Digital Signature Legality for Administration in European Union: Simplify Your Document Signing Process

How to eSign a document: digital signature legality for Administration in European Union

the 53rd session of the commission as you already know kovitna we are convinced that a strong legal framework will facilitate the recovery and help to revitalize global trade i would like to take the opportunity to congratulate to the secretary secretariat of concentrate for all the efforts displayed for the organization of these important webinars in this occasion we will discuss about identification and authentication in the digital economy which is increasingly playing a substantive role on online commerce with no more dilation i would like now to give the floor to madame secretary anjivan pratt to deliver some introductory remarks about this topic please and you have the flaw thank you chair excellencies distinguished delegates dear participants in the army trial kovit 19 response and recovery webinar series it gives me great pleasure to welcome you all virtually for the third day of the 53rd commission session and the first day of the series of webinars that will take place today tomorrow and in the in four days of next week i'm grateful to member states of ancient trial that have suggested very early on that anti-trial texts are very relevant to tackle some of the multiple challenges states are facing to mitigate the disastrous consequences on the economy and take measures to help recovery we know that many regions are not yet at the stage of recovery but that there is planning ahead for the new reality and the recovery of the economy it's with this in mind that we are humbly hoping to make a contribution and that my colleagues have designed this webinar session that is starting this morning so to kick off uh these the series we have a first panel on identification and authentication in the digital economy a very topical discussion around the suite of legal texts uncetra has developed on electronic communications and electronic signatures in cross-border trade and the work that we're currently developing in working group 4 on electronic identification and trust services in international trade i'm delighted that we have before us to discuss this to discuss these issues a panel of such distinguished and diverse speakers distinguished in their contribution to digital trade and transformation and diverse in their multi-disciplinary backgrounds reflecting the fact that we lie at the junction of law and tech as i had to find out in the exploratory work we've been conducting in the secretariat on this topic but diverse also as far as the geographic locations are concerned and i'm also very pleased to welcome so many uh participants uh we have received over 1 500 responses as of this morning from stakeholders and interested parties from all over the world covering very different geographical regions and among the registered participants i'm happy to let you know that we have 53 percent of females joining us today i have been informed that this figure is still going up as we speak registrations are closed for day one and day two but are still open for the other days which will where for which the registrations will close um two days prior to each session so without further ado i'm going to giving the floor to the moderator for this session my colleague alexander kunzelman alexander is on the team of our working group four on digital identity and trust services and he will be uh joining us and leading you through the discussions of this morning session thank you very much alex you have the floor thank you very much adam um welcome panelists welcome attendees thank you so much for joining us we have as anna mentioned we have uh a very distinguished and diverse panel for you today um my name is alex kunzelman and i am legal officer with the youngster trial secretariat i'm here joined with some colleagues many of the panelists will be familiar with luther castellani also a legal officer here at the uncertain secretariat before introducing the panel i wanted to just lay a few ground rules about how this panel will take place and the discussions that will follow it so first we have the the panel session which will go for slightly over one hour with five presentations from each valve panel then this will be followed by state interventions and then a q a session now on the topic of the state interventions we would like to encourage all states who are joining this webinar to to make use of the state intervention section which will take place as i mentioned immediately following the panel so in about just over one hour's time now to do so um and to ensure that this can this can flow as smoothly as possible i would invite each state wishing to take the floor to use the q and a widget or feature on the cisco webex platform to mention your state name that's all you need to do so that we know that you would like to take the floor you probably at this stage can't see the q and a widget because that will only be activated towards the end of the panel just to ensure that we can we can control the proceedings now as well after the state interventions we'll have a general q a session which will be for all um all attendees for them in which to participate now attendees will be able to use that q a widget as well to write their questions and we will do our best to put those questions to the panelists towards the end of this session and then the session will close after the q a session with with some remarks from angelo career principal legal officer and head of the legislative branch at the answer trial secretariat so as i mentioned panelists will have about 15 minutes to present and i will use a very old-fashioned bell to announce when there is two minutes to go to ensure that we keep to schedule as much as possible so now with that housekeeping out of the way it gives me gives me great pleasure to introduce our first panelist mr andrea cevida who is head of the knowledge management and innovative innovative systems unit within the directorate general for communications networks content and technology of the european union his unit is in charge of knowledge management data analytics web technologies and it governance where he leads the adoption of advanced digital technologies to streamline business processes decision making and collaboration towards an efficient digital administration previously mr savita led the e-government and trust unit within the directive general for communications networks content and technology dge connect and also the task force in charge of the adoption and implementation of the 2014 eu regulation on electronic identification and trust services better known as the eidis regulation and this will be something that i understand that mr savita will be addressing in his presentation before joining the commission in 1993 