eDelivery helps public administrations to exchange electronic data and documents with other public administrations, businesses and citizens at the national level and across borders, in an interoperable, secure and reliable way.
The eDelivery Building Block helps public administrations to exchange data and documents via AS4 Access Points, based on the AS4 messaging protocol. This allows different parties to exchange electronic data and documents across sectors and borders through a secure eDelivery message exchange network. By connecting to an AS4 Access Point, a public administration can exchange electronic data and documents with any organisation connected to another Access Point in the network. The eDelivery Building Block also helps upgrade exisiting solutions so they can connect to eDelivery messaging networks through an Access Point.
Using AS4 Access Points has several benefits:
- Vendor-neutral: the specifications are not proprietary and controlled by one owner
- Multi-vendor: multiple conformant products and solutions are available from different vendors
- Aligned to the Electronic Registered Delivery Service of eIDAS: this guarantees security, nurturing user trust
- Reliable: recovers automatically if a transmission is unsuccessful, and provides evidence of sending and receiving documents/data
- Domain-independent: it can be used in any Policy Domain of the EU
- Scalable: there is no inherent limit to the number of parties in a network or of messages exchanged
The Building Block is intended primarily for policy domain owners involved in the roll out of EU or national policies that require the secure exchange of documents and data across borders. It is also intended for service and soſtware vendors in the eDelivery domain, helping them to upgrade their solutions so they are fully interoperable and conformant with technical specifications.
The eDelivery Building Block team provides the following services:
- Self assessment: a survey that assesses the requirements of stakeholders interested in re-using eDelivery components
- Open source software of an AS4 Access Point, called Domibus
- Training sessions on the AS4 messaging protocol and deployment of its sample Access Point, Domibus
- Connectivity testing to test if a newly installed Access Point can successfully communicate with the AS4 Access Point hosted by the European Commission
- Conformance testing to ensure that AS4 solutions to be offered in the market, as soſtware or as a service, comply with the AS4 implementation guidelines
- Service desk providing user support on the overall eDelivery service offering