eDelivery hands-on webinars: the Once-Only Technical System  

Anna BUSDRAGHI posted on Jan 30, 2023

eDelivery hands-on webinars: the Once-Only Technical System  

The eDelivery team officially kicked off the 2023 event calendar! On the 26th of January, over 60 attendees came together for the webinar “The Once-Only Technical System: A hands-on guide to eDelivery” organised by the Once-Only Technical System (OOTS) team.  

The event began with an overview of the crucial role played by eDelivery within the OOTS infrastructure. eDelivery representatives highlighted the building block’s value in building the Once-Only Technical System, the first EU-wide cross-domain and cross-sector dataspace. In the framework of OOTS, Domibus-based access points make up the layer of interoperability for secure evidence 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.

Subsequently, the webinar progressed to hands-on activities. There, eDelivery representatives led the audience through installing and configuring Domibus and exchanging messages among active participants. Lastly, the webinar ended with the Q&A session, where attendees engaged the team on questions such as the Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) and Service Metadata Locator (SML) compatibility with Domibus, and the possibility of having future working sessions on native installation.   

On that note, the eDelivery team is happy to witness a significant interest in Domibus-related hands-on webinars. On top of the already packed event calendar, the team is working hard to cater to the evolving needs of eDelivery stakeholders. Stay tuned! 

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 davide ragusa on Unsplash

EC-3rd Countries Trust Services Forum

Constantin-Catalin MIRICA posted on Jan 25, 2023

EC-3^rd Countries Trust Services Forum

Discover the actions taken by the European Commission to move towards alignment of trust services with Third Countries.

12 June 2023 - 09:00 - 17:30 (CET)

Hybrid event, Brussels

Registration Closed

WebEx link to join remotely:

https://ecconf.webex.com/ecconf/j.php?MTID=m34dda4a5ef4b1030c10d66abefbc7ddc

About the event

The collaboration between the European Commission and the Third Countries has taken a substantial leap forward with the release of the Third Countries AdES List of the Lists (TC AdES LOTL). The purpose of this collaboration is to enable the mutual recognition of trust services between the European Union and Third Countries. Now, the European Union (EU) and Third Countries can implement the Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) of trust services under the eIDAS Regulation. In this event, multiple key players of this collaboration would like to share with you the latest advancements of the implementations, their experiences and the different point of views with regards to trust services. The event will cover a range of topics related to trust services, such as the latest updates of the eIDAS Regulation, international partnerships, recognition of Third Countries' trust services, technical design, and more. In addition, we are delighted to present a diverse range of speakers from the European Commission, industry experts and Third Countries, who will share their insights and experiences.

For more information about this milestone, please consult the news article.

Note that physical places are limited and registration to physically participate will close once the limit is reached. Please register as soon as possible, specifying in the ad hoc section your willingness to physically participate in the event. As the event is in a hybrid form, the possibility of participating online is still provided, please register for the event by clicking on the button on the right also if you are going to join the forum online.

Agenda

ID	TIME	TOPIC	SPEAKERS
1.	09:00 - 09:15	Welcome words	Lorena BOIX ALONSO (European Commission)	15'
2.	09:15 - 09:35	eIDAS regulation eIDAS 2.0 eIDAS regulation present and future	Gudrun STOCK (European Commission)	20'
3.	09:35 - 09:55	Current state of international partnerships Policy around the recognition of Third Countries trust services	Vicente ANDREU NAVARRO (European Commission)	20'
4.	09:55 - 10:15	European Commission's Third Countries Trusted List (TCTL) Programme Presentation of the pilot in the eIDAS Dashboard	Apostolos Tolis APLADAS (European Commission)	20'
5.	10:15 - 10:30	Regulatory Framework on trusted services Competences of the supervisory body Registration/Accreditation of QTSP Trust list/ Electronic Identification Scheme International Aspects	Ermela CEKANI (Albania)	15'
	10:30 - 10:50	Coffee break		20'
6.	10:50 - 11:50	Panel discussion	Sylvie LACROIX (Sealed), Viky MANAILA (IntesiGroup), Evgenia NIKOLOUZOU (ENISA)	60'
7.	11:50 - 12:05	Presentation of the TC AdES LOTL and the UA collaboration	Olivier BARETTE (Nowina Solutions)	15'
	12:05 - 13:35	Lunch break		90'
8.	13:35 - 13:50	Data Free Flow with Trust – Proof of Concept between Japan and the European Union	Prof. TEZUKA (Japan)	15'
9.	13:50 - 14:05	Trust services infrastructure in Ukraine	Oleksandr KOZLOV (Ukraine)	15'
10.	14:05 - 15:50	How the specifications of the TC AdES LOTL and the XML MRA element works, concepts.	Olivier BARETTE (Nowina Solutions) & Olivier DELOS (Sealed)	105'
	15:50-16:20	Coffee break		30'
11.	16:20-17:05	Q&A	Vicente ANDREU NAVARRO, Apostolos Tolis APLADAS, Olivier DELOS, Olivier BARETTE, Jean Emmanuel PEREZ HERNANDEZ	45'
12.	17:05-17:15	Closing remarks	Natalia ARISTIMUÑO PÉREZ (European Commission)	10'

