First CEF AS4-compliant b2b solution developed as open source by a public administration
The European Commission has tested and approved Laurentius, an eDelivery solution for the exchange of court documents and cases that is compliant with the AS4 profile of the OASIS ebMS standard. In September, Laurentius passed all tests by the EC’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for its so-called “e-SENS AS4 conformant solutions”.
Laurentius is developed by Slovenia’s Supreme Court and published on GitHub under the European Union’s free software licence EUPL. The EC stamp of approval makes it the first open source, AS4 compliant document exchange solution developed by a public administration - not counting the EC’s own sample implementation, Domibus.
“That Laurentius has passed the tests and is listed as a conformant solution is a great reward for all the people involved in the project”, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court told the EC’s Open Source Observatory.
Laurentius - the name honours Lovrenc Košir, a Slovenian who is regarded by some as the inventor of the postage stamp - is to be used by the country’s 66 courts to securely exchange court documents and case information electronically. The software will replace the court’s existing eDelivery software, which has been in use since in 2011. The electronic exchange is popular: in 2015, more than 1.3 million court writs were delivered over the system.
The current system uses a proprietary protocol and XML schema, explained a spokesperson for the Supreme Court. “However, our IT policy prefers the use of open standards, and for our purpose the OASIS ebMS standard along with the AS4 profile seemed perfect. The fact that it was chosen by large-scale EU projects such as e-Codex and e-Sens for the same purpose was an additional incentive.”
The software is developed as open source, with reuse in mind. “Our primary goal with the new eDelivery system is to allow other Slovenian public administrations to use it for their own secure and reliable exchange of documents. We’ve designed Laurentius to be a reference platform for secure eDelivery”, the spokesperson said. “Submitting Laurentius to CEF DIGITAL for testing as an e-SENS AS4-conformant solution was simply the next logical step.”
Working on the highway
The European Commission’s CEF Building Blocks offer basic capabilities that can be used in any European project to facilitate the delivery of digital public services across borders. The development of these building blocks is supported by the Connecting Europe Facility, a EUR 1 billion programme on trans-European networks and infrastructures in the transport, telecommunications and energy sectors.
More information:
CEF eDelivery conformant solutions
Laurentius (on GitHub, in Slovenian)
CEF eDelivery
16 October 2016 - For the next few weeks, OSOR will be testing the effects of providing its headlines in other languages than English. This is one of the selected news items.
Az Európai Bizottság elfogadta a szlovén bíróságok közötti adatcserét megvalósító megoldást
La Comisión Europea aprueba la solución de intercambio de datos de las Cortes eslovenas
La Commissione Europea approva la soluzione della corte Slovena sullo scambio dei dati
Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή εγκρίνει την ανταλλαγή δικαστηκών δεδομένων στη Σλοβενία