Pilot Procedures

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4.1 Cross border pilot testing approach

To establish and confirm the cross border connection between Data Owners and Data Evaluators, two tracks were defined in the Pilot Planning deliverable, which were each divided into several milestones. The milestone sequences were designed to introduce complexity in cross-border communication in a step-by-stap fashion, allowing involved Member States to focus on one challenge at a time and keep the complexity manageable. To summarize, the tracks and milestones that were used are:

Tracks and milestones as defined in D4.6 Pilot Planning

	eIDAS track	OOP TS track
1	eIDAS for natural persons up and running	"Hello Europe" in lab (using a playground with DE/DO Mocks)
2	eIDAS for legal persons up and running	"Hello Europe" between two connected Member States
3	powers validation implemented	full scale cross-border communication between all Member States
4		ready to start pilot

These tracks were meant for all Member States to use synchronously. This however, turned out to be unrealistic because all Member States seems to have their own challenges, leading to different speeds of development. The general approach, where tracks and milestones were defined, remained useful, however for each combination of Data Owner and Data Evaluator a separate timeline turned out necessary.

Member states performed unit-tests themselves before attempting cross border testing. Specific meetings, named connectathons, were held to test and confirm connection (at Milestone-level) between all Data Owners, Data Transferers, Data Requestors and Data Evaluators. In these meetings, structured testing (see D4.6 Pilot Planning for testcases) was applied to confirm connections for both the eIDAS track and the OOP TS track, making sure that cross border communication and error handling works as expected. In case of errors and issues, the technical experts attending the meeting used the available time to investigate and solve issues like configuration-errors etcetera, or defined actions to perform between meetings, for issue regarding firewalls and local DNS-components. For issue-solving, experts shared screens and collectively studied log-files in involved Member States.

Knowledge developed in the earlier connectathons was shared across other DBA partners and DE4A pilots, in order to smoothen future connectathons and establish remaining connections sooner. Also, test cases and presentations to structure these connectathons were re-used for future meetings, securing a constant quality of the established connection between components.

Up until the moment of reporting, the OOP TS connection between a total of 5 Data Owner / Data Evaluator combinations were confirmed and in total 8 connectathons for the OOP TS track were organized. For the eIDAS track, three connectathons (and several bilateral technical investigations) were organized between Austria, Romania and The Netherlands, leading to one confirmed connection between Romania and The Netherlands, and connections between Austria and both Romania and The Netherlands with issues remaining to be resolved. Chapter 2 of this document provides more detail of the connection status of each DBA partner.

4.2 End users engagement progress and dissemination/impact activities

The pilot planning deliverable, section 4.4 described the user involvement activities. To summarize, the following user groups are targeted for participation in/evaluation of the pilot:

1. employees of the data evaluator in al DBA Member States
2. employees of the data owner in all Member States
3. representatives of companies in alle Member States, where 3 subgroups were identified
   • real representatives of real companies, aiming to actually do business in another Member State (also called invited companies)
   • real representatives of (invited) real companies, aiming to contribute for learning purposes (also called companies of professional/private networks)
   • fake representatives of fake companies, to be used for piloting simulated/fictitious DE/DO combinations (also called fictitious companies)

The table below displays the participation of each of these groups in specifica pilot DE/DO combinations , and remains unchanged compared to the planned involvement

			Data Provider Member State
			Romania	Sweden	The Netherlands	Austria
			Real data	Fictitious data	Real data	Real data
Data Consumer Member State	RO	Simulated eProcedure		Fictitious companies	Dutch companies of professional network	Austrian companies of professional network
	SE	Simulated eProcedure	Romanian companies of professional network		Dutch companies of professional network	Austrian companies of professional network
	NL	real eProcedure	Invited Romanian Companies			Invited Austrian Companies
	AT	real eProcedure	Invited Romanian Companies		Invited Dutch Companies

The table below shows the activities that were identified to recruit participants, as well as the status of each activity.

