The European Commission has signed an agreement with OpenPEPPOL and will host a central service of the eDelivery network – the Service Metadata Locator – which allows participants in the network to dynamically locate each other across Europe.
The eDelivery network is one of the CEF eDelivery building block and initially developed as part of the PEPPOL Large Scale Pilot project. The specifications provided to the Member States as part of the CEF eDelivery building block are document-type neutral and can be re-used in every domain.
About CEF
Now, the CEF, in full: the Connecting Europe Facility, is the common financing instrument of trans-European networks for the period 2014-2020. During this period, CEF will help to complete the European single market by making available €33.24 billion in the form of procurement, grants and innovative financial instruments. CEF will finance projects of common interest in three different sectors: transport, energy and telecommunications.
CEF Digital
The EC wants a full functioning Digital Single Market. And that requires more interoperability between Member States and different sectors. This is why the European Commission is promoting the roll-out of essential digital services that will play a vital role in the flow of data across borders and sectors. This is known as the CEF Digital programme which finances Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs) such as: eID, eDelivery, eSignature, eInvoicing and Automated Translation. These DSIs can be understood as the utilities (water, electricity and gas) of the Digital era and are therefore called ‘ building block DSIs’.
DSI eDelivery
The eDelivery building block helps public administrations to exchange electronic data and documents with other public administrations, businesses and citizens, in an interoperable, secure, reliable and trusted way.
Through the use of this building block, every participant becomes a node in the network using standard transport protocols and security policies. eDelivery is based on a distributed model, allowing direct communication between participants without the need to set up bilateral channels.
So…
…the latest contract concerns openPEPPOL to be used for the eDelivery domain. And not for that other building block, called eInvoicing. But maybe in the near future things are about to change.
