E-Güven, Elektronik Bilgi Güvenligi A.Ş., the first electronic certification service provider in Turkey allowed to operate under the Turkish Electronic Signature Law, promises to fundamentally revise the medium in which many Turks do business. E-signatures provided by such companies as E-Güven also promise to be a significant component in the ongoing plans of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government to implement a deeper and more robust e-government.
In common terms, e-signatures allow clients to “sign” online documents electronically.
In more legal terms, the “e-signature” provided by E-Güven to individuals and business will provide a legally binding acknowledgment of acceptance of the terms of any legal document posted online or which can be sent through an online medium. The e-signature has the added bonus of having a time stamp, making it so that recipients/senders cannot dispute the time a document was received/sent.
In practice, this means that all documents that require a physical presence to be signed can be done electronically. For example, for users not using E-Güven, online electric fund transfers over TL 10,000 require a physical presence in the bank in order to execute. With e-signatures, these transactions can be completed online. So, too, can all transactions requiring a signature that can be sent through a fax machine; any document typed in Word, for instance, can have the e-signature applied, and then sent via e-mail.
As an indication of the increasing importance of e-signatures, more than 80 percent of banks now use digital signatures in Turkey. As part of Turkey’s e-government initiative launched in 2008, an increasing number of government sites are now implementing the system as well. Demonstrating Ankara’s efforts to take advantage of the increasing digitalization of information and processes, the Turkish government has recently embarked on an ambitious e-government project that will connect various government agencies within a secure communication gateway and standardized meta-data protocol. Individuals will also be able to access these sites using the Internet. Ultimately the program will provide a platform whereby government ministries can interact with other ministries, individuals, businesses and civil society online.
As a result, the number of e-signatures E-Güven provides has skyrocketed in the few short years since the technology’s inception. Although the legislation governing e-signatures was introduced in 2004, and the first license was granted in 2005 to E-Güven, it was not until 2006 that they began issuing e-signatures to consumers. The number of signatures granted by E-Güven now stands at 120,000, and Can Orhun, the company’s general manager, forecast these figures would grow by more than 100 percent in 2009.
“2006 and 2007 were learning years for government and business,” followed by an explosion in growth in 2008, said Orhun. He felt that the number of business’ using the e-signature application would grow exponentially in 2009 as more companies opted into the system and as the authorities in Ankara expanded e-government services.
While this growth is impressive, the use of e-signatures in Turkey lags behind that in other developed countries. In Sweden, for example, where e-government services have been ranked the most developed in the world by the UN e-Government Readiness Index, it was reported that more than 1 in 10 people used e-signatures, and many countries throughout the EU boasted having more than 1 million users. In general e-signature usage is high in countries where Internet penetration is high.
Government actions, however, leave much to be optimistic about with respect to increasing Internet penetration; in addition to e-government initiatives, Ankara announced plans last week to reduce Internet usage taxes by 10 percent -- from the present 15 percent to 5 percent. Many have interpreted this as a significant step on the path to promoting Internet usage in the country. Commenting on the tax reduction earlier last week, Tuğrul Cora, general manager of Millenicom, described the development as “very positive” and believed that it sent a “signal to business to invest more in technology in order to compete.”
When Sunday’s Zaman asked Orhun whether he thought the government was doing enough to encourage the use of E-Güven, Orhun was enthusiastic but felt that much more could be done.
“What we would like to see is many more applications. It is important to have new applications where people can use e-signatures. Yes, the government is working for it, but they have not done all they can do.”
E-Güven’s activities are part of a wider transformation occurring in Turkey whereby government is slowly transforming the way it does business and implementing the so-called e-government. Many observers say that this leads to a further broadening and further consolidation of democracy in countries that have traditionally enjoyed state-centric forms of government through the diffusion of state power.
Indeed, academic circles have also been critical of the speed at which the Turkish government has been implementing e-government practices not only because they feel it has prevented Turkey from fully participating in the information society, but more importantly because they feel that the slow pace at which it is being implemented has prevented the country from adopting EU requirements and indeed even hindered democratic consolidation. This is because, e-government is believed to change the way in which the strong state governs by bringing more policymakers from civil society into the fray and creating a number of partner organizations for the delivery and execution e-government programs.
Associate Professor Gülgün Tosun at Ege University, for instance, released a report last year that acknowledged attempts being made by the government but also blasted it for the slow pace at which e-government procedures were being implemented. For her, it was not only the low Internet penetration rates and the limited number of services available online: “The Turkish experience in digital government has clearly shown that there is no possibility of a transformation from the traditional state model towards a participatory state model if e-government is only understood to be no more than a digitalization of public service provision.”
Nevertheless, advances are being made, and the exponential growth forecast for 2009 is a testament to this growth phenomenon.
“We can see that e-sig is not only a security application; it helps people ease their lives, it helps people take better advantage of government services and other service providers,” said Orhun. “In 2007, we had a big project that made it so that we can now store information on mobile [telephone] chips and use a mobile digital signature.”
Nonetheless, there are still many transactions that still have to be done the good, old-fashioned way. “Anything that needs to be signed can be done using an e-signature, but one cannot marry using the e-signature nor purchase a house.” Too bad for those wishing to spare the expenses associated with the traditional Turkish wedding.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): David Neyland
Quelle/Source: Sunday's Zaman, 01.02.2009
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
