Français     Deutsch

This report summarises the results and conclusions drawn from a study realised for the EPAN working group eGovernment during Luxembourg's Presidency 2005. As the title makes clear, the general topic of the study is the interoperability of eGovernment systems. It is self-evident that this field is much too complex and voluminous to be treated exhaustively by the limited resources dedicated to this study. Nevertheless, the fact that the study focuses on identification handling in the EU and relates it to data sharing and data protection issues might be regarded as an advantage, since these questions are crucial and emerging topics in the area of interoperable eGovernment systems. Specifically the cross-border, pan-European exchange of personal data is a challenge that is influenced tremendously by these issues. Besides the fact that identity management in general is without any doubt topical, and that the relation to data protection adds a new aspect, there was a second major motivation for conducting the survey. In the study "The Electronic Identification of Citizens and Organisations in The European Union: State of Affairs", carried out by EIPA during the Belgian presidency in 2001, identification management has already been illuminated. It goes without saying that four years in E-Government are a rather long period – and that with the accession of the ten new member states in 2004 and the current four candidate countries the composition of the Union has changed significantly since then. Consequently, the intention of the Luxembourgish Presidency was to provide an update of the situation drawn up 2001 and to get the new picture for the bigger Union. This update could be accomplished for the identification part of the Belgian part only, because this new study did not take into account all authentication related issues, like for instance electronic ID cards. This idea followed the résumé of the debate in the EPAN WG eGovernment after the presentation of the Belgian study in November 2001, where the members agreed that it was "… necessary for the future debate in this WG to split up the theme of unique id. keys, electronic signatures and electronic id. cards and treat them separately…". As already mentioned, the study relates the identity management domain to data protection concerns. In this context, the legal base of the Directive 95/46/EC and its national implementation has been of special interest.

Full Text

Related Categories

E-Government