mr savita worked in industry for nearly eight years as a project manager of international research and development projects in of on decision support systems for environmental civil and industrial emergency risk and risk management so it gives me great great pleasure to pass the floor to mr sabida for his presentation thank you sorry to to interrupt your presentation there it appears that we do have um difficulties with the audio we can hear you but it's very stuttered so um what i suggest that we do is that we might proceed to um to sell mrs ajovi while we just resolve that audio link so again my apologies um if we then if we can pass the uh the floor to um uh mr jovi before doing so um i will just introduce mr ajovi with the view that will come back to um mr savita for his presentation um so um mr mr ajovi is the director of the agency for digital development a government agency responsible for implementing the national digital strategy utilization he also serves as the director general of the information services and systems agency a body responsible for the operational implementation of programs and projects within the framework of development strategies for secure digital information services and systems in benin mr ajavi has more than 30 years experience in the telecommunications and digital solutions sector in a range of managerial technical and commercial roles mostly in africa a telecommunications engineer by training mr ajovi previously held the position of general manager for western and central africa and director of distribution with cisco should be familiar with this platform based in south africa so mr angelo is a pleasure to have you please you have the floor thank you very much and and i do hope that you hear me perfectly well thank you very much thank you thank you um my short presentation sorry i don't have any any slide to show is the uh basically uh some element of experience uh from benin in west africa uh on how on the momentum of digitalization and specifically how kobe 19 crisis has either has affected the momentum uh whatever the the way uh it has changed it so what we want to say first is that uh in benin we created a new momentum for digitalization uh starting 1923 starting 2016. and we did it you know on the top of the states with an action program a government action program that puts digitalization at the core of the development process what has happened with kovid knight is basically that we were put under a lot of pressure uh to deliver some services uh specifically because digitalization has proven to be an option or has proven to provide options not only to government but also to citizen and to and enter company and the way it has benefited us is really to bring some spotlight on how important it is to have a certain level of maturity in terms of digitalization if i can give you some example we were confronted through the continuity of the government action within these days of lockdown of confinement and we put under pressure to make sure that cabinet meetings can still happen using the digital tools and in each ministry that we still have the management uh being able to meet with the minister and carry on with the state business so this was obviously a challenge that we had to face another thing like most of the countries was about education education was a key subject because we had to try to maintain a certain level of education through our schools and your universities in universities for example what has the what has been done is that we obviously can't sell every uh courses and presentation uh with significant number of people students uh in the same room and and we had you know these big uh sessions with thousands of students in in one room uh but we have to put them on removes uh learning and remote teaching uh using one of the well-known platform uh on the market so again we became one of the big user you know almost overnight uh and and of these platforms whether we like it or not it's not ours it's a platform which is hosted uh somewhere in europe in the us but again we were pushed to get to that very quickly and this has contributed to increase the maturity of digitalization in benin and it is important because people have started to do things that they were not doing before and i believe that they will continue doing at least some of it in the future going forward one of the key milestones of what benin has done and has basically chosen for his development is to say do we really know our people in the country are we sure that we can identify these people are we sure that we can reach to these people including in the rural areas including with the people moving around as uh been doing for for centuries now so what we decided to do is to have a digital biometric identification of everybody and we ran that program and within six months we had in excess of 10 million beninis and resident in benin over a population of about 12 million people so we have that database and we are using that database for different purposes main one is to make sure that we have the civil identification of the people so it helped for example we discovered in the process by the way that we had more than two million people with zero identification and i'm talking about not digital and education i'm just talking about identification none of it and it gave us the opportunity to give birth certificates digitalized birth certificate to benin so these people as you can guess are not uh the most uh uh are not the richest people in benin on the contrary they are in the extreme poor uh categories of the population in the now they have an identification a digital notification very quickly at services we had a plan and we had prepared for that but we plan to launch it a bit uh later but we were able to launch very quickly on the end of march uh the uh these services portals and this services services government to citizen it allows now citizens to get a number of administrative papers directly from the portal the government has put in place without traveling from the comfort of their home but also when i say traveling i mean it's not from my home to you know two blocks away uh the uh the uh municipality office it's literally tens of kilometers between my uh home and and any government or administrative office so this was very important and things like your citizenship documents can now be obtained through this portal this portal also was very much orientated to provided companies to the documents they need to run their business properly and they would get that and the ratios of the company for example could be obtained from that from that portal it's important to get to that and the identification process that the digital identification was key to get that because obviously some of these documents are very sensitive and very personal to either the people or to the company through the digital