Commercio Developers Guide

# 4.1 Certified Delivery: a trusted services pillar

Commercio.network mission is to bring the Blockchain technology to give companies the freedom to exchange any paper document in a digital form (digital transformation) We believe the principle that an electronic document should not be denied legal effect on the grounds that it is in a paper form.

Exchanging documents among each other in the same way we would do with a paper one is called eDelivery.

# Origins

From CEF website:

eDelivery has strong links to Regulation (EU) 910/2014 on Electronic identification and trust services, commonly known as 'eIDAS'. In its conclusions of 27 May 2011, the European Council invited the European Commission to contribute to the digital single market by creating appropriate conditions for the mutual recognition of key enablers across borders, such as electronic identification, electronic documents, electronic signatures and electronic delivery services, and for interoperable e-government services across the European Union.

eDelivery supports this fundamental principle of the Digital age by promoting the alignment between its technical specifications and the eIDAS regulatory framework.

Some key concepts set forth by eIDAS, directly related to eDelivery:

# Article 3 - Definitions

(36) ‘electronic registered delivery service’ means a service that makes it possible to transmit data between third parties by electronic means and provides evidence relating to the handling of the transmitted data, including proof of sending and receiving the data, and that protects transmitted data against the risk of loss, theft, damage or any unauthorised alterations

# Article 43 - Legal effect of an electronic registered delivery service

(1.) Data sent and received using an electronic registered delivery service shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in an electronic form or that it does not meet the requirements of the qualified electronic registered delivery service. (2.) "Data sent and received using a qualified electronic registered delivery service shall enjoy the presumption of the integrity of the data, the sending of that data by the identified sender, its receipt by the identified addressee and the accuracy of the date and time of sending and receipt indicated by the qualified electronic registered delivery service."

# Article 46 - Legal effects of electronic documents

(1.) "An electronic document shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in electronic form

# Benefits

The implementation of eDelivery may be triggered by a new EU regulation, a new Large Scale Pilot sponsored through EU funding (H2020 or other) or a new cooperation initiative between EU Member States. Even if eDelivery is conceived for the exchange of documents and data across borders, it is also possible to use it to link up different regions, municipalities, etc. in one Member State. Goals of eDelivery A success factor for implementing eDelivery is to clearly understand the motivation for its use, its scope and (business) needs. There are 4 main goals behind an eDelivery implementation: interoperability, scalability and performance, security and legal assurance & accountability.

# Interoperability

Implementing common technical specifications that enable diverse organisations to exchange data and documents. Example It is difficult to enable the exchange of data between Member States because their information systems were developed independently and have, as a result, no common data structures (not addressed by eDelivery) and data exchange protocol (addressed by eDelivery). The business needs that can be satisfied by interoperability are:

  • You can exchange documents and/ or data using a standardised messaging protocols other than e-mail
  • You can exchange attachments in addition to messages (XML documents)
  • The information about the participants (what messages they can process, the message protocol that they support, …) is easily discoverable and accessible to you and to everyone else in the data exchange network
  • You can easily change and discover the registered address of nodes
  • You can execute asynchronous request-response interactions

# Security

Promoting an atmosphere of trust among all participants in the message exchange network. Example E-mail is widespread and reaches the intended recipients most of the time, but its delivery is not guaranteed. Furthermore, e-mail is usually not encrypted meaning that its contents may be intercepted and compromised along the way. A number of document and data exchange systems, deployed in the late 1990s/ early 2000s, no longer match the modern-day security demands.

  • You are certain that data and documents are secured against any modification (integrity)
  • You are certain that documents are encrypted during transmission (confidentiality)
  • You are certain that the origin and the destination of the data and documents are trustworthy
  • You have access to advanced and configurable logging of events related to the exchange of data and documents

# Scalability & Performance

Enabling the number of participants in the data exchange network to grow as well as the number of exchanged messages. Example EU systems based on a hub and spoke architecture, where the systems of the Member States connect to a hub operated by the European Commission, are hard to scale as the hub becomes a bottleneck.Data exchange systems that rely on e-mail are not easy to automate and consequently not easy to scale.

  • You can exchange documents and data files larger than 50 Mb
  • Your back-office has different ways to connect to the message exchange network
  • You are certain that the message exchange network will adapt to an increasing number of nodes, as opposed to a stable number of nodes
  • You are certain you can handle increasing messaging loads in a day, hour, etc
  • You are certain you have access to advanced and configurable monitoring of the system

Promoting a high level of transparency and confidence among all participants in the message exchange network. Example The evidences produced during the exchange of data and documents should have a legally recognised evidential value.

  • You have the guarantee that data and documents are delivered once and only once (retries, receipts, duplicate elimination)
  • You are certain that messages are delivered even if sent to temporarily unavailable channels (store and forward)
  • You receive evidences, possibly with legally recognised evidential value, of the several steps of the exchange of documents and data
  • You are certain of the non-repudiation of receipt and/or origin of every exchange through signature
  • You are certain of time synchronization in the message exchange process

# Benefits of eDelivery

Benefits Reduce Risk Reduce Costs Improve Quality
Reduce the learning curve of service providers of document and data exchange networks x x
Make savings in the cost of creating, maintaining and operating document and data exchange networks as some of these costs may be shared with other service providers of eDelivery x
The wide use of the same eDelivery specifications is expected to create incentives for software companies to offer eDelivery compliant solutions at a competitive cost x
Accelerate the delivery time of a working document and data exchange network as eDelivery provides out of the box specifications and software components x
Foster synergies at all levels with other service providers of eDelivery x
Increase the quality of document and data exchange networks as eDelivery was already been tried and tested in multiple policy domains x x
As use increases, the wide availability of IT engineers with knowledge and experience in eDelivery's technical specifications is also expected to increase x x

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