Digital Europe for All

The overall objective of DE4A was to support Member States to meet the obligations resulting from the entry into force of the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR). This regulation requires that a list of 21 types of administrative procedures, currently online for national users, are offered online to cross-border users and with automated exchange of data (evidences) between the public agencies required to fulfill these procedures. Examples of these cross-border procedures are applying for study grants; asking for recognition of academic titles; or requesting a proof of residence.

DE4A has explored and piloted across borders the once-only principle (OOP) for Member States. In this regard, the project has addressed architectural, technical, semantic, legal and organisational barriers to cross border interoperability in the context of EU public administrations modernisation (Once-Only Principle (OOP), Single Digital Gateway Once-Only Technical System (SDG OOTS)).

The main results have been the following:

-Hands-on experience and knowledge for DE4A Member States: The project has generated for 8 participating Member States (also Germany who joined as observer for an additional pilot with The Netherlands and other stakeholders the necessary experience to address short, medium and longer term challenges in the contexts of Once-Only, Single Digital Gateway and effective and integrated cross-border public service delivery to citizens and businesses in the context of public services modernisation across the EU.

-DE4A Multipattern architecture for the cross-border exchange of evidences that comprises the following interaction patterns: Intermediation, User Supported Intermediation (USI), Lookup, Verifiable Credentials, Subscription & Notification and special case of ‘Push’-like pattern linking domicile registration and deregistration procedures. The evidence exchange pattern adopted by the Implementing Regulation on technical specifications for SDG OOTS very clearly matches the DE4A USI pattern. In addition, this flexible architecture can be applied to a much broader range of public sector services, going beyond the principal focus of the SDGR and may be established as a horizontal infrastructure to be used for a multitude of sectoral requirements.

-DE4A connector that is the component that establishes the cross-border communication between the Member States (Data Evaluators that request the evidences and Data Owners that owns the evidences) for the exchange of evidences over an eDelivery network. The connector improves interoperability by supporting multiple patterns in a single application and making easy scalability to connect large numbers of Data Evaluators and Data Owners-

-DE4A Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) Framework with two main components: the SSI Authority Agent and the Mobile End User Agent. This framework supports the implementation of Verifiable Credentials (a user-centric evidence exchange pattern), following specific project requirements such as re-use of existing legal and technical frameworks and using eID and eIDAS to facilitate the authentication process of the users, as well as using the SSI approach to facilitate the user-centric, evidence management and exchange, aligning with EBSI/ESSIF specifications and integrating with such EU-wide framework and infrastructure through EBSI’s Early Adopters Programme. This framework is relevant for the upcoming EU Digital Identity Wallets ecosystem (revision of eIDAS regulation) as an alternative way to realize Once-Only. The wallet prototype in DE4A can be seen as “a European Passepartout supporting pseudonymous identification and allowing the user to manage the different personas of their human Digital Twin in a privacy-enhancing way”. With relatively low effort, additional “contexts” can be defined in order to support management of different types of credentials in a single wallet.

-DE4A semantic components required for a common understanding to facilitate the cross-border exchange of information between public authorities. DE4A solves the problem of “evidence mapping” by implementing two concepts, the Canonical evidence and the Information Desk under the principles of proportionality, subsidiarity and efficiency and according to the European Interoperability Framework. The concept of canonical evidence is the keystone of these principles, as it provides the grounds for semantic interoperability of cross-border and cross-sector evidence. The Information Desk can be taken as a reference for further developments of the SDGR OOTS as they provide a simpler approach while offering more functionality. In addition, the DE4A semantic results can be useful for the implementation of OOP through the EU Identity Wallet provided by the upcoming revision of the eIDAS Regulation, for the implementation of OOP at national level or at international level beyond the European Union, and for the implementation of the exchange of information in any domain, not only in the public sector.

-Legal insights on the legal challenges for the implementation of the SDG.

DE4A results have been validated through 3 cross-border pilots (Studying Abroad, Doing Business Abroad and Moving Abroad) comprising 7 use cases with 29 combinations between Member States.

DE4A has provided invaluable hands-on knowledge to DE4A and SDG-involved Member States, to the European Commission and to many stakeholders regarding practical solutions to address interoperability challenges at all levels (technical, semantic, organisational and legal) including complex aspects for which they have been at the core from requirement to integration and real-life testing: from elicitation approach for (complex) canonical evidence definition, to cross-border authentication (even for non-notified eIDs in pilots) and authorisation also based on (full and fine-grained) powers validation achieved extending eIDAS infrastructure with pilot-specific nodes in Doing Business Abroad, effective record matching at Data Owmers, improved and secure eDelivery framework with dynamic discovery and with open source Connector to save cost and effort in MS (also improving interoperability by supporting multiple patterns in a single application and making easy scalability to connect large numbers of DEs and DOs), or establishment of a self-sovereign identity supporting framework successfully integrated with cutting-edge blockchain EU infrastructure (EBSI Early Adopters programme) and innovative technologies (mobile wallets and agents), anticipating for MS fully user-centric evidence exchange and foreseen synergies between the SDG and upcoming eIDAS EUDI Wallets ecosystem, to name a few.

The DE4A common components are available for the community of Once-Only practitioners at European Commission and Member States levels in the context of the Single Digital Gateway and OOTS in the public GitHub repository (“DE4A EU project”): https://github.com/de4a-eu
DE4A project results are documented in the DE4A Wiki: https://wiki.de4a.eu/index.php/DE4A_Service_Interoperability_Solutions_Toolbox
DE4A public deliverables: https://www.de4a.eu/project-deliverables
Academic publications: https://www.de4a.eu/academicpublications
Further information on project outcomes, including Member State testimonials about the positive impact of DE4A, can be found on the DE4A Final Event microsite https://finalevent.de4a.eu/ with all presentations and a recording of the April 12th 2023 event.

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DE4A (Digital Europe for All)

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