identification we were about to get the people to know who we are dealing with online and who we are giving information who we are getting information from and who we are giving back a document a digitalized document or some other information so this was very important and we can do that on a fully secured way with the approval from the authority in charge of protecting the data the personal data of the citizens it also gave some potentialities to the e-commerce platform they can now use the uh digital notification to make to secure their transaction whether it's a commerce transaction whether it's a finance transaction and we're going further again by putting together a platform that would provide different type of payment and specifically to government institution without i mean through through that platform that platform is not yet operational but i'm sure that you will you will hear about that uh in a few months when it will become fully commerce operational specifically e-commerce has the very key features that it has to have and that features is the confidence in what you are doing in the transaction you are processing and digital is not different than that we have to build that security and that confidence that the people and the companies would trust when they are using these services and for that we are also building our pki platform in order to assist not only in securing the identification the identity of people through [Music] national identity cards passports but also for commercial transactions and financial transactions in the country so what i want to to finish on is the fact that yes visualization is a process it's not an easy process in africa because the level of match and it goes with a lot of uh training a lot of uh basic very basic training sometimes it goes with also the end points that have to be present if you don't have a smartphone if you don't have a laptop if you don't have a tablet then basically you are out of the system and we are working on all that what kovid business has given us which is positive and i acknowledge all the uh the uh the hardship around the kobe business but which is positive is that it has forced us to increase significantly the level of the maturity of digitalization in the country and through that we will see a number of consequences in terms of people a large number of people using digital tools but also the commerce within the country but also with other countries on other commerce platform increasing significantly so this is what i wanted to share with you to start with thank you very much mr anjali thank you very much for that very informative and fascinating presentation um i i must say from from my perspective a couple of takeaways from me were firstly the um the the importance of consultation and that's something certainly that we are we are seeing both in our in the working undertrail and the development of texas but in particular of the technical assistance side uh the need to to bring on board all the populations that will be affected by it uh and secondly that that need for digital education and awareness um certainly uh i think something that um um we we can all be reminded of including um myself at the uh at the end of trial secretariat about exactly what's there what's available and how it was used so i will now proceed with the next panelist we have mr dongwan choi from the republic of korea joining us mr choi is the director of the cyber security planning division within the ministry of science at ict ict of the republic of korea uh he previously served as director of the public relations division as well as the director of cyber threat response division he was involved in the amendment of the act on the protection of information and communications infrastructure and the development of the personal information and information security management system korea's highest and most comprehensive data protection management and privacy certification systems for enterprises so with that it gives me great pleasure to pass the this hand the floor to you mr choi for your presentation thank you very much it's my pleasure to take part in take part in this webinar it's fortunate that we can have where experts can get together to seek wise solution to speed 19 price i will explain the digital signature x which has been revised to vision 3. with the with the basement in i.t we are seeing the spread of the circulator in the however the 19 break 19 outbreak the transition to the contact with society has been accelerated thanks to the practice of social distancing measures and admission in sectors such as education business activities and administration where there has been has not been much of online activities because now we are seeing the expansion of contact resources throughout those industries this expansion of context resources is not a one-off event but is expected to be spread throughout our society as a new paradigm we prefer content with the importance of truth worthiness and security of digital signature which is a way of identification and authentication in the entire world has grown in the amended version of the digital signature act recently revised by the ministry of science and ict measures has been reflected the provide support for safe authentication in the scientific feature first manifesto background on how the digital signature act has been tremendous in the early stage of internet development in korea theater signature x has been enacted in 1999 and public key certificate system has been adapted in order to promote online services such as administration finance and e-commerce and guarantee safety and truth-worthiness of e-commerce over the past 20 centuries 20 years public historically system has been used for many weeks as the measure to identify individuals in the digital world and verify the authenticity of digital documents the public key certificate system has contributed to the public certificate system helps enjoy technology and monthly monopolistic observation causing incoming inconvenience for users in having to activex controls and limited access to distance of emerging technologies this has led to increases demand for public key certificates from korean people the korean government has corrected the feedback from multiple stakeholders and divided them and took measures such as implementing hackathon for reconstruction public reconstruction in public key certificate system in 2018 as a first of efforts to answer the core of citizens to revoke public key certificates digital signature x has been amended in this year which includes revoking committees certificate system and promoting digital signature in the area of closing technologies as your individual autonomous competition of multiple market frames [Applause] the key content of the has superior bigger effects than other laws in the revised digital signature act the evaluation and