The cost of setting up an eDelivery Access Point
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As this is a question that comes up frequently, the European Commission has analysed the cost of setting up and operating an eDelivery Access Point. The Connecting Europe Facility's (CEF) eDelivery building block promotes the use of eDelivery Access Points for the secure and interoperable exchange of data across sectors and borders in the EU.
An eDelivery Access Point makes this possible by implementing a standardised message exchange protocol for establishing point-to-point connections among parties in a distributed network, allowing them to exchange data in a secure, reliable and fully interoperable way.
How much does it cost?
The cost analysis includes the costs of setting up and operating an eDelivery Access Point, the cost of the connector or custom plug-in (architectural variants of modules that provide business-specific functionalities) as well as that of technical onboarding activities such as connectivity and integration testing with other Access Points in an eDelivery network.
The analysis concluded that the approximate average costs (also known as the Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO) for a European Institution to set up and operate an eDelivery Access Point, that doesn’t use a custom connector plug-in, in a cross-border European project over a timeframe of two years, amount to €86 000. As the European Institution usually plays a coordinating role in the project, this reported cost includes the technical onboarding of up to 50 participating entities, including Member State public administrations and other organisations.
Costs exceed this amount for projects that need to develop and maintain a custom connector/plug-in. Most projects do not require a custom connector/plug-in, but for those that do, the cost of developing and maintaining the custom connector/plug-in varies considerably depending on the business-specific requirements from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand euros.
As far as other organisations are concerned (public or private), the information collected from beneficiaries of CEF grant funding for deploying eDelivery indicates an average estimated cost of setting up an eDelivery Access Point and the correspondent components of €62 000. Contrary to the cost reported for European Institutions, due to unavailability/non-specificity of data, this cost does not include operational cost, but does include, for the organisations that required it, the creation and/or set-up of a custom connector/plug-in.
How did we collect the data?
The European Commission's Directorate-General for Informatics, DIGIT, collected data on the costs of:
1) Projects carried out by European Union Institutions:
The data collected assessed the individual costs of the eDelivery Access Point, the plugin, and technical onboarding activities over a period of two years (one year for set-up and one year for operation) from six projects. Technical onboarding costs include the support provided to national authorities setting up and maintaining an Access Point, as well as to private entities connecting to this Access Point. The sum of all the aforementioned costs provides an estimate of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
2) Projects operating at national level with grant funding from the CEF Telecom programme:
The data was collected based on payment requests made by grant beneficiaries to INEA (the agency administering the grants on behalf of DG Connect) for the implementation of eDelivery Actions between 2015 and 2019. The payment requests include the costs incurred by beneficiaries for the set-up (but not the operation) of the eDelivery Access Point and possibly of a custom connector/plugin.
Below you can find a full breakdown of the cost analysis.
Costs breakdown (values in EUR)
Cross-border projects carried out by European Institutions | |||
Cost Item | One-off | Yearly ongoing | Total (two-year) |
eDelivery Access Point | 34 000 | 24 000 | 58 000 |
Technical onboarding activities | 20 000 | 8 000 | 28 000 |
TCO (without custom connector/plug-in) | 54 000 | 32 000 | 86 000 |
| Custom connector/plug-in (lower bound) [1] | 24 000 | 9 000 | 33 000 |
CEF Telecom programme-funded projects | CEF Telecom programme-funded projects | ||
Cost Item | One-off | Yearly ongoing | Total (two-year) |
eDelivery Access Point and plug-in/connector | 62 000 | N.A | N.A |
[1] Most projects do not require a custom connector/plug-in, but for those that to, the cost of developing and maintaining the custom connector/plug-in varies considerably depending on the business-specific requirements from tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand euros. An average lower bound is provided here.