South-Mediterranean: First intra-regional e-signatures seminar

 

On November 12th we were invited by the European Commission (EC), DG Connect, to present the GSMA Mobile Identity programme at the two-day exploratory seminar on e-signatures for e-business transactions in the South Mediterranean region, hosted in Amman, Jordan. The event was attended by around 80 people from Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East, from both public and private sector organizations. This working seminar was organised by the EC in partnership with the Jordanian Telecommunications Commission (TRC).

The objectives of this seminar were to:

1) Identify common business needs for intra-regional and EU-South Mediterranean transactions

2) Identify existing local resources to secure transactions and define how to leverage them regionally

3) Assess the feasibility of intra-regional legal, operational, and technical cross-border interoperability

The need to settle a common ground for cross-border and intra-regional interoperability of electronic services and transactions is growing. A focus of the seminar was therefore put on recent international and regional developments in the area of regulatory frameworks for electronic signature and trust services, and other related technical issues, such as certificate management services and national Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs).

The seminars’ participants agreed that the mobile is a viable and secure technology for e-signature services and applications, especially in countries with low fixed telephony and internet penetration. The GSMA was invited to speak in a session on international infrastructure best practices. I provided an overview onto mobile signature as one of the key enabling products for authentication and identification in the digital economy, which was well received by the participants.

During the seminar it became clear that most countries in the South Mediterranean region are highly interested in mobile signature and are already dedicating significant resources to the deployment of e-signature, especially Jordan, Tunisia and Israel. Although at different levels, all participating countries have developed e-government services and recognise e-signature as a valid authentication solution.

Other key findings were shared by international governments and regulators, who presented their views on the importance of e-signature both at national and at cross-border level:

• The national agency for secure identification documents (ANTS) – a public body that comes under the remit of France’s Interior Ministry – highlighted the importance of national strategies for eID and presented a “proof of concept” project for NFC enabled eID  for French citizens

• T-scheme, the UK regulator for e-signature and digital certificates, presented its self-regulated model for supervision of electronic signature and trust services at http://samedayessays.org/paper-editing/

• The EC presented its current review of the regulatory framework for eID and trust services for essay writing and their work on Trusted list to enhance national and cross border interoperability

• The role of ETSI was emphasised as very important and likely to influence international standards and best practices.

As a conclusion it was agreed that a report will formulise recommendations for wider initiatives to leverage a common approach towards trusted electronic transactions in the region via for instance the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), a multilateral partnership among 43 Euro-Mediterranean Heads of State and Government. A follow-up meeting will also be held by the Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona on 21st – 23rd of January 2014.

The EC, which is currently revising its legislation on electronic identification and trust services e-Identification, eAuthentication and eSignature (eIDAS), is keen to contribute to reinforcing co-ownership of new Mediterranean relations through concrete regional cooperation projects on the topic. Major European countries such as France are supporting this initiative as it is also part of their national agenda. Further Member States support would be good to leverage this topic at political level and to increase the rapid development in this area.

Presentations of the working seminar are available here: Day 1 | Day 2