Europe’s Digital Verification Opportunity. CEPS Research Paper 17 JUN 2020.

Europe should move fast to allow the private sector to leverage its public digital verification system, especially in view of the changes to communication brought about by the Covid-19 crisis, concludes this new study. Identity verification remains a time-consuming, arduous process in Europe, often requiring paper documentation and a myriad of certificates guaranteeing credentials. Sometimes, a physical face to face meeting is also needed. This report shows how the EU has constructed a unique cross-border electronic identification infrastructure with digitally linked verification (eID) and interoperable electronic authentication (eIDAS). These advances make Europe the first and only region in the world where digital ID and verification are provided securely and in a legally enforceable manner. But Europe’s impressive digital verification system was mainly designed to ease citizen-government interactions. On average, citizens have only one or two interactions a year with their authorities. Private-sector use will therefore be key to it reaching its potential. Although reliance on digital verification raises understandable fears about increased government and corporate surveillance, the report argues that new technologies allow strong privacy protection while ensuring at-distance accuracy. To achieve this goal, Europe needs to fill in certain in GDPR data protection rules concerning digital verification, and encourage the adoption of privacy-protecting technologies such as blockchain

Security in Ad Hoc Networks and Pervasive Computing

Pervasive computing is an exciting and blooming research field, in which innovative techniques and applications are continuously emerging and aim to provide ambient and personalized services to users with high quality. Ad hoc networks are wireless, self-organizing systems formed by cooperating nodes within communication range of each other that form temporary networks. Their topology is dynamic, decentralized, ever changing and the nodes may move around arbitrarily. The last few years have witnessed a wealth of research ideas on ad hoc networking that are moving rapidly into implemented standards. Technology under development for ad hoc networks and pervasive computing is making important steps toward this end goal possible

The State of the Electronic Identity Market: Technologies, Infrastructure, Services and Policies

Authenticating onto systems, connecting to mobile networks and providing identity data to access services is common ground for most EU citizens, however what is disruptive is that digital technologies fundamentally alter and upset the ways identity is managed, by people, companies and governments. Technological progress in cryptography, identity systems design, smart card design and mobile phone authentication have been developed as a convenient and reliable answer to the need for authentication. Yet, these advances ar enot sufficient to satisfy the needs across people's many spheres of activity: work, leisure, health, social activities nor have they been used to enable cross-border service implementation in the Single Digital Market, or to ensure trust in cross border eCommerce. The study findings assert that the potentially great added value of eID technologies in enabling the Digital Economy has not yet been fulfilled, and fresh efforts are needed to build identification and authentication systems that people can live with, trust and use. The study finds that usability, minimum disclosure and portability, essential features of future systems, are at the margin of the market and cross-country, cross-sector eID systems for business and public service are only in their infancy. This report joins up the dots, and provides significant exploratory evidence of the potential of eID for the Single Digital Market. A clear understanding of this market is crucial for policy action on identification and authentication, eSignature and interoperability.JRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

Viewfinder: final activity report

The VIEW-FINDER project (2006-2009) is an 'Advanced Robotics' project that seeks to apply a semi-autonomous robotic system to inspect ground safety in the event of a fire. Its primary aim is to gather data (visual and chemical) in order to assist rescue personnel. A base station combines the gathered information with information retrieved from off-site sources. The project addresses key issues related to map building and reconstruction, interfacing local command information with external sources, human-robot interfaces and semi-autonomous robot navigation. The VIEW-FINDER system is a semi-autonomous; the individual robot-sensors operate autonomously within the limits of the task assigned to them, that is, they will autonomously navigate through and inspect an area. Human operators monitor their operations and send high level task requests as well as low level commands through the interface to any nodes in the entire system. The human interface has to ensure the human supervisor and human interveners are provided a reduced but good and relevant overview of the ground and the robots and human rescue workers therein

Assessing the cumulative environmental effects of marine renewable energy developments: establishing common ground

Assessing and managing the cumulative impacts of human activities on the environment remains a major challenge to sustainable development. This challenge is highlighted by the worldwide expansion of marine renewable energy developments (MREDs) in areas already subject to multiple activities and climate change. Cumulative effects assessments in theory provide decision makers with adequate information about how the environment will respond to the incremental effects of licensed activities and are a legal requirement in many nations. In practise, however, such assessments are beset by uncertainties resulting in substantial delays during the licensing process that reduce MRED investor confidence and limit progress towards meeting climate change targets. In light of these targets and ambitions to manage the marine environment sustainably, reducing the uncertainty surrounding MRED effects and cumulative effects assessment are timely and vital. This review investigates the origins and evolution of cumulative effects assessment to identify why the multitude of approaches and pertinent research have emerged, and discusses key considerations and challenges relevant to assessing the cumulative effects of MREDs and other activities on ecosystems. The review recommends a shift away from the current reliance on disparate environmental impact assessments and limited strategic environmental assessments, and a move towards establishing a common system of coordinated data and research relative to ecologically meaningful areas, focussed on the needs of decision makers tasked with protecting and conserving marine ecosystems and services

The eIDAS Regulation: A Survey of Technological Trends for European Electronic Identity Schemes

