E-identity: Basic building block of e-Government

Creating a system of electronic identification and authentication represents one of key prerequisites of successful and efficient e-Government that will offer to citizens and businesses comprehensive processing of their requests without the need to physically visit the office. The United Nation, within their regular evaluation of e-Government development, reviews the availability of individual electronic services as well as their sophistication. If public administration wants more than just to provide information and aims to offer its customers higher quality services in the form of transactions or even interconnected services, it will sooner or later try to solve the e-identification issue. Experience of some EU member states and experts` recommendations show that the only e-identification tools with a chance to succeed are those that are simple, user-friendly and allow logging into e-services of both public and private sector. Among those tools, without any doubt, is mobile eID whose potential is to be unlocked especially in Africa, which has become a pioneer in mobile payments and other intelligent services using the widely spread mobile phones. Besides mobile eID a successful identification and authentication tool may also be represented by cards issued in cooperation with banks (payment card issuers), as is the case not only in Europe (e.g. Sweden) but also in Africa, e.g. in Nigeria. Interconnecting of public and private services then brings also the question of attributes` (credentials`) trustworthiness, where the level of trust in a given instrument is derived from the sensitivity of the service and the amount (level) of personal data that are required. For some services, e.g. enabling access to budget information or elected representatives` voting, a basic authentication is enough, to set up a business or to change a residence, more reliable authentication will be required. Together with the increasing mobility there is the possibility to use eID issued in another state and thus enabling easy, simple and fast handling of official matters (including e.g. tax payments) also to citizens of other states. This paper aims to evaluate the European experience with the tools of electronic identification and authentication, building a cross-border system of electronic identification within the STORK and STORK 2.0 projects, including setting a scale of trustworthiness and respecting national solutions and providing inspiration to African states with building electronic identification as one of the basic building blocks of e-Government.