Russia increases involvement in PEPPOL

Russia increases involvement in PEPPOL

by Schmidt, Patrik — created on 04/10/2012 04:40

Following up on our story about Russian interest in PEPPOL during the conference in Rome, key delegates from the National Certification Authority and AETP have been increasing their involvement in PEPPOL developments, sharing their experiences and the challenges of cooperating on electronic trading

The Russian Federation CJSC National Certification Authority (CJSC NCA) was established in the year 2000 having its objectives also to develop and maintain a document flow system in all areas of business activity and civil turnover; to ensure the widest possible access to it for citizens and organizations; to protect rights and lawful interests of all electronic document flow system’s users and to facilitate the dispute resolution and any conflicts between them.

During the conference in Rome, CJSC NCA delegate met with PEPPOL representatives to hold preliminary discussions regarding CJSC NCA’s experiences, approaches and challenges in areas of international e-trade. They expect to start cooperating with PEPPOL immediately.

“We have been dealing with issues of valid trans-boundary electronic document flow for several years. In the meantime we have studied a lot of various approaches and technologies in this field. We consider PEPPOL experience to be very interesting and we especially appreciate the solid approach to international e-trade applied by PEPPOL. During the meeting with key PEPPOL representatives we found common ground and appointed a direction of further cooperation. As the first step in this direction it was decided to carry out some tests to study in more detail the technology PEPPOL uses. We have enlisted the support of PEPPOL technical specialists and plan to proceed to joint testing next. We also achieved a preliminary agreement on conducting joint tests with representatives of French PEPPOL Validation Service Provider - ADETEF.” Alexander Sazonov, Head of service administration and development department at CJSC National Certification Authority.

AETP is the non-commercial organisation “Association of Electronic Trading Platforms”, founded in 2007, combining most of the trading operators of public and commercial procurement in Russia. The Association was an initiator of globalisation of legal and technological base of electronic trading , and responsible for improving the legal value of electronic documents for trading. AETP is willing to share its experience with European countries for a better future. Its main interest in PEPPOL is on establishing systems for the development of the e-commerce market between Russia and European countries.

AETP appreciates the opportunities and achievements of PEPPOL to exchange experiences and to have a fruitful partnership. In Russia, AETP is harmonising the different eProcurement rules, and the Association understands that the EU is doing the same in the area of eProcurement. AETP is hoping for a mutual experience exchange, so both parties will be able to cooperate with each other as well as fulfil their functions and self-interest. They are ready to start by implementing PEPPOL and are planning to join OpenPEPPOL and to enable cross border interoperability between the EU and Russia.

“Our interest in PEPPOL was triggered by its vision. AETP started out on trading platforms, as well as in the industrial sector with energy and oil. Only later we have moved into government procurement “– stated Iliia Dimitrov, Executive Director of AETP.

Despite the many opportunities and the level of engagement, there are issues to be discussed. For example, the difference with eSignatures, where in Russia there is a single eSignature and within PEPPOL there are multiple. Trading in the EU is quite different from Russia where the systems AETP use, are almost completely automated.

“Russia is in some way in a similar situation as the EU: a vast geographical area with regions of different levels of development. These regions often have a certain specialization and bring different products to the market. In many ways, e-commerce tools provide equal opportunities for access of the regions to the market, including the government market. Now we are interested in the wider boundaries of e-commerce between our countries, that we believe will lead to greater stability in Russia and Europe in relation to the economic crisis. We are now combining electronic trading platforms and starting from 2012, we have brought together Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan in the same trading union for economic integration.” – concluded Iliia Dimitrov, Executive Director of AETP.