Speakers

Lorena Boix Alonso

Director for Digital Society, Trust and Cybersecurity, DG CONNECT, European Commission

Lorena Boix Alonso is Director for Digital Society, Trust and Cybersecurity in the Directorate General for Communications Networks Content and Technology (DG CONNECT), at the European Commission. She is a member of the Executive and Management Board of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) and as well as the Commission representative in the Governing Board of the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC) and a member of the Management Board of the Computer Emergency Response Team for the EU Institutions (CERT EU).

She joined the European Commission Directorate-General for Competition in 2003. Prior to that, she has worked for Judge Rafael García Valdecasas, at the European Court of Justice, as well as Deputy Director and Legal Coordinator of the IPR-Helpdesk Project and in private practice in Brussels.

Natalia ARISTIMUÑO PÉREZ

Digital Services Director, DIGIT, European Commission

Today Director of Digital Services with her past experience that combines different Head of Unit positions in the domains of interoperability policy, delivering solutions for human resources, decision-making, document and knowledge management. Since she joined the European Commission in 2000, she has been involved in developing user-friendly solutions for public administrations and the European Commission itself. She graduated from Deusto University (Bilbao, Spain) with IT background and has a deep knowledge of the business domains she works with.

Gudrun STOCK

Deputy Head of Unit, DG CNECT, European Commission

Gudrun has more than 30 years of experience in the private sector and EU Institutions, in a wide variety of fields ranging from audit, law, human resources and statistics to digital cultural heritage, digital inclusion, digital government and digital identity. Currently, Gudrun is Deputy Head of Unit of the eGovernment and Trust unit at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology (DG CONNECT). Her ambition is to foster the implementation of the European Digital Identity Framework.

Vicente ANDREU NAVARRO

Policy Officer, CNECT, European Commission

He is currently assigned as a Policy Officer to Unit “eGovernment and Trust” of DG CNECT where he works in electronic signatures and in international aspects of the eIDAS regulation.He qualified as a Computer Engineer at Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and obtained a master’s degree in Information and Knowledge Society at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Before joining the European Institutions in 2019, he had developed a career in Spain as a civil servant in the information and communication technology areas, mainly on IT security, data protection, electronic government and IT governance.

Apostolos Tolis APLADAS

Program Manager, DIGIT, European Commission

With his expertise in digital transformation, Tolis is always seeking opportunities, to transform the way European citizens interact with the services offered by the EU Institutes, Bodies and Agencies (EUIBAs) as well as to assist the private and public sector within EU and beyond, to establish citizens-centric, interoperable services of great value.

Background

Tolis graduated as an Electrical and Electronics Engineer from the University of Patras, Greece and following a successful career in Greece and Germany, he started working for the European Commission and specifically in DG DIGIT, in 2011.

Since then, Tolis has managed several projects in Research and Education domains and lately he is the Solution Owner of the electronic identities and digital signing services in the European Commission. The past 4 years, Tolis and his teams are working intensively to boost the penetration of Trust Services inside the EUIBAs, as well as in the EU Member States. He is also a key contributor to the efforts of the European Commission in the technical field of international recognition of Trust Services between the EU and 3rd countries.