accreditation tend to determine whether signature authentication protocols are abided by having proofs the standards for operating digital signature authentication process has been established by taking into account of internationally recognized standards in order to increase trustworthiness of digital signature means and provides information for users to ensure they make rational choices the evaluation and accreditation system will be operated by private evaluation and accreditation agencies and will be operated as a certification system based on the voluntary application of digital signature authentication providers third digital signature authentication providers are obliged to certain identification guidance and establish certification protocols the amended digital signature x stipulates accredited digital signature authentication providers to establish and comply with the procedures and method of our id identification and communication process for the responsibility of the third signature authentication providers that has been issued certificate certificate has been stipulated in the case of images in order to use the feature of specification a system for digital significant digital signature authentication profiles to convenience for damages has been established with the amendment base to the theater signature act many changes will take place in the internet usually environment of korea the use of digital signature in various urgent technologies such as blockchain blockchain and biometric technology will be further promoted as to respond to the inclusive use of counter context resources safer and more convenient digital signatures will be launched to make market throughout increasing increased competition among different methods of digital signatures contact with services on the interface including administration healthcare and education will be supported and improved if innovated is each year to use in response to those infectious disease disease like the inhabited the korean government is step of effort to create a general contact environment where inconvenient experience by citizens in their daily lives can be meaning minimized by advancing digital signature services content with services will be provided to people working from home due to self self isolation and group activities such as religious gatherings and networking events this will enable members of the community to avoid feeling disconnected from relationships due to isolation in addition the majors will be taken continuously for basic living rights to be guaranteed amid the pandemic by by actively supporting essential activities of general property such as healthcare and education we will make sure to take further improved solution and share them with other countries based on the counter measures and policy directions of the international community it must stay thank you mr choi thank you so much for that very informative update on recent um legislative developments in korea and just picking up on your last point in terms of sharing that experience with others i'm sure that um from what we've seen with focuses on electronic transactions law in the in the last few months that many states would be interested to take up that offer to hear from the lessons learned from korea and in terms of that you know i characterize an opening up of the of the legislative regime for electronic signatures um particularly we find very interesting uh in view of the current work that we're doing on legal issues related to the digital economy is the use of of blockchain biometric systems for and i have the use of other technology um for digital class signatures and authentication so um i think it's a very timely and interesting uh intervention for for us now the next panelists we have um is carla and oh before i introduce um uh ms vasquez can i ask kindly for all other panelists to mute their lines we are getting the feedback on the line just check i think we are i think we do have news so thank you thank you very much uh so um is the co-founder of jw legal innovation a legal tech firm that helps small and medium-sized enterprises increase their value through digital transformation and empowers the re-evolution of law as a catalyst for digital inclusion and economic growth in law uh in latin america mr vasquez valach is a lawyer with two postgraduate degrees in commercial law and public international law with further studies in electronic communication electronic signatures and e-commerce legal frameworks all very topical for today's discussions during her 20 years professional experience ms vasquev has vasquez has held different positions across the private and public sectors as general deputy director of business policy at the ministry of economy of mexico she successfully implemented different legal reforms on business simplification and operation she also led the renegotiation of the electronic signature provisions of the mexico eu free trade agreement and the digital agenda of the pacific alliance achieving inclusion of cross-border recognition of trust services and it's on that last point that we are particularly uh interested to have um mrs kid's intervention given what we're seeing is a a greater focus on electronic signatures and cross-border recognition in the digital trade context so um with that i'm delighted to pass the floor over to uh um to to present thank you thank you thank you very much for for the invitation alexander luca it's an honor to be here and share this panel with all the experts uh thanks for the opportunity and i would like to to to share with you uh some important aspects that in the private sector point of view uh uh as a as a legal firm in this um challenging um activity that i am now doing because of it because it's different when would you work from a public perspective and and then when you go to private sector you confront different challenges and you you have to come to to go with the problematics that a company has in the day-date so um identification and authentication in the digital economy is a very important issue that actually is discussing in the in the general context of a company but first uh and perhaps you already know in latin america we are not dealing so good with the covet events i was looking at the the last um prediction of luis alberto moreno the idv adv group he said that the region will experience a deep recession because of the the covet pandemic so we have a lot of challenges we have to rethink our daily life from work to school to entertain all our life is completely have a new a new life given the highly contagious nature of the quran of idols countries have been forced to resort to extreme measures including quarantine lockdowns and widespread business closure companies are trying to continue and to fulfill commitments with clients with employees with suppliers with vendors with partners it's a huge