Publisher's Synopsis
Expounds the role of trusted services and public key infrastructure in enabling the electronic delivery of government services to the public. The publication is the result of the work of the ICA 'fast-track' Study Group on Trusted Services and PKI which was convened in July 1999. It is the result of a Case Study on specific developments in the area of PKI implementation and approaches to delivering electronic government services, covering Australia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States. Electronic Government (eGovernment) environment is developing rapidly with many of the countries planning to introduce a comprehensive set of electronic services within and between governments ("G2G") within a 1-3 year timescale. For some, eGovernment initiatives will build on an existing but limited set of electronic services to citizens ("G2C") and business ("G2B") and providing mainly for basic eCommerce (viz, eMerchant) services, business registration and taxation returns. The study underscores the need for three basic elements that are deemed essential in promoting confidence in the electronic medium as a vehicle for electronic commerce, namely: (1) A trusted business environment based on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technologies; (2) A suitable legal framework which recognises electronic signatures, also referred to as digital signatures, as having legal effect and validity; and (3) Laws of evidence providing for admissibility of electronic signatures and electronic documents in legal proceedings. A number of significant technical issue remain to be considered more comprehensively, including: the compatibility of electronic certificates by different certification authorities; certificates usage by applications; and the achievement of a consistent approach in structuring how certificates are handled by directories. The publication provides excellent pragmatic insight and should be useful to all governments with new or potential initiatives for eBusiness in a trusted service environment.