Oleksandr Kozlov

Expert on eID, EU4DigitalUA, e-Governance Academy (in Ukraine)

Oleksandr is an expert on eID at EU4DigitalUA, e-Governance Academy in Ukraine. He worked on harmonization of Ukrainian regulations with the EU requirements in several governmental institutions in Ukraine.

He was always an active contributor in implementation of eIDAS Regulation in Ukraine with an aim to mobilize effortless and trustworthy cross border transactions. Being a part of eGovernance Academy they assist public sector in making digital transformation happen through consultancy, training, networking, research and assisting in the implementation of various e-government technical solutions.

Oleksandr has actively contributed to the advancements and developments in the EU's collaboration with Ukraine. He has supported Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine in aligning with eIDAS Requirements and integration with EC TC AdES LOTL. During this cooperation valuable insights into the technical design, practical challenges, and best practices in recognizing Third Countries' trust services were identified.

Olivier BARETTE

Partner, Nowina Solutions

Olivier is an eSignature expert with an extensive experience of 25 years in IT, in particular regarding digital transformation in eGovernment and finance.

He is providing consulting and auditing services to public and private stakeholders in trust services ecosystems, in Europe and MENA, and has contributed to various standards and guidelines around (Q)TSP security requirements and electronic signature validation. Among others, since 2014 he is providing support to eIDAS initiatives at the European Commission and has been involved in the technical field of international recognition of Trust Services between the EU and 3rd countries.

Ermela CEKANI

Expert, National Authority for Electronic Certification and Cyber Security

Ermela graduated in Master of Science in Computer Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Tirana, Albania. In 2016 started working in the Accreditation Unit in National Authority on Electronic Certification.

Since then, she has been working for National Authority on Electronic Certification and Cyber Security and the main job duties consist of adopting international legislation and standards in the field of trust services and cyber security (such as eIDAS Regulation, NIS Directive, ENISA best practices). Previously she has participated in FESA and ENISA Meetings where she has represented the Authority.

Panelists

Viky MANAILA

Trust Services Director, INTESI GROUP

Viky Manaila is an international expert in the field of electronic signatures, digital identity and digital transformation processes, who has successfully promoted the electronic business globally. Viky has successfully contributed to standardization work for the global acceptance of European Trust Services, a study of existing trust services that operate in different regions of the world and their possible mutual recognition or global acceptance.

The eIDAS Regulation and corresponding standards go beyond EU boundaries, proving that interoperability and cross-border legal recognition are the keys for global electronic commerce and transactions.

Viky has detailed in-depth knowledge of regulations, technologies and policies in digitisation and digital identities in the EU and third countries. She is member of different high level working groups set up by the European Commission, ETSI (www.etsi.org ), World Economic Forum, aimed at aligning policy and operations around trust identity, digital signatures and cross-recognition.

Viky Manaila is also President for Cloud Signature Consortium.

Sylvie LACROIX

Managing director, SEALED

Sylvie Lacroix is an eSecurity consultant with +25 years of experience. With a Master from the Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain as technical background, Sylvie started her career as researcher in cryptography at the UCL University. She acquired a significant experience in business representation and exploitation of security, cryptography and PKI topics through participations to the implementation of major projects within Europe and beyond, such as national eID cards and ePassports deployment, or the integration of eSignature within diverse ecosystems.

Sylvie is expert for several European projects in the framework of the eIDAS Regulation. She worked for prestigious organisations such as European Governments, ENISA, the European Commission, large enterprises and CEN and ETSI, the two major European standardisation bodies.

Evgenia NIKOLOUZOU

Cybersecurity Officer, ENISA

Dr Evgenia Nikolouzou joined ENISA in 2016 and her main focus was to support the implementation of the eIDAS Regulation and contribute to policy related issues in the area of electronic communications sector. Evgenia is successfully contributing to many ENISA reports on Trust Services and Digital Identities and actively supporting the eIDAS community.

Background

She received a Dipl.-Ing. and a Ph.D iin Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and was for years performing research in internet architectures and related security and performance evaluation aspects.

