eQuality Certificate

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Project Details

Project Purpose

The purpose of the project is to create the business models and business class diagrams for documenting the business scenarios and business transactions involved in the issuing and the exchange of the electronic quality certificate. The process is described by several use cases: The producer/trader send a request for obtaining an e quality certificate. This involves the declaration of the product and production specifications to the issuing authority; The producer/trader retrieves an issued e quality certificate from the issuing authority; The exchange of the e quality certificate between the involved business partners and authorities. The e quality certificate is a unique document that is issued by an authority, and the document states that the product meets certain qualification criteria. The document is signed and unique marked by the issuing authority. The e quality certificate is protected against falsifications. Also the exchange processes of the e quality certificate is providing protection against fraude with the certificate.

Project Scope

The objective of this project is to standardise the business processes, the business transactions and the information entities of request, the issuing and the exchange of the the electronic exchange of the e quality certificate along the supply chain. The project will describe the business process for the electronic exchange of - Data involved in the process of requesting and issuing an electronic quality certificate between the producer / trader and the issuing authority, vice versa, and - the exchange of the e quality certificate along the supply chain. The project will focus on the e quality certificate for agricultural products, both of plant and animal origin. The supply chain consists of all parties involved from farmer – fisherman, including cooperatives and producer organisations, packers and traders, processors up to the retailers, including the service providers and authorities. The data involved in the request of an e quality certification message contains: - information about the product (type, purpose, quantity, quality, identification) , production process, location and party and purpose of the certificate (ie. export to country X) The e quality certificate contains data about the related product and the administrative data of the certificate, (date of issue, inspection, etc; the certificate ID, inspector and an electronic signature of the authority.) The relation between the physical product instance and the assigned e quality certificate for this product instance will be maintained along the lifecycle of the product instance. The certificate is used by the producer / trader to prove the product qualifications in case of export or for other business processes. The certificate is used by the export control authority and by the (international) trade partners.

Project Deliverables

The project deliverables include:

•  A specification of the requirements for a quality certificate (for agricultural products) 

+ what information items should be included in the certificate;

+ which security should be applied (encryption, ID, signature, hash total etc).

this specifications will be the base for the business requirement specifications (BRS).

• A business requirement specification (BRS) document containing business models covering the electronic business processes related to a request, issuing and exchange of the e quality certificate;
• A requirement specification mapping (RSM) document describing the message structures (as class diagrams) for the business transactions
• XML schemas to implement the message structure
• Implementation guidelines and user guide for the XML schemas and exchange processes.

Exit Criteria

The exit criteria that will indicate the deliverables has been completed , are specified in the table below

• A specification of the requirements for a quality certificate

This is for internal project use only. The public review will be done by the BRS review.  

• A business requirement specification (BRS) document containing business process models covering the electronic e quality business processes.
  • completed BRS
  • Public review and logs showing how comments have been addressed.
• A requirement specification mapping document describing the message structures (as class diagrams for the business transactions.
  • Completed RSM
  • Public review and logs showing how comments have been addressed.
• XML schemas
  • Completed XML schemas

• Implementation guidelines and user guide
  • Completed implementation guidelines and user guides.

Geographical Focus

The geographical focus covers the globe, initial contribution is expected from European Union Member States and all countries interested.

Initial Contributions

-       eCERT                   CCL 8A

-    eCROP                  CCL 16A

-       eLabs                    CCL 12B          

-    Track and Trace      CCL 18A 

Resource Requirements

Participants in the project shall provide resources for their own participation. The existence and functioning of the project shall not require any additional resources from the UNECE secretariat.

Project Proposal Files