The eIDAS regulation aims to provide an interoperable European framework to enable EU citizens to authenticate and communicate with services of other Member States by using their national electronic identity. While a number of high-level requirements (e.g., related to privacy and security) are established to make interoperability among Member States possible, the eIDAS regulation does not explicitly specify the technologies that can be adopted during the development phase to meet the requirements as mentioned earlier. To the best of our knowledge, there is no work available in the literature investigating the technological trends within the notified eIDAS electronic identity schemes used by Member States. To fill this gap, this paper analyzes how the different technological trends of notified schemes satisfy the requirements of the eIDAS regulation. To do this, we define a set of research questions that allow us to investigate the correlations between different design dimensions such as security, privacy, and usability. Based on these findings, we provide a set of lessons learned that would be valuable to the security community, as they can provide useful insights on how to more efficiently protect interoperable national digital identities. Furthermore, we provide a brief overview regarding the new eIDAS regulation (eIDAS 2.0) that aims to provide a more privacy-preserving electronic identity solution by moving from a centralized approach to a decentralized one

Face-off: AOP+LMP vs. legacy software

Our presentation relates on a first attempt to see if aspect-oriented programming (AOP) can really help with the revitalisation of legacy business software. By means of four realistic case studies covering reverse engineering, restructuring and integration, we discuss the applicability of the aspect-oriented paradigm in the context of two major programming languages for such environments: Cobol and C. For each case, we consider both advantages and disadvantages

State of the art of electronic signatures

Die Sicherheit von elektronischer Kommunikation und von Transaktionen ist ein kritisches Thema heutzutage. Um Verträge online abzuschließen ist ein hoher Sicherheitsstandard notwendig und das Thema „Digitale Signatur" damit ein integrativer Bestandteil jeder digitalen Geschäftsdurchführung. In diesem Zusammenhang wurden 44 Länder untersucht, darunter alle 27 EU-Mitgliedsstaaten, 3 Bewerberländer und 14 weitere europäische Staaten und in einer strukturierten Zusammenschau in den Dimensionen rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen, technische Standards und Marktdurchdringung zusammengefasst. Um einen allgemeinen Eindruck über die aktuelle Situation in jedem Land zu gewinnen, wurde eine erste Internetrecherche gestartet, ein Fragenkatalog zusammengestellt und per e-Mail ausgesandt, sowie Kontakte mit verschiedenen Institutionen und Unternehmen aufgebaut. Die eingeholten Informationen wurden in der Studie zusammengefasst. Zum Zweck der Übersichtlichkeit wurde die Studie stark strukturiert und subjektive Interpretationen bewusst ausgelassen um die Fakten für sich sprechen zu lassen. Die Vollständigkeit der gesammelten Daten wird reflektiert in der Länderklassifikation. Um einen raschen Überblick zu erlangen wurde am Ende jeder Länderanalyse eine Tabelle erstellt, welche die Entwicklung des Landes in Bezug auf digitale Signaturstandards zusammenfasst, sowie eine Bewertung in Hinblick auf verfügbare Information und Entwicklungsstand enthält. Die aktuelle Studie demonstriert auf deutliche Art und Weise, dass es keine globale Implementierung von digitaler Signatur bis jetzt erreicht wurde, hauptsächlich durch eine technische Interoperabilität der Systeme, Prozesse und Konfigurationen, wobei die rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen nicht das Hindernis sind. Es ist nicht schwer zu verstehen, dass eine grenzüberschreitende Adoption der digitalen Signatur nicht auf dies Art und Weise realisierbar ist.Today we live in an e-era, where the topic of Internet security and safety is inevitable. To realize a secure transaction and contract signing via Internet, it is necessary to give a great attention to the subject of digital signatures. In this context, 44 countries have been surveyed (27 EU member countries, 3 EU-member candidates, 14 other European countries) and a structured synopsis has been compiled in the dimensions legal framework, technical standards and market penetration. To obtain a general idea about the current state in the country, an Internet research was started. Furthermore, a list of questions was sent out via e-mail to different companies and agencies and a lot of contacts were established. The collected information was pulled together and compiled in the following study. For purpose of clarity, the study is structured in-depth and subjective interpretations are left out to let the facts speak for themselves. To gain a fast overview, tables sum up the countries development concerning electronic signature standards and rating them in regard of available information and development in different categories. The present study demonstrates quite clearly that no wide-area implementation of digital signatures has been achieved yet, mostly because of lacking technical interoperability of systems, processes and configurations, while the uniform legal framework is certainly not the barrier. It is not very hard to understand that the benefits of a broad adoption of digital signature in the European economic area cannot be realized this way

Joined-Up ICT Innovation in Government: An analysis of the creation of eIDM systems from an Advocacy Coalition and social capital perspective

This chapter introduces the subject of this thesis – joined-up ICT innovation in the public sector. The first section demonstrates that scientists and policy makers fully agree that ICT innovation should be a joint effort involving multiple public sector actors. To solve today’s urgent social problems, specific government agencies have to jointly rethink and improve practices – including their ICTs. However, as section two demonstrates, there are some severe barriers to joined-up ICT innovation. Evaluation studies consistently show that government agencies often fail to realize cooperative change. The third section provides a review of literature that attempts to explain the difficulties. The conclusion is that current public administration theories merely provide a fragmented picture of determining variables. The Advocacy Coalition Framework is introduced as it aims to overcome this theoretical fragmentation. The framework offers a broad overview of all kinds of factors that determine policy change. A confrontation between the variables of the model and innovation literature reveals strong similarities, which indicate that the model can also be applied to ‘innovation’. The fourth section identifies a critique of the social subsystem of the model. Social capital theory is introduced in order to address this critique as it can contribute to the operationalisation of the Advocacy Coalition Framework and hence strengthen its explanatory value. In section five, the unit of analysis is confined to a specific joined-up ICT innovation, namely the joint development of electronic identification systems. Section six defines the central research question, which combines the key elements: (a) the difficulties of joined-up ICT innovations, (b) the use of the Advocacy Coalition Framework to explain those difficulties and (c) social capital theory to enhance the framework. The chapter concludes with the theoretical and social relevance of the study