She has participated in several European Union projects and was a lecturer on many postgraduate courses.

She has published a number of international papers and journals and since 2007 she is contributing as evaluator and reviewer to EU Commission.

3 Comments

Domibus 5.1 RC expected in February 2023

Olha KOSHCHIYENKO posted on Jan 19, 2023

Domibus 5.1 RC expected in February 2023

We are happy to announce that Domibus 5.1 Release Candidate will be released in the beginning of February 2023. Domibus is the sample implementation of an eDelivery Access Point maintained by the European Commission.

Domibus 5.1 RC will include a number of new features, improvements, and bug fixes, among which:

Support different security algorithm configurations
Support different/multiple (types of) private keys to be used by different security configurations
Add retry strategy with increasing delay between attempts
Add possibility to configure retention policy for metadata separately than the one for data
Allow batch (re)sending of messages from the admin console
Production support for self-sending: Domibus will support the possibility for the receiving party of a message to use the same access point as the sending party

You can find more information about this and other Domibus releases 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 | Domibus

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.

The image used in this article is by Ramón Salinero from Unsplash

Domibus 5.0.3 released

Olha KOSHCHIYENKO posted on Jan 18, 2023

Domibus 5.0.3 released

We are happy to announce that Domibus 5.0.3 was released. Domibus is the sample implementation of an eDelivery Access Point maintained by the European Commission.

Domibus 5.0.3 includes a number of new features, improvements, and bug fixes, among which:

Fixed partition creation/dropping issue
Fixed the error when trying to use a PKCS12 format for the keystore
Created an API to move messages in final status to DELETED
Fixed issue when fsplugin.messages.location to point another disk (Windows) files are not picked up
Fixed issue causing that after DB migration from 4.2.11 to 5.0.1, Domibus fails to start at first two attempts
Fix for show domain checkbox is not present in property page
Analysed and fixed OWASP reported security vulnerabilities

Domibus 5.0.3 is backward compatible with 5.0.2. The upgrade is not mandatory, but it is highly recommended.

You can find more information about the release 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 | Domibus

The image used in this article is by Shubham Dhage from Unsplash

eDelivery funding opportunities under CEF and DEP

Olha KOSHCHIYENKO posted on Jan 12, 2023

eDelivery funding opportunities under CEF and DEP

Since 2014, a variety of grants have been made available by the European Commission to support the adoption of eDelivery. Between 2015 and 2020, 23 grant agreements have been signed for the eDelivery Building Block Digital Service Infrastructure (DSI) under Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). A total of EUR 5.16 million of CEF Telecom Programme funding has been earmarked for 17 Member States, two EEA Countries and one third country, corresponding to a total cost of EUR 6.95 million.

The below table presents details about the number of projects and the allocated CEF funding amounts in the EU Member States and beyond.

Since 2021, the evolution of eDelivery is funded by the Digital Europe Programme (DEP). The Digital Europe Programme is a new EU funding programme focused on bringing digital technology to businesses, citizens and public administrations. The structure and the objectives of the budget allocated to eDelivery under DEP are different from the CEF. The primary objective of the budgetary allocation is to ensure that DG DIGIT and DG CNECT of the European Commission continue successfully running the eDelivery Building Block. While direct funding to eDelivery potential beneficiaries is currently not available through the DEP, the eDelivery team will continue working hard to ensure the highest level of service provision to the stakeholders.

In what concerns potential future funding opportunities, a possibility exists to include eDelivery under calls financed from Cohesion Funds, Structural Funds and Agricultural Funds of the European Union. The eDelivery will immediately inform all interested stakeholders, should the project funding opportunities arise.

The eDelivery Building Block

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

eDelivery bringing immediate value to the OOTS, EHDS and eFTI projects

Olha KOSHCHIYENKO posted on Jan 10, 2023

eDelivery bringing immediate value to the OOTS, EHDS and eFTI projects

In December, the eDelivery team engaged closely with the Once-Only Technical System (OOTS), European Health Data Space (EHDS) and electronic Freight Transportation Information (eFTI) communities to demonstrate the added value of eDelivery for these projects, on the one hand, and to help them understand how they can adapt eDelivery to their specific needs, on the other hand.

