Newsletter 11.04.2018 - PKI Migration, Statutes Changes/Additional GA, etc.

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Last updated: Apr 11, 2018

Please find below a high level introduction to the plans for changing the OpenPEPPOL Statutes and revising the PEPPOL eDelivery operations, together with the call for participation to two new Work Groups.

Below the high level introductions, you will find links to the background documentation and detailed information. 

Subjects Covered

  • Face-to-face Cross-Community meetings 30 and 31 October 2018
  • Changes to the OpenPEPPOL Statutes
  • Additional 10th General Assembly 30 October 2018 
  • 2018 strategy for Change Management of the Agreement Framework 
  • Plans and requirements for the 2018 PKI migration
  • Implementation of a centralised multi-protocol test bed
  • Call for participation in two new work groups
    • Reporting Work Group
    • OpenPEPPOL Financial Model Work Group

Face-to-face Cross-Community meetings 30 and 31 October 2018

The eDelivery, Post-Award and Pre-Award communities plan their autumn face-to-face Cross-Community meetings 30 and 31 October 2018. Venue will be communicated shortly. Save the dates!

Changes to the OpenPEPPOL Statutes

At the statutory 9th General Assembly 21 March,  the required quorum to vote on the suggested changes to the Statutes was not obtained. As a result, an additional 10th General Assembly needs to be organised. Meanwhile, the Managing Committee will continue to work on improving the Statutes, taking into consideration the revised governance structure that was approved at the 9th General Assembly and comments made by members during the meeting. The revisions will be made available in Confluence, together with the related background documents from the 9th General Assembly before the summer, inviting the members to comment by September. 

Additional 10th General Assembly 30 October 2018 

In order to get the Statutes formally approved OpenPEPPOL will conduct an additional 10th General Assembly 30 October in conjunction with the planned face to face Cross-Community meetings 30 and 31 October 2018. Invitations and background materials will be made available in Confluence in advance of the meeting, as will access to submission forms for participation and delegation of proxy votes.

2018 Strategy for Change Management of the Agreement Framework 

The OpenPEPPOL Agreement Change Management Board had two open positions for election in March 2018, however, the call for participation provided only one candidate. Furthermore, the election criteria for the Agreement CMB will change when the revised governance model is implemented.  Therefore, the election process was cancelled.  As an interim solution, the Agreement CMB has been dissolved and its members together with the members of the Agreement Revision Workgroup have been established as an Agreement Revision Advisory Board.

The board will take no formal decisions regarding change requests but will continue discussing and documenting the impact and proposed implementation.  This board will be active until a new formal Change Management Board has been elected in conjunction with the 2019 statutory General Assembly. Changes related to Annex 3 and 4 will, as always be raised to the domain-specific Change Management Boards and should there be a need for decisions regarding changes to the main agreement documents, these will be raised to the Managing Committee.

Plans and Requirements for the 2018 PKI migration

OpenPEPPOL will migrate to a new PKI Certificate issuing platform in 2018, as the current platform will no longer be supported. As a result, all PEPPOL Access Points and Service Metadata Publishers will be required to implement the capability to support both the new and the old root certificates before 3 September 2018. 

The migration process is planned as follows:

11 April: the new root certificates are available for download in Confluence at:  https://openpeppol.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/OPMA/pages/193069072/Introduction+to+the+revised+PKI+Certificate+infrastructure+and+issuing+process

16 April:  the certificate issuing process will begin and members are urged to request their PKI v3 certificate 

31 August: OpenPEPPOL will no longer issue the old certificate types 

3 September:  the new certificates can be used in production

30 November:  the old certificates will be revoked and cannot be used in the PEPPOL eDelivery Network

For details and further information, please see the Introduction to the revised PKI Certificate infrastructure and issuing process and the PKI Certificate Migration 2018 pages. 

Implementation of a Centralised Multi-protocol Test Facility

To strengthen the integrity of the PEPPOL eDelivery Network and establish an aligned on-boarding process for all OpenPEPPOL Service Providers, OpenPEPPOL is taking over responsibility for the acceptance testing from Difi.  Therefore it will be mandatory for all Service Providers to succesfully pass the test provided by the centralised test facility in order to obtain a PKI production certificate.  This facility will also provide onboarding testing for the AS4 protocol and for SMP Providers.  It is currently being developed in cooperation with DG DIGIT.

Call for Participation in Two New Work Groups

OpenPEPPOL has established two new high-level work groups: a Reporting Work Group and a Financial Model Work Group. Both work groups are mandated by the Managing Commitee, owned by Steve Graham (UK Department of Health) and led by Carmen Cicierello. 

The Reporting Work Group will focus on establishment of a common set of requirements for usage reporting in the PEPPOL eDelivery Network, and a unified approach to consolidation and presentation of the information collected. Please find the Call for Participation and the Work Group mandate in Confluence (Call for Participation to the Reporting Work Group) 

The Financial Model Work Group will focus on identifying the future financial model for OpenPEPPOL, to ensure the optimal economic foundation is in place to run the Association and support the eDelivery Network effectively. Please find the Call for Participation and the Work Group mandate in Confluence.  (Call for Participation to the OpenPEPPOL Financial Model Work Group)

We strongly encourage all members to contribute to the ongoing work of the OpenPEPPOL Association, and to submit their interest by sending a mail to openpeppol@peppol.eu. !