials are available to the general public in the dedicated event websites for July and September.

In September 2022, the eDelivery team officially re-launched the Informal Cooperation Network for eDelivery (ICN). The ICN offers a platform for Member States' representatives involved in the setting-up of national eDelivery infrastructures to share their experiences, present their projects and actively contribute to the adoption of eDelivery at national and EU levels. 24 participants from 14 countries took part in the re-launch event that was held online on 9 September.  

The participants, together with the eDelivery team, reviewed the objectives and operational arrangements of the ICN. They also shared best practices, experiences and lessons learnt in the context of the implementation of eDelivery and discussed the alignment with other building blocks and EU initiatives, like the Once-Only Technical System (OOTS). 

The European Commission and HaDEA (the European Health and Digital Executive Agency) presented funding opportunities and grants for organisations willing to pilot eDelivery in their countries. In particular, the HaDEA representative highlighted that organisations could apply for funding for the implementation of eDelivery at national, regional or European level as part of larger use cases eligible for funding under several call priorities established in the Digital European Programme Work Programme 2021-2022. The Work Programme mentions that building blocks – including eDelivery – are solutions that could be reused under the following priorities:  

• data space for the smart communities’ domain, elaborating blueprint architectures for different data spaces; 
• European Digital Government EcoSystem (EDGES); 
• projects under Specific Objective 5 of Digital Europe Programme. 

Under Specific Objective 5 on Deployment and Best Use of Digital Capacities and Interoperability, the key target sector and groups eligible for funding are: 

• the EU public sector; 
• the EU organisations of public interest (such as health and care, education, judiciary, customs, transport, mobility, energy, environment, cultural and creative sectors); 
• relevant businesses, industry and SMEs in the EU. 

Other possibilities of potential funding could stem from calls under EU Cohesion Programme, structural funds and agricultural funds, but only if eDelivery is relevant as part of the use case addressed by a project. 

Discussions will continue in the next ICN meeting, planned in hybrid format for spring 2023. 

Image by Chris Montgomery from Unsplash 

The eDelivery Conformance Testing service is being upgraded

The eDelivery team is busy preparing the next generation of its Conformance Testing service, based on the Interoperability Test Bed – a solution from the European Commission's Interoperable Europe portfolio to facilitate the conformance testing of IT systems.

The goal of the eDelivery Conformance Testing service is to verify that a software product or service implementing the eDelivery specifications, either commercial or open source, does so in a conformant manner. The service allows testing both the eDelivery AS4 specifications and eDelivery SMP specifications. To test conformance, users need to test their product (System under Test) against a series of predefined test cases. Throughout this process continuous support will be provided by the eDelivery support team.

The new generation of the eDelivery Conformance Testing service is being developed in a joint effort by the eDelivery and the Interoperable Europe teams. The new service will facilitate a faster turnaround and feedback loop when running the conformance tests. It will allow users to carry out the tests much more independently, requiring less additional support from the eDelivery team than with the current generation of the service. The new service will offer a modern, more user-friendly user interface, which will provide more insight into the test configuration and test steps being executed. 

The new platform should be available to users in the first months of 2023.

You can find more information about the eDelivery Conformance Testing service on this page.

For more information, please contact us via our portal or by e-mail: EC-EDELIVERY-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu.

The eDelivery Building Block

eDelivery is a building block that provides technical specifications and standards, installable software and ancillary services to allow projects to create a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange.

The eDelivery Conformance Testing service allows testing software products and services against the eDelivery specifications. The technical specifications are translated into test assertions, which are the main unit for testing and reporting the conformance of an implementation. Based on the test assertions, test cases are derived and implemented on the test platform in the form of executable test scripts. An implementation can only pass the conformance testing process in case all mandatory test assertions have been successfully completed. The outcome of the test execution is documented in a test report which is published alongside the name of the product in the pages displaying the eDelivery conformant solutions (AS4, SMP).

Image by Rodion Kutsaiev from Unsplash.

Join us in one of the upcoming eDelivery events in 2022-2023

Holiday season is over and the eDelivery team is happy to share its planned communication activities for the rest of the year and beyond. After seeing a lot of community interest for the webinars on how to send an AS4 message with eDelivery AS4 sample software Domibus on 13 July 2022 and 15 September 2022 and the successful relaunch of Informal Cooperation Network for eDelivery on 9 September 2022, the eDelivery team is looking forward to welcoming you in upcoming webinars and meetings.

We’ve already booked our calendars for another two webinars! The webinar on the new features in Domibus 5.0 scheduled for 18 October 2022 is just around the corner and we invite you to register here. Registrations are also open to the other webinar about Domibus plugins on 22 November 2022, where current and prospective users of Domibus are invited to learn more about the available options for their existing IT systems to interact with Domibus as an eDelivery Access Point (web service-, file system- and JMS-based integration). You can directly register by clicking here.

The eDelivery team is going to finish the communications activities of 2022 with the presentation of the eDelivery building block and how it can support data spaces in the different sectors in the SEMIC Conference Data Spaces in an interoperable Europe on 6 December 2022.

Next year we will start with the dedicated event on Once Only Technical System and eDelivery implementation for the SDG Once Only Technical System community. The relaunch of the eDelivery Interoperability Forum for creators of AS4 conformant software in the first months of 2023 will also expand on market opportunities regarding developing AS4 services for customers and explore the AS4 service providers needs and wants. The business owners are going to have a dedicated webinar in Q1 2023 as well about the eDelivery value proposition, the various possibilities of its implementation, success stories and support activities. During the spring months, we will organise the 2nd meeting of the eDelivery Informal Cooperation Network, which is going to be hybrid (in person in Brussels and online). After the post-pandemic catch-up on 9 September 2022, we are looking forward to even more discussions, knowledge sharing and collaborative work within the Forum. If you are interested and would like to learn more, do not hesitate to check the network's page and/or contact us.

We will kick off Q2 with the webinar on dynamic discovery using SMP and SML.

If you would like to stay tuned and be the first to hear about our organised events, do not hesitate to register to our event notifications and to contact us by email EC-DIGITAL-BUILDING-BLOCKS@ec.europa.eu.

The eDelivery Building Block

eDelivery is a building block that provides technical specifications and standards, installable software and ancillary services to allow projects to create a network of nodes for secure digital data exchange.

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 eDelivery AS4 profile, an open technical specification for the secure, web-based, payload-agnostic exchange of data or documents.

SMP is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) for publishing and retrieving data necessary for an eDelivery party to dynamically configure its system for message exchange with counterparties using eDelivery. It is based on the eDelivery SMP profile, an open technical specification for publishing service metadata within a 4-corner network.

SML is the sample software provided by the European Commission to implement an eDelivery Service Metadata Locator (SML) for an eDelivery party to discover the URLs of other counterparties using eDelivery Access Points and their corresponding metadata. It is based on the eDelivery BDXL profile, an open technical specification for locating Access Points within a network.

Photo by Libby Penner on Unsplash