The OOTS community was given a presentation to explain the role of eDelivery in the OOTS architecture in the OOTS Implementers Café #2. The OOTS is the first EU-wide cross-sectoral and cross-domain data space that enables the sharing of information between public administrations across borders between EU countries. It is cross-sectorial and can be expanded beyond the current scope of life events set out in the Single Digital Gateway Regulation. It puts into practice the Once-Only Principle, which states that citizens should not be forced to provide information to authorities if another authority already holds that information in electronic format. The presentation of the eDelivery Building Block in the OOTS Implementers Café was followed by a lively Q&A session during which Member States raised several questions on key topics, like the difference between static and dynamic discovery, the possible role of dynamic discovery using SMP and SML in the OOTS, and the possibility for a country to use a single versus several Access Points within the Once-Only eDelivery network. It was also highlighted in the meeting that the OOTS community can rely on the eDelivery service offering and on the cooperation between the OOTS and eDelivery teams also in the new year. On 26 January 2023, a co-organised hands-on webinar will be held, showing the participants how they can start building their eDelivery network for the OOTS. During the webinar, the audience will attempt to establish several eDelivery Access Points and use them to share (sample) evidence.

The EHDS – a health-specific ecosystem comprised of rules, common standards and practices, infrastructures, governance and legal frameworks is a key pillar for the European Health Union and the first concrete step in secondary use of health data (for research and policy-making purposes). EHDS aims to empower individuals through better digital access to their personal health data, to support free movement by ensuring that health data follow people, to unleash the data economy by fostering a genuine single market for digital health services and products and to set up strict rules for the use of individual’s non-identifiable health data for research, innovation, policy-making and regulatory activities. eDelivery's contribution to enable the creation of the EHDS is already explained at length in our dedicated article, but shortly, according to the blueprint for the HealthData@EU infrastructure, the HealthData@EU nodes 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 underpin the trust and security of the HealthData@EU nodes. 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. In this context, the eDelivery team demonstrated to participants in the EHDS2 pilot how sending AS4 messages via eDelivery Access Points would look like and discussed the directions for future cooperation.

Last but not least, the eDelivery team participated in two events related to the electronic Freight Transport Information (eFTI) project – a workshop on the implementation of the eFTI architecture on 2 December 2023, and the "Technical Fridays" event of the Digital Transport and Logistics Forum (DTLF) on 9 December 2023. eFTI is a set of data elements processed electronically for the purpose of exchanging regulatory information among economic operators (mainly companies involved in freight transport and logistics) and between operators and competent authorities. The implementation of eFTI is monitored by the Digital Transport and Logistics Forum (DTLF) – an expert group of the European Commission that brings together public and private stakeholders from various transport and logistics communities. DTLF supports the European Commission in promoting the digital transformation of the transport and logistics sector. In these events, the team presented eDelivery as a potential message exchange solution for the eFTI exchange environment.

While the use of eDelivery in the eFTI project, and if so its scope of deployment, are still ongoing, in the case of EHDS and OOTS the decision and modalities to deploy eDelivery in their respective architectures are already in place. The cooperation with the three partners will continue throughout the year and beyond.

The eDelivery Building Block

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.

Image from Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Blog

eDelivery hands-on webinars: the Once-Only Technical System

EC-3rd Countries Trust Services Forum

Discover the actions taken by the European Commission to move towards alignment of trust services with Third Countries.

12 June 2023 - 09:00 - 17:30 (CET)

Hybrid event, Brussels

Registration Closed

About the event

Agenda

Agenda

Speakers

Panelists

Domibus 5.1 RC expected in February 2023

The eDelivery Building Block | Domibus

Domibus 5.0.3 released

The eDelivery Building Block | Domibus

eDelivery funding opportunities under CEF and DEP

The eDelivery Building Block

eDelivery bringing immediate value to the OOTS, EHDS and eFTI projects

The eDelivery Building Block

eDelivery hands-on webinars: the Once-Only Technical System  

EC-3^rd Countries Trust Services Forum