The deal is sealed: European Commission takes digital one step further by using qualified e-seals on all documents
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Rethinking processes to deliver more effective services is a key driver of e-government. It is also at the core of the EU Action Plan for eGovernment which aims to achieve open and innovative public administrations across Europe by 2020. An essential enabler for e-government is trust: trust in the identity of the people on the other side of the interaction and trust in the integrity and origin of documents.
Since December 2018, the European Commission has been applying qualified electronic seals (e-seals) to all manually-registered documents in its ARES document management system. This allows anybody receiving a document from the Commission to be certain where it came from and that is has not been modified.
The European Commission, serving over 500 million EU citizens, aims to lead by example in the digitisation of its processes. The decision to use e-seals is an important milestone to the full digital transformation of the European Commission, making processes paperless and more efficient.
What are e-seals?
E-seals have been established in European law since 2016 through the eIDAS Regulation on electronic identification and trust services. E-seals are applied to documents or data and identify a legal entity, such as an organisation or business, providing certainty to the origin and integrity of a document. The eIDAS Regulation defines three levels of e-seals: simple, advanced and qualified. Qualified e-seals provide the highest level of security and are recognised everywhere in the EU through the eIDAS Regulation’s certification scheme, supported by the trusted lists.
The e-sealing solution at the European Commission is based on DSS, the open-source library provided by the Connecting Europe Facility’s (CEF) eSignature Building Block. DSS makes it easy for implementers of e-sealing or e-signing solutions to stay compliant with the eIDAS Regulation and related standards. This means, for example, that a Greek entrepreneur can sign a permit application in Helsinki and expect it to be recognised by public authorities in Dublin.
With the 2018 Commission Digital Strategy, the Commission has committed to lead by example by becoming a digitally transformed, user-focused and data-driven administration.
What are the CEF Building Blocks?
The Connecting Europe Facility’s Building Blocks (CEF eArchiving, Context Broker, Big Data Test Infrastructure, eDelivery, eID, eInvoicing, eSignature and eTranslation) enable secure cross-border digital interactions between citizens, businesses and public administrations. To see how, read the success stories of the CEF Building Blocks.