eDelivery Documentation

Background 

Technical specifications and Interoperability in Europe

Any Policy Domain of the EU (Justice, Procurement, Consumer Protection, etc.) in need of secure, reliable, cross-border and cross-sector exchange of documents and data (structured, non-structured and/or binary), can use the technical specification prescribed by the eDelivery DSI.  

These have been developed by international Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) such as OASIS and ETSI and selected by the Large Scale Pilots (LSPs). Additionally, these are aligned with the legal and organisational principles of eIDAS.  

This strategic decision aims at the adoption of eDelivery's technical specifications by the software industry at large and not only by public authorities. 

The technical specifications of eDelivery are:

• Available for free

• Supported by multiple programming languages

• Independent from any specific vendor products

• Supported by (Open Source and Commercial) solutions that can be purchased in a competitive environment

For example, eDelivery's message exchange specifications are based on OASIS' AS4/ ebMS3.0 specifications which have already been used in the e-CODEX LSP but also by major software vendors: over sixteen commercial products and several other Open Source products.

eDelivery and the European Commission

The European Commission decided to promote the uptake of eDelivery in Europe through one of its funding programmes, the Connecting Europe Facilities (CEF). In 2014, the eDelivery Digital Services Infrastructure (DSI) was included in the CEF Telecom Work Programme 2014. It continued to be included in all ensuing CEF Telecom Work Programmes until the programme ended in 2020, resulting in over EUR 16 million of funding in this entire period. 

As of 2021, the eDelivery building block is included in the European Commission's Digital Europe Programme. This budget will finance the following activities : 

Technical 

• implementation, testing and open-source publishing of software and specifications
• development and operation of a testing and reference centre

Support and training

• support to the providers of access points through a helpdesk
• dissemination and training actions for actual and prospective users
• technical training and remote support for software companies and other parties

Service administration and stakeholder engagement

• administration and operation; provision of statistics on the use of the services
• steering the extension of the service and monitoring its functional and geographical deployment
• support interaction with the stakeholder community
  

The technical management of the eDelivery DSI is done by the Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT) of the European Commission.

Implementation of the EU policy directly related to eDelivery is the responsibility of the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) of the European Commission.

The Large Scale Pilots (LSPs)

The eDelivery DSI was built on the results of large cross-border piloting initiatives (the Large Scale Pilots - LSPs).

These LSPs were carried out between 2007 and 2017 in several policy domains.