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Exciting news from eDelivery ecosystems in 2024

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In the ever-evolving landscape of digital transformation,  the eDelivery team would like to review 2024 for when it comes to eDelivery-based ecosystems. This year brought three new digital ecosystems live, increasing the number of active eDelivery ecosystems to 36. Almost one third of them are currently facilitated by the EC corporate service (EU Send), which noted a 27% increased growth of connected Access Points just in the first half of the year. Besides the growth, various eDelivery ecosystems achieved very important milestones this year. This article sheds light on recent developments in their implementations relevant to the eDelivery community. Peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement On-line), EMSWe (European Maritime Single Window environment), EHDS (European Health Data Space), OOTS (Once Only Technical System) and eFTI (electronic Freight Transport Information) exchange environment – all moved big steps forward in 2024. Let’s celebrate their success and learn about their journeys to an advanced future of digital data exchange across Europe.

On this page:

Peppol

Peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement On-line) network The Peppol Network is one of the largest and oldest eDelivery networks facilitating the exchange of electronic business documents in B2B and B2G environments in 65 countries. Managed by OpenPeppol, a non-profit governance organisationinternational Association, as its governaning entity, Peppol acts as a global interoperability ecosystem with its own governance, standards and operations. This eDelivery network features standardised layers and is based on standardised communication among Access Points, operated by commercial service Providers enabling and ensuring seamless connection connectivity and data exchange through service providersbetween buyers and sellers that use Peppol Service Providers.

Peppol logistics domain

As of 2024 a the Peppol four-corner model environment, where data is exchanged between access points operated by commercial service providers, of Peppol can be used for exchanging logistics data in addition to invoicing and ordering. This new service domain addresses the complexity of logistics, which involves multiple actors, industries and business processes, with a standardised approach that can be adopted globally and regionally to improve visibility and transparency in the supply chain.  

Transition to

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federated SML

Currently Peppol relies on the European Commission’s Service Metadata Locator (SML) service. With increasing usage, Peppol is working with DIGIT to transition from a centralised to a federated SML. The evolving architecture have been discussing during eInvoicing and eProcurement Conference in May 2024, and eDelivery presentation can is available here. (Question to Lefteris: do you have some better source to direct someone interested in the proceedings of the Conference?) 

Peppol ViDA

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Pilot

Peppol ViDA pilot demonstrates how the Peppol eInvoice specifications and the Peppol Network can meet the expectations of the Digital Reporting Requirements (DRR) outlined in the VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) directive, which mandates the use of electronic invoicing and VAT reporting for cross-border transactions within the EU. In the ViDA pilot Peppol together with tax administrations, service providers and businesses are piloting a five-corner model to include regulatory reporting (enabling tax and other types of reporting through the network).

Learn about eDelivery's presentation at the Peppol eInvoicing and eProcurement Conference here and Peppol's presentation in the eDelivery Informal Cooperation Network meeting here.

EMSWe

EMSWe – The European Maritime Single Window environment integrates various national reporting systems into a cohesivecoherent, interoperable framework and streamlines and harmonises the reporting procedures obligations for ships arriving at and departing from EU ports. Established by Regulation (EU) 2019/1239 the EMSWe goes live on 15 August will apply from August 15, 2025 and is a game - changer to shipowners, port authorities and national governmentsfor ship operators, and all national authorities involved in a port call. EMSWe ensures that the data is provided is in the same everyone in way across the EU and only needs to be provided only once. A shipowner will send Ship operators will be able to send their data to a Member State’s (MS) Maritime National Single Window (NMSW) and this data will go to EMSWe by eDelivery facilitated MNSW) using harmonised interfaces, notably the Reporting Interface Module (RIM) based on eDelivery. The EMSWe is in the late stages of development and is beginning Member States are starting the deployment phase.   

EMSWe has been presented to both eDelivery Interoperability Forum and Informal Cooperation Network as a project to keep an eye on. 

Reuse of eDelivery

Decentralised network of 22 MNSWs across maritime MS integrates solutions like such as Domibus and employs uses the four-corner model to enhance interoperability, security and efficiency. eDelivery components such as the Service Metadata Locator (SML) and Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) are used to manage the discovery and addressing of endpoints within the EMSWe network.  