Activity id	Activity	Status	Comment
DBA-UI-1	Prepare invitation for user categories	Completed	Member States aiming to work with real representatives have sent out invitations to companies or placed invitations on websites in order to attract attention.
DBA-UI-2	Invite users (all types)	Completed	Also, companies were sometimes actively approached in cases DBA partners had access to companies in their professional networks, or private networks. Where applicable employees maintaining databases and working in processes of the DE and DO, were approached to invite them to participate in the pilot. This resulted in several representatives for each user group, although not for all. Recruiting companies seems especially difficult for DE/DO combinations where real data and real eProcedures will be used. Representatives seem concerned that pilot participation will lead to administrative and legal consequences that they are not prepared to carry, when they just want to participate to help learning (and not aim to actually do business abroad). Finding companies that, at the the moment of piloting, are actually planning to do business abroad seems difficult too. This is a timing-challenge of the pilot.
DBA-UI-3	Set up user management (lists and control sheets)	Completed	Registration of participants and their involvement in specific DE/DO combinations is available.
DBA-UI-4	Organize eIDs and mandates for real users	In progress	This activity is meant for representatives joining the pilot. As pilots have not run yet, this activity is still in progress and eIDs for representatives are being prepared when the start of a pilot for a DE/DO combination approaches.
DBA-UI-5	Set up microsite (templates)	Completed	A microsite, providing information about the DBA pilot, an animation explaining the DBA process and offering forms to apply for participation is available at the DE4A website (https://www.de4a.eu/doingbusinessabroadpilot)
DBA-UI-6	Implement microsites	Completed	A microsite, providing information about the DBA pilot, an animation explaining the DBA process and offering forms to apply for participation is available at the DE4A website (https://www.de4a.eu/doingbusinessabroadpilot)
DBA-UI-7	Finalize questionnaire forms	Completed	Questionnaires as designed in the D4.6 pilot planning deliverable have been refined and implemented into online forms in the DE4A DBA website (A microsite, providing information about the DBA pilot, an animation explaining the DBA process and offering forms to apply for participation is available at the DE4A website (https://www.de4a.eu/doingbusinessabroadpilot)
DBA-UI-8	Set up and share newsletters	Completed	Newsletters are available on the DE4A website (https://www.de4a.eu/news).
DBA-UI-9	Design walkthroughs of filled in questionnaires	Partially completed	Walkthroughs for eProcedures are available for several portals (like Mijn.RVO.nl). Also, instructions for pilot participants, addressing both the pilot and questionnaires, are available in general. Additional work is required, especially for eProcedure portals that have not been finished at the moment of creating this report.
DBA-UI-10	Design fictitious company cases with users	Not completed	This activity applies to Data Owners that will work with fictitious data sources (mostly due to legal restrictions). For DBA, this applies to the Swedish Data Owner in particular. This data source is not ready yet (at the moment of creating this document), so therefore this user involvement activity has not been completed yet.

User involvement was initiated 10 weeks in advance of the planned start of all pilot combinations. Depending of the actually expected starting date of each specific Data Owner/Data Evaluator combination, the intensity of the activities mentioned in the table above were set. This means that for those 5 DE/DO combinations mentioned in Chapter 2 of this document, more activities have been completed (and activities have been executed mote actively) than for the other combinations. The knowledge gained in DE/DO combinations is shared with other DBA DO/combinations as well as with other DE4A pilots, in order to smoothen future activities to recruit participants.

In addition to the planned activities to recruit users, preparations for an international event were made (in collaboration with other work packages in the DE4A program). Preparations were set up as a joined venture between DE4A and the EuroChambers organization, but had to be cancelled due to changes in priorities. The preparations made were useful for future events that DE4A aims to organize.

4.3 Planned improvement following received feedback

DBA will describe 1st iteration functionality  that could be improved  but  these functional improvements will not be implemented in the 2nd iteration (because the 2nd iteration focusus on new, different functionality). The functional improvements are recorded for future use, outside of the pilot. Other improvements (on procedures regarding user involvement for example) can be mentioned as well, and can be implemented in the 2nd iteration.

Next Chapter: 5. Conclusions