It is already possible to buy cars, records, plane tickets, get a loan, transfer money, gamble, and download music, films, and pornography on the internet. But the public sector has been slow off the mark, and one of the barriers has been how to be sure someone logging on to vote or apply for a student loan is who they claim to be.
Thursday’s research programme GUIDE (Government User Identity for Europe), backed by a consortium of companies such as BT, Siemens and Visa, is aimed at finding an ‘identification and authentification’ system that all governments can use in their daily dealings internally, and with the public.
Researchers from legal experts to IT geniuses and academics will by trying to steer a path through the ethical, policy and technological minefield of ‘e-government’ to try and emerge, three research programmes and four and a half years later, with pan-EU applications for their findings.
These could include ways for contractors to apply for government tenders through the internet, for government departments, ministries, and even governments themselves to share information more easily, and for citizens to get hold of personal social security information, file tax returns, and even vote.
The latter is somewhat of a pipedream for the moment, described by Lia Borthwick, Guide coordinator as “no silver bullet.”
But with European elections in June expected to attract lowest turnout ever and politicians hand-wringing over how to reverse the trend, having the outline for a secure online voting system in four and a half years may come just in time to rescue the European Parliament’s democratic credibility for the next round of EU voting.
Quelle: EUpolitix, 29.04.2004
