Summary

  • The European Commission's OOTS Checkpoint begins online preparation on 27 October, with connectivity tests in early November and peer-to-peer, end-to-end transactions in Brussels on 25–26 November.
  • Neutral monitors will verify technical test evidence; national coordinators will review the transactions from a user's perspective and identify what their services still need before citizens can use them.

The promise is wonderfully dull: move to another EU country, apply for a service, and avoid carrying a document that a public office already holds. The machinery behind that dullness is less forgiving. One administration must request evidence, another must return it, the identity must match, and the person must be able to finish the application. The European Commission's OOTS Checkpoint agenda puts those links on a test bench. Its online kickoff is set for 27 October; the Brussels exercise follows on 25–26 November.

The participant playbook describes an unusually hands-on examination. Two national systems pair up, agree on a test and record what happened. A neutral monitor examines logs and validator results, asks for missing proof and checks the outcome. A team that finds its own bug can repair it and try again; a blocking fault in the Commission's common services goes to a Commission specialist. The test record is managed manually rather than through the Gazelle platform used at earlier Projectathons. The exercise asks people to inspect the evidence, not just watch a dashboard turn green.

This round concentrates on the complete journey. The playbook calls for end-to-end flows and prioritises eID-node integration with dynamic identities; static, pre-agreed data is a fallback. Its baseline is technical design version 1.2.5, with 1.2.5X for tests involving candidate countries. Limited interest in testing 2.0.x led the organisers to recommend the 1.2.x line for this Checkpoint. A pair of computers can exchange packets on a version they share; a citizen needs the whole chain of identity, request, evidence and service decision to work.

Two rooms in Brussels carry different responsibilities. Engineers run peer tests. National coordinators supervise them and, on the second day, examine live or recorded transactions as an end user would. The agenda says they will identify blockers and define what is needed before services become available to citizens and businesses. The playbook sets an end-2026 ambition of Acceleratormeter level 6 or 7 for every Member State: teams already there should validate live user transactions, while teams at levels 1–5 receive extra testing support. Those are work assignments, not a published country scorecard.

The schedule gives the claim of readiness a sequence of receipts. Preparatory and connectivity tests run from 2 to 20 November. An optional setup day and the Gateway Coordination Group meeting fall on 24 November. Peer testing and coordinator review follow on 25–26 November; reports and lessons are planned for mid-December. OOTS infrastructure has been live since December 2023, according to the Commission page. The coming Checkpoint concerns how national implementations behave together when a real request must finish.