Joining the European Single Market with Harmony eDelivery Access
The Estonian Information System Authority explores Harmony eDelivery Access as part of Estonia’s implementation of secure cross-border data exchange for the Single Digital Gateway.
Countries are no longer operating in isolation in the European Union for quite some time already, and their digital infrastructures must reflect this shift. Enabling public services to be accessible and efficient across borders, for the Union, has to be a must.
The next logical step is to extend countries’ digital services to accommodate this evolving cross-border reality. To address this, the Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) is leveraging Harmony eDelivery Access as part of the European Union’s Single Digital Gateway (SDG) initiative.
The SDG is a major EU-wide project aimed at making public services more accessible to citizens and businesses across member states. It seeks to eliminate the barriers posed by national borders when accessing public services, such as obtaining birth certificates and diplomas or registering businesses. The goal is to simplify the lives of European citizens at pace with the advancement of digitalisation.
We explore how RIA is integrating Harmony eDelivery Access into its systems, the specific needs that led to this adoption, and the implications for Estonia’s and the EU’s digital ecosystems. With Meelis Sääsk and Hannes Lepp, RIA Head of Unit and Expert on the SDG project.
“Harmony made our work much easier. Domibus was a challenge to set up, but Harmony encapsulates it in a containerised environment, which streamlines installation and management.”
RIA’s Role in Estonia’s Digital Ecosystem
For context. The Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) develops and maintains the country’s core e-government infrastructure, including the X-tee ecosystem based on X-Road. As part of its mandate, RIA ensures secure data exchange between various governmental and private entities in Estonia. The challenge is now enabling secure and efficient cross-border data exchange also within the European Union, through the Single Digital Gateway (SDG) initiative.
The SDG aims to facilitate access to key public services across EU member states, allowing citizens to request and receive official documents – such as birth certificates, diplomas, business registrations, and the like – regardless of their location. The project, though, requires infrastructure that can handle secure, asynchronous messaging between governments across different countries. This is where Harmony eDelivery Access comes into play.
Cross-Border Data Exchange for the Single Digital Gateway
The Single Digital Gateway regulation requires member states to establish secure channels for cross-border data exchange. The technical infrastructure that's required to put into practice the 21 procedures covered by the SDG regulation is implemented by the Once-Only Technical System (OOTS). Estonia, through RIA, is tasked with ensuring that its government systems can communicate efficiently with those of other EU countries. “One of the key requirements of the SDG regulation is enabling secure cross-border communication between governmental entities,” the RIA team explained. To achieve this, RIA needed a technical access point component for eDelivery that could facilitate this exchange in the OOTS.
While Estonia already uses the X-Road® for domestic data exchange, the OOTS architecture demanded a solution tailored specifically for cross-border communication. This required a system capable of handling asynchronous messaging, a fundamental difference from the synchronous nature of X-Road. “The main difference between eDelivery and X-Road is that X-Road works synchronously – sending and receiving messages in real-time. eDelivery, on the other hand, is asynchronous, meaning it allows more flexibility in how and when messages are sent and received.”
Adopting Harmony eDelivery Access for the Once-Only Technical System
Harmony eDelivery Access provides the infrastructure for secure, asynchronous data exchange that’s essential for the OOTS architecture. Built on the open-source Domibus eDelivery access point sample implementation by the European Commission, Harmony eDelivery Access simplifies the technical implementation of eDelivery by packaging the access point into a Docker container, making it more user-friendly and easier to deploy.
“Harmony made our work much easier,” one of the project leads at RIA noted. “Domibus was a challenge to set up, but Harmony encapsulates it in a containerised environment, which streamlines installation and management.”
Harmony eDelivery Access is a central component in the OOTS architecture. It acts as the access point through which Estonia can securely exchange data with other EU member states. RIA’s implementation connects Harmony eDelivery Access to an intermediate platform that links Estonia’s national databases to the European OOTS eDelivery network.
“In simple terms, Harmony is the gatekeeper that manages secure communication between Estonia and other EU countries,” a team member described. This role is crucial, as the entire cross-border data exchange process depends on Harmony’s ability to handle secure message transmission.
Another factor that played a role in RIA’s choice of Harmony was its connection with NIIS, the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions. The existing relationship with X-Road gave RIA confidence in Harmony’s capabilities. “We trusted NIIS because of our prior collaboration with X-Road, so it made sense to try out their solution for eDelivery as well,” one of the RIA team members said.
Enabling Cross-Border Data Exchange in Estonia
The Once-Only Technical System is still in development, but RIA has already made progress in implementing the necessary infrastructure. “We are still in the development phase, like many other member states, but Harmony has already proven itself as a key tool in our infrastructure,” the RIA team pointed out.
One of Harmony eDelivery Access's most significant impacts is the quality of information exchange. Data exchange in the OOTS involves exchanging sensitive documents such as birth certificates, diplomas, and other official records. So, it is extremely important to ensure that this data is handled securely and accurately. Harmony eDelivery Access’s ability to facilitate asynchronous messaging ensures that messages are reliably delivered and verified, even if the receiving node is not immediately available.
In this scenario, once the system is fully operational, citizens from other EU countries will be able to request official documents from Estonia through their home country's eGovernment portal. “Citizens won’t need to worry about where they are physically located to access public services,” RIA experts noted.
As the OOTS implementation project progresses, RIA’s adoption of Harmony eDelivery Access will continue to improve Estonia's well-known quality of digital service delivery and prepare the ground for upcoming wider adoption and cross-border exchange.