Problem. Until 2017, Lithuania was one of the few European Union (EU) countries without access to the EU’s core service platform operating within the EU’s unified digital service infrastructure, thus remaining isolated from cross-border digital services.
Meanwhile, Lithuanian businesses exchange vast quantities of documents daily with EU institutions, economic entities, and citizens, yet have virtually no means to send and receive these electronic documents in an interoperable, secure, reliable, and legally recognized manner. Such cross-border exchange of electronic documents is enabled by the electronic delivery digital service building block).
Opportunities. The EU encourages EU Member States to participate in the development and use of cross-border digital services by providing Member States with access to EU trans-European networks and offering financial support for the development of such services through projects of common interest. The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) is the EU’s primary financial support instrument for transeuropean networks and digital service infrastructure building blocks, —such as electronic delivery (eDelivery), electronic invoicing (eInvoicing), electronic identification (eID), electronic signature (eSignature), e-health (eHealth), and electronic translation (eTranslation).
Project. For the development of electronic delivery (eDelivery) in Lithuania, in 2017 the European Commission provided financial support from the CEF programme for the implementation of the “eDeliveryLT” project (Project No. 2016-LT-IA-0080, Contract No. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2016/1284783).
Project value: EUR 248,810, with partners’ own contribution to the project amounting to EUR 62,202.5.
Project duration: 2 years, starting April 1, 2017, ending April 1, 2019, with planned electronic delivery operations commencing September 1, 2018.
Partners. The “eDeliveryLT” project is implemented by the Infobalt association (coordinator) together with its partners: UAB “Sistemų integracijos sprendimai”, UAB “Skaitos kompiuterių servisas”, and the public institution “eDeliveryLT”. The latter is responsible for the further maintenance and development of electronic delivery.
Project objective: to create an Access Point with a Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) for cross-border exchange of electronic documents and to test the operation of this Access Point for one year. This will enable Lithuanian economic entities to exchange electronic documents both among themselves and across the EU.
For electronic delivery, eDelivery LT plans to use the B2A (business-to-administration) scenario approved by the PEPPOL organization, which is compatible with the B2B (business-to-business) scenario. Compliance with electronic identification and trusted transaction requirements ensures legal certainty and reliability in cross-border electronic document transmission, while the interface with the trans-European Digital Service Infrastructure (DSI) ensures secure and convenient document transactions.
Benefits. Electronic delivery will enable interoperability at the EU level and among EU Member States regardless of the standards used in each EU country.
Furthermore, once electronic delivery is established in Lithuania as one of the EU Single Market and Schengen Area countries, it can be extended beyond EU borders, primarily to EU Eastern Partnership countries, from which major flows of transport, goods, and services originate.
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