Welcome and introduction

15 mins

Dietmar Gattwinkel, DG CNECT H4

• Dietmarwelcomed the participants and introduced the agenda for the day, asking participants whether any additions should be considered.
• Dietmar informed the meeting that he has been in contact with the eHealth network for the use of eDelivery in a pilot to tackle the current Covid-19 pandemic and that further details about this initiative will most likely be shared in an upcoming meeting.

Round table : sharing of eDelivery status at national level 

• The Workshop participants are invited to present the status on eDelivery implementation at national level

60 mins

Meeting participants

Arne Tauber (Austria):

• Arne informed the meeting about an update of the eDelivery system in Austria that was held in December 2019. The previous system was reshaped and the new system and architecture in place have more senders, especially from business/economic operators’ side. Backwards compatibility is ensured. There was a focus to have additional interfaces for QERDS based on ETSI standards and to establish cross-border eDelivery with other countries, possibly funded by CEF grants. Arne could present this topic at a later stage that addresses the QERDS requirements defined on article 44 of the eIDAS regulation.

Klaus Luttich (Germany):

• Klaus informed the meeting that Germany’s government is doing eInvoicing with PEPPOL and that federal states will soon be checking solutions to receive eInvoices. The government’s data center expanded to other federal states. Germany is currently evaluating whether AS4 could be used in a large scale eGovernment system currently being setup, but no decision has been taken yet.

Erik Hagen (Norway):

• Currently they are working on the reference architectures and patterns for health use in various ways of exchanging data. eDelivery in an important input to that since they are using messaging in different ways, e.g. synchronous APIs. There is also a first version of eNotification (publish/subscribe) being developed.
• The infrastructure for eDelivery is the PEPPOL-based one. There are discussions on whether to establish a national governance structure and expand eDelivery use for other domains, but the focus has been still in eProcurement. Several other sectors have been picking up similar ways of documenting reference architectures in their sectors. A national strategy will be looking into the possibility to establish eDelivery as a backbone for cross-sector exchanges.

Gerard Soisson (Luxembourg):

• Gerard informed that has been no major changes in Luxembourg and that they are still using PEPPOL for eInvoicing and also Domibus in the context of BRIS. They are thinking on how to unify the different domains within a single eDelivery Access Point and an infrastructure for eInvoicing and other needs. Additionally, there have been discussions on how useful it could be to define eDelivery as a standard for exchanges between administrations. Luxembourg will make eInvoicing mandatory as of 2021 – this will make more companies use eDelivery.

Piet van der Berg (the Netherlands):

• Piet informed that there has been no major changes to report on.
• RINIS has been working on an eConfirmation pilot and a presentation in the current session is planned to see if there is interest on a pilot project with the Netherlands.

Jonas Žalinkevičius (Lithuania):

• Jonas informed that Lithuania is still using PEPPOL for eInvoicing and that they have plans to participate in the CEF call to establish an EBSI node.

Jose Eusamio (Spain):

• Jose informed that they have just started with eDelivery and are doing some tests in the Domibus node to understand the capacity and the functionalities. They are interested and involved in the SDG initiative. Additionally, they are interested in exploring the synchronous capacity.

Michel Bugeja (Malta):

• eCodex is the only implementation in place in Malta of AS4 with Domibus. Malta is also planning to introduce a node for eInvoicing via PEPPOL. The eDelivery node for the SDG initiative is being developed by the team implementing eIDAS.

Lars Melsted Thomsen (Denmark):

• Lars informed that there has been a pilot to implement Domibus, SMP and some tests run on the Access Point held in December 2019. This is now in production and there are other implementations with digital post solution and healthcare services (i.e. a new system for messaging in healthcare domain) in development during the last 6 months of 2020.

Pedro Viana and Luis Valente (Portugal):

• In the last week there were some new services launched to address the current crisis, e.g. providing for layoffs to the public sector. There has been work on digital signatures by enforcing mobile signature and developing new ways of accessing to eIDAS authentication.
• Domibus was implemented in the interoperability platform. Currently they are performing connectivity testing with the CEF support team. The team developed a simple plugin to connect Domibus to the interoperability platform. In June 2020 the Access Point should be working with other Access Points in domains to be used by both public services and the private sector across domains. Domibus will also be used for eInvoicing. AMA is looking for cross-border services to provide with other countries.

Martin Volcker (Sweden):

• Sweden is implementing a national SMP and continuing with the secure data exchange project, to be in production in 2021.
• There was a strategic study carried out to understand whether eDelivery should be used in secure digital communications for organisation to organisation and to private person exchanges (digital post). eDelivery uptake will consequently evolve both at national and cross-border levels.
• There is a government assignment to investigate the use and development of REST APIs.
• There is an additional component called ‘address book’ to look into the organisations’ functions to allow the delivery to a specific department or function in the organisation. To allow cross-border exchanges each country could have that address book that could eventually also be connected to digital post.
• The secure digital communication project was considered one of the most important IT products in Sweden during the corona virus pandemic since it allows secure exchanges across domains (e.g. healthcare and tax purposes). This raised the interest from different public organisations in the project.
• Martin could present how the project is working in an upcoming meeting of the network.

Pavel Tesar (Czech Republic):

• Pavel informed that the platform for sending digital registered letters is in production already for 10 years and nothing major has changed for this eDelivery implementation.
• During the current pandemic, the government subsidised the use of the system for private entities to communicate to public sector entities and other private entities. Even so, the uptake numbers barely doubled, showing that there is a need to have marketing actions around the service focusing on the functionality of sending registered letters digitally for free. A big reason why the private sector does not embrace this is that only a fraction of citizens has the mailboxes active, so organisations would in any case have to arrange for a large volume of paper communication.
• Another reason for the low uptake could also be that the law says that it is legally valid only when the recipient sends confirmation receipt of delivery. The private sector is unwilling to invest in the use of the system since they are not sure whether it is delivered (in the case of paper delivery, after 10 days it is considered delivered).

Petteri Kivimaki (NIIS – X-Road):

• Petteri informed that there was a technical PoC to test the feasibility of the gateway to connect eDelivery and X-Road. A use case for this use case is still missing from Finland or Estonia where X-Road is being widely used, but there are already some potential use cases in the radar.
• SDG can also bring a potential use case to connect organisations and services in Estonia and Finland in the context of the SDG.
• NIIS is currently looking for organisations to participate with use cases.
• A presentation on this could be planned for the next meeting.

Updates on CEF eDelivery 

20 mins

Bogdan Dumitriu, DIGIT D3

• Cf. slides.

• Cf. slides.

Break

CEF’s European Blockchain Services Infrastructure building block: use cases and roadmap

30 mins

Robert Czarny, DIGIT D3

• Cf. slides.
• Martin Volcker informed that Sweden has use case for statistics using Blockchain.
• Martin Volcker additionally mentioned that would be interesting to have the implementation not only in Domibus but also on other eDelivery solutions to enable competition between suppliers for Access Point services.
• Dietmar Gattwinkel wrapped up the meeting and thanked all for the participation.