RIM

The technical infrastructure – RIM – reuses eDelivery

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to ensure secure data exchange and is a mandatory component to be integrated by MS in their MNSW. RIM acts as an AS4

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access point and allows

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ship operators to submit formalities to Member States

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using AS4

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protocol.

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One can learn more about it here. The testing of RIM with MS has

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started since 2024 and

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many MS plan to be ready for the 2025 go-live date. 

EHDS

The European Health Data Space (EHDS) – a key pillar of European Health Union is the first sectorial data space enabling the benefits of primary (MyHealth@EU) and secondary (HealthData@EU) health data exchange. eDelivery reuse for EHDS has been piloted in the latest HealthData@EU pilot and is reused in the HealthData@EU Central Platform. The TEHDAS2 – the Second Joint Action Towards the European Health Data Space continues the work for EHDS by developing concrete guidelines and technical specifications for EHDSthe data space. 

HealthData@EU Central Platform

The HealthData@EU Central Platform is a pivotal digital system developed by the European Commission to implement the requirements of the upcoming EHDS Regulation. This platform contains the EU Dataset Catalogue, which gathers metadata from European Institutions, Member States, third countries and research organisations. The machine-to-machine connection between the Central Platform and Contact Points is ensured by eDelivery AS4 standard implementation. The infrastructure, developed and tested during the EHDS Pilot project, reuses eDelivery AS4 software infrastructure. Release 2 of HealthData@EU Central Platform with new features has been presented in October 2024 to the community. Future updates are planned and will be rolled out in cooperation with EHDS key stakeholders. 

OOTS

The Once Only Technical System (OOTS) is an initiative under the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR) aims at simplifying online administrative procedures across the EU. The OOTS enables the secure, real-time exchange of documents and information between national public administrations, ensuring that citizens and businesses only need to provide their information once. This is the first eDelivery basedlets EU public authorities securely exchange official documents and data – at the request of citizens and businesses – as part of cross-border administrative procedures, e.g., when registering an address or vehicle when moving abroad. This is part of a wider move to a “search-free” administrative model of automated data-exchange, as opposed to document-exchange.

The OOTS is the first EU-wide data space and a large-scale example of cross-border infrastructure reducing the administrative burden on Europe’s citizens and businesses. eDelivery is crucial to the OOTS, providing dataspace and one of the biggest ecosystems in general in the EU. eDelivery provides the technology for secure data exchange between public authorities and central services, learn more about it here. . Read here about how the OOTS and eDelivery put evidence sharing at the heart of EU interoperability.

Intermediary platform

The OOTS has also developed an intermediary platform which regulation also defines the concept of a so-called intermediary platform. An intermediary platform supports both evidence requesters or evidence providers and enables the automated exchange of documents and data between national authorities from pre-existing eGovernment procedure portals, national registers and EU-wide systems. This platform An intermediary platform that supports evidence providers can receive requests and send responses as eDelivery messages and facilitates connection and user re-direction services to a different non-eDelivery interface. Learn more about intermediary platform application in education and vehicles domains. Specific instances of Intermediary Platforms have been developed for the education and vehicle domains.

OOTS Projectathons

OOTS is successfully advancing forward and OOTS Projectathons are there To advance the implementation of the OOTS, the Commission regularly organises OOTS Projectathons. These are large-scale testing events for different systems to connect and perform marathons of peer-to-peer interoperability and compliance tests in a structured environment. The The last Projectathon focused  focused on four domains – vehicle registries, business-related procedures, population domain and education. Almost 500 More than 400 tests have been completed ensuring , including higher quality transactions possible and than at previousProjectathons. In total, 288 Member States experts participated in achieving the success to achieve this success (on-site and online).

eFTI

The electronic Freight Transport Information (eFTI) exchange environment comes in place to support all EU Member States to accept and process freight transport information from economic operators. The recent achievements in the eFTI initiative include the adoption of the Implementing Act on common procedures and rules for accessing and processing eFTI data by competent authorities, and the Delegated Act on the eFTI common data set and eFTI data subsets. These acts provide the technical specifications and implementation guidelines necessary for the successful deployment of the eFTI exchange environment. Learn more about eDelivery’s role in eFTI and its development here.

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