Current status of pilot

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2.1 Catalogue of services and status

Previous deliverables already defined the two use cases and six pilot scenarios for the DE4A Doing Business Abroad pilot. During the customization and integration phase for the first pilot iteration these have been refined (and is some cases were abandoned due to pilot partners having to leave the consortium:

• Use case 1: starting a business in another Member State
  • the core of this use case is the fulfilment of procedural obligations to start doing business in the Member State. Therefore the pilot concentrates on the steps for a business to register with a service provider abroad.

• Use case 2: doing business in another Member State
  • the core of this use case is retrieving and updating company information by the service provider. Therefore the pilot will focus on the subscription process and the process of sending, receiving and processing event notifications.
  • the option to fulfill corporate tax duties or apply for a service may still be possible with the service provider, but will not be piloted.

Doing Business Abroad partners participate with Data Owners (DO) and Data Evaluators (DE), allowing to pilot these use cases in multiple DE/DO combinations. Unfortunately, the partners Skatteverkes (Sweden) and BOSA (Belgium) had to terminate their involvement in the DE4A Consortium due to - for example - higher priorities caused by establishing the international COVID-19 certificates. The table below displays the DE/DO combinations per use case that will be piloted with the remaining partners, and the current status of their infrastructure (green = ready; orange = not completely ready)

	Data consumer			UC-1 Starting a business in another Member State				UC-2 Doing business in another Member State
				Data Owner				Data Owner
pilot scenario	Country	Name	Portal	AT	NL	RO	SE	AT	NL	RO	SE
DBA1	Austria	BMDW	USP.gv.at		KvK	ONRC	BVK		N/A	N/A	N/A
DBA4	The Netherlands	RVO	mijn.rvo.nl	BMDW		ONRC	N/A	N/A		ONRC	BVK
DBA5	Romania	ONRC	portal.onrc.ro	BMDW	KvK		BVK	N/A	KvK		BVK
DBA6	Sweden	BVE	verksamt.se	BMDW	KvK	ONRC		N/A	KvK	ONRC

Data Owners and Data Evaluators have completed the deployment of, and the integration with the OOP TS components. This achievement benefits both iteration 1 and 2 and is therefore of great importance.

Data Owners and/or Data Evaluators being not completely ready for Use Case 1 (which is piloted in the first iteration) is due to eIDAS related issues:

• The establishment of the Swedish eIDAS pilot node is still in progress.This is expected to complete by Q1 2022.
• The eIDAS connection has not yet been established between available eIDAS pilot nodes of
  • Austria and The Netherlands. This is expected to be completed by Q2 2022.
  • Austria and Romania. This is expected to be completed by Q2 2022.
• The integration of the Austrian eIDAS pilot node and the Austrian Data Evaluator portal can not be established before March 2022.

The Swedish and Romanian Data Evaluator eProcedure portals are available in simulated environments and may be upgraded to production environments later. Because the Swedish eProcedure portal (verksamt.se) cannot use an eIDAS node yet, the portal is temporarily equipped with an simulated authentication and authorization mechanism without eIDAS. This allows the portal to be used for piloting and gaining experience on working with the OOP TS.

2.2 Strategy to mitigate infrastructure delays

The customization and integration phase for the first pilot iteration has faced some delays, pushing the start of the pilot running phase backwards. Explanations for these delays are:

• The DE4A common components were available later than expected, so deployment and integration on national level could started later.
• Member States prioritized COVID-19 related activities above DE4A activities, resulting in less resources for DE4A activities.
• COVID-19 required all DE4A collaboration to take place in an online fashion, being less effective than regular face-to-face meetings.
• Deployment of, and integration to the OOP TS is often performed by several organizations within Member States. This requires more time to align and coordinate, and has proven to be reason for misunderstandings and discussions. National organizations that pilot partners collaborate with, seem less committed to the pilot which seems to reduce willingness to apply changes to infrastructural components.
• Obtaining certificates for secure piloting proved to take a long time.

Despite the delay, the preparations of the second pilot iteration have started according to planning. Because the activities for iteration 1 are still in progress, this puts pressure on the preparations for the second iteration. The following measures have been taken (and will be taken) to prevent further delays for the second iteration.

• The infrastructure basically exists of two parts: eIDAS related infrastructure and OOP TS related infrastructure. The Data Consumer and Data Provider integrate to these infrastructures and establish cross border connections. The OOP TS infrastructure is related strongly to the SDG, while the eIDAS infrastructure is a pre-requirement to work with DE systems and the OOP TS at all.

Describe strategies that have been put into place until now, in order to prevent delays.

• bypass eIDAS authentication and add manual entry for eIDASLegalPersonIdentifier
• develop components between DT and DO to reduce dependency on DO development resources
• use existing infrastructure (SEMPER NODE) for piloting purposes and to deploy DE4A Connector
• temporarily use dummy IdP (ATLAS) with eIDAS
• use simulated data source and eProcedures
• Establish a demonstration of the DE4A Connector and DE/DO Mocks before starting usage in Member States
• Mention that NL will create a temporary and highly focussed MVP fix for the NL DO to be able to pilot the S&N pattern

2.3 Achieved interoperability status

To provide an overview of all possible DE/DO combinations and display the extend to which interoperability is possible

• NL: DO, DT, DR, DE operational; eIDAS operational
• AT: DO, DT, DT operational; DE operational but connected to eIDAS in March 2022; eIDAS operation with version 2.5, profile 1.2
• RO: DO, DT, DR, DE operational (DE=simulated); eIDAS operational
• SE: DO, DT, DR, DE operational (DE/DO simulated); eIDAS operational per January 2022

2.4 Updates in Metrics

To describe (if any) changes in metrics compared to the previous deliverable. Use D4.6 section 2.2 as a basis.

Include explanation about the changes performed and reasons behind.

• no updates?
• Or perhaps, now that we have more knowledge about S&N, Lookup and Fine Grained Powers Validation, we might want to refine the metrics on that?
• Mention that an additional questionnaire (limited in size) will be added, focussing on technical adequacy, process of connecting and deploying, and documentation. Not related to DBA pilot goals or success criteria, but to collect lessons learned for Chapter 3 of D4.7.

Next chapter: 3. Goals and success criteria