2020-09-30 CEF eDelivery Interoperability forum

Agenda Approval

The following agenda for the meeting was approved without comments:

1. Roll call
2. Approval of the agenda
3. Approval of the minutes of last meeting
4. Progress update and discussion items
5. AOB

Approval of Previous meeting minutes

• The minutes of the previous meeting (24/06/2020) are approved without comments.

Conformance and connectivity testing updates

• Several new software providers registered for the AS4 conformance testing since the last occurrence of this forum.

API and Blockchain study

• The CEF eDelivery team held bi-lateral meetings with representatives of several Member States and organisations in order to adjust the ‘Scope Document’ for defining a REST API profile and presented a pre-final version in a meeting held on 24 September 2020. It was clarified that the scope was not to make a REST API 'browser compatible' equivalent to eDelivery AS4, but that the goal was to explore use cases and gain experience with the REST paradigm to see where it can complement the eDelivery Building Block based on MS needs.
• The CEF eDelivery team elaborated a draft functional specification document for piloting the integration between Domibus and CEF EBSI in order to support notarisation of messages and collection of statistics. As the current version of the CEF EBSI API does not support all the required functionality for the collection of data for statistics and especially for the querying of this data, CEF eDelivery provided a series of requirements to CEF EBSI for the v2 of their API. The piloting experience will be useful to analyse what parts of the technical solution may need to be lifted/adapted as CEF eDelivery specifications. It was noted that the Access Points will not host a blockchain node themselves, but would only interface with existing EBSI nodes.
• More information can be found via Project API4IPS in ISA² action "Innovative Public Services"

Certificate guidance

• A guide is being prepared by the eDelivery team to inform eDelivery domains about minimal requirements and recommended approaches for organising their PKI approach where Domibus APs and SMP/SML are concerned (what type of certificate, what are the certificate fields relevant to eDelivery and how they are used, etc.). This document tries to provide further guidance concerning certificates since this is a recurring support request to the eDelivery team.

eDelivery specifications

• The eDelivery team is proud to report that ISO (International Organisation for Standardization) approved ebMS3 (ebXML Messaging version 3.0) and AS4 (Applicability Statement 4) as International Standards.
• The standards will become the new part 1 and part 2 of the ISO 15000 standard.
• More information is available in this news item.

eDelivery components

• The eDelivery team released an updated version of the eDelivery AS4 sample software. Domibus v4.2 RC1 is a release candidate that is intended for users to try out the new features in a non-production environment and to report back any issues they may experience with this release or with the upgrade to this release. The final release of v4.2 is planned on 10/12/2020. Details on the features of this release, including documentation and installation or upgrade information is available via https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/display/DIGITAL/Domibus+-+v4.2+RC1
• The SML team is preparing the SML 4.0.3 release which is planned to include security updates and functional security enhancements (e.g. enhanced X509Certificate authorization).

SML/SMK cleanup

• A  SML (production) and SMK (acceptance) cleanup task is launched with the aim to keep the SML intact and secure. This task consists of cleaning the abandoned/unused/obsolete records from the SML (/SMK) and the DNS. A 45 day period is giving for the service providers to clean up and assess their expired endpoints and SMP certificates and after 45 days the CEF eDelivery Support team will clean all the expired and invalid entries from the SML (/SMK).

Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR) and alignment with relevant Large Scale Pilots (LSPs)

• MD reported that DG GROW, DG CONNECT and DIGIT teams keep on working, together with Member States on the implementation of components relevant for the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR). The project has now started its first formal review cycles where Member States can provide feedback to the current specifications and deliverables of the active Work Packages.
• In the same context, the ongoing alignment with relevant Large Scale Pilots (LSPs) such as TOOP and DE4A and a Member State readiness study team is continuing.
• As part of the TOOP collaboration, TOOP has just transferred a relevant subset of its specifications to the CEF team by releasing these specifications under the EUPL license. Consequently these specifications can be used as baseline specifications for the SDG OOP technical system.

INEA calls for proposals

• The most recent round of INEA grants relevant to eDelivery users is an eProcurement call (CEF-TC-2020-2), which will close on 05/11/2020.
• The indicative budget is EUR 3 million. More information is available via https://ec.europa.eu/inea/en/connecting-europe-facility/cef-telecom/apply-funding/2020-cef-telecom-calls-proposals
• The grant is mainly about eProcurement, but it includes the option of deploying or operating an eDelivery AS4 Access Point or an eDelivery SMP. 

AoB

• In the European State of the Union 16/09/2020, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen presented her vision for a Europe ‘that emerges stronger from the pandemic and leads the way towards a new vitality’. She explicitly mentioned that the EC will focus on ‘leading the digital transformation, particularly on data, technology and infrastructure’. The eDelivery team will work to join that effort, by looking for synergies and opportunities in the European Data Spaces and beyond.