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IAS: Study on an electronic identification, authentication and signature policy

The aim of the study is to devise building blocks for an electronic identification, authentication and signature (IAS) policy for the European Union, as well as related electronic trusted services and credentials.

These concepts are not uniformly defined at the European level, and their interaction is not yet well understood. The IAS approach at the European level is still at an embryonic stage and highly fragmented.

The electronic signatures framework (Directive 1999/93/EC on a Community framework for electronic signatures) can serve as a starting point. However, as pointed out by previous studies, the current electronic signatures framework is not optimal. Α new framework could provide solutions to solve remaining e-signature interoperability issues, to address e-identification and also ancillary and related trust services and credentials (such as time stamping, e-signature long term archiving, electronic seals, certified e-documents delivery, admissibility of e-documents, …).

The study is conducted by DLA Piper together with its subcontractors Sealed, Time.lex, PwC and Studio Notarile Genghini and it is financed by the European Commission (study reference: SMART 2010/0008). The study was started in May 2011, and will end in October 2012.

The scope of the study covers the following tasks:

• Task 1. Assessing the various hypotheses and issues regarding a policy on electronic identification, authentication and signature.

• Task 2. Identifying valuable findings and recommendations in the past and on-going undertakings supported by the European Commission as well as in major third parties initiatives, also in available legislation, to use as input material for an IAS framework.

• Task 3. The study will provide building blocks of a pan-European IAS framework, including ancillary credentials and services. This task will build on the findings of tasks 1 and 2.

In addition, the study team will provide selected ad-hoc technical and legal support to the European Commission.

The tender specification further details the content of the study.

The tasks will result in several deliverables, which will be published on this website once they become available:

Workshop
As part of the IAS study, a public workshop was held on 3rd October 2011 to gather stakeholders' feedback on draft deliverables. A second public workshop will be held in 2012 (date to be decided).

Study website
The website of the study contractor is http://www.iasproject.eu/
 

CROBIES : Study on Cross-Border Interoperability of eSignatures

The objective of the study on Cross-Border Interoperability of eSignatures (CROBIES) is to propose solutions to remove barriers to cross-border interoperability of qualified electronic signatures and advanced electronic signatures based on qualified certificates.

CROBIES is based on and takes into account the relevant provisions of Directive 1999/93/EC and their national implementations as well as the standardisation work based on the Directive.

The Commission launched the CROBIES study (Cross-border interoperability of electronic signatures) in support of the Action Plan on e-signature and e-identification. The study kicked off in August 2008 and ended in June 2010.

The objective of the study was to analyse the requirements for e-signatures in terms of cross border use and to establish a general strategy for cross border interoperability of qualified electronic signatures and advanced electronic signature based on qualified certificates within the existing legal framework set by Directive 1999/93/EC.

Nonetheless, CROBIES also suggested improvements at legal, technical and trust levels.

CROBIES also focused on quick wins that could substantially improve the interoperability of electronic signatures (ex. the trusted list) and contributed to define the terms of mandate M460 issued by the European Commission to the European Standardisation Organisations electronic signatures.

CROBIES concentrated on the following aspects through related work packages and their associated reports:

- An overview of the issue (“head” document).

• WP1. A proposal for a common model for supervision and accreditation of certification service providers issuing qualified certificates (and other services ancillary to e-signatures) because Directive 1999/93/EC does not specify how supervision should be organised.
• WP2. The establishment of a “Trusted List” of for qualified signature certificates providers. The resulting deliverable was the key technical input for §0.
• WP3. A proposal for an interoperable qualified signature certificate profile to improve the provision, in both machine processable and human readable ways, of information on the qualified status of a certificate and on the indication that the e-signatures it support are created by a secure signature creation device as defined by Directive 1999/93/EC
• WP4. A proposed framework for interoperable Secure Signature Creation Devices. Although Annex III to the Directive gives high level requirements for secure devices and specific standards were developed for their assessment, interpretation and implementation at national level still varies quite widely. To resolve this issue, CROBIES formulated recommendations for a homogeneous interpretation of the Directive at the European level.
• WP5. A proposed model for providing guidelines and guidance for cross-border and interoperable e-signatures implementation of (the resulting deliverable was the key technical input for §2.4). CROBIES also proposed a quality classification for e-signatures as well as a means to maintain a European list of recommended cryptographic algorithms for e-signature.

 

 

Last updated: 28.9.2010

 

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