challenge for for economic for companies and more challenging is that in latin america we have almost 90 percent of our companies are microsmall and and and enterprise so that's another factor that it's in in the in the game and in the public sector uh the public administration has to insurance continuity of the services so if we and analyze from the private sector perspective and the public sector perspective there are huge huge challenges for latino america both sectors are considering how to function online and how to function online if it includes to to have this uh environment electronic environment that combines legal certainty and security so uh mexico how how how are we doing in in digital uh experience well almost 10 years ago we initiate a digital strategy a national digital strategy we have implemented the model of electronic signatures and also the electronic ecommerce in our legal framework but if i am truly honest with you because of a culture aspect companies and government won't give the importance of digital environment since 2000 um the the main efforts that we have done on and digital transformation have have been done on five years ago for example an an important a single window where companies can fully incorporate in online basis with no fee he associates and no fail notaries in included in this process it's a it's a policy and a legal reform that has been done since 2016. so before that companies didn't have another option that go fully the traditional process paper basis another important digital advance in it looks like it provoked um several additional police electronic policies was the invoice that our tax authority implement in 2017. so that leader aspect really helps now that companies are really more confidence and using electronic means and now because of the the problematic that represent this um social distance companies our clients are asking us how can i go through electronic with legal send certainty and with the confidence that my contract my document that i was i were i will sign electronity will have the same effect that those that i use on paper so uh in a general context in mexico we all already have all the legal framework of as i said the electronic signatures and of course the evidence to form for formation of contracts and intentional intention of the party equivalent to the web ink signature it's already there but now the question is which kind of electronic signature should i and that's another huge debate in the community because we have electronic signatures we have um like pin electronic signatures perhaps a pen in our mobile device or in our computer also we have pki infracture in mexico that public sector and tax authorities give additional recognition because it's a electronic advanced signature so there's a common misunderstanding that there's only one type of electronic signature that could be used in mexico with pla with legal effect that it's pki infraction and that's not right so as a legal firm we have to get orientated companies and give them the the sufficient elements to decide which method is the method that really uh is light of the circumstances of the operation that he has to do and we have to include an a very strict analysis about the type of document that they are going to find we have to allow this kind of electronic signature help me to identify the parties and both parties manifest their consent to the use of the electronic signature and of course all our clients are are very worried that the documents that are cannot execute electronic will be executed electronically if i go to a judge will be effective will be interpreted as a legal document so that's the challenges that we face when we are um in these uh crucial circumstances with soviet um challenges but um i realized that that the the in commercial sector the private sector now is very very interesting in go through the use of electronic signatures and either electronic id independent education um last i would like to share with you also the the this effort that mexico and chile peru and colombia made with alliance pacific alliance because it's an important effort that it's going through it's not done but they are willing to to make um this uh complete um integration because they as a level of of a member mandate they established that the there will be an electronic signature cross-border recognition between the four countries and it was something easy to do because the four countries have ate in fracture but it doesn't mean and this is very important it doesn't mean that doesn't recon excite other kind of methods of electronic signatures but governments will interact with this um cross-border recognition for example in custom issues or documents that will be transferring some information for for importers exporters so this is a important uh photo and regional regional integration that it's it's good to know that we as a as a country are willing to do so in that's the general context of what's happening in mexico regarding electronic signatures and of course if there's an a question i will be delighted to to answer thank you thank you so much carla uh for that that presentation which just avoided me having to use the bell so i i'm delighted but also delighted for the um the the overview of the of the fact that the i suppose the disconnect between the disconnected the lag between the legal developments and the actual putting into practice within within the legal within the business community and also for that overview of what's happening at this moment within the pacific alliance again if i if i may before we introduce the next panel just a couple of takeaways i have from that both the the the the technology neutrality the importance of technology neutrality um that you mentioned with by with your references and questioning of the the um attention to pki as well as and this picks up on something that serge said earlier about the education so when i understand from missouri's contribution about the education of the the general public in being in a digital id scheme we also see the need of course to to educate the business community in the use of these electronic tools in their in their business practices so that's um thank you thank you very much i hope i'm correcting those takeaways um what we will do now is i am very mindful that we still have waiting very patiently and again apologies to andreas savita our first panelist due to some technical issues with the sound what i would like to do is to um to pass the floor now back to andreas avida to see how we go with the the microphone but i'm afraid if we still have problems with the the microphone what we might need to do is to um is to to stop the presentation and then move on to our final palace for the time being so um andrea um i i give the floor to you with my fingers crossed that everything's okay with the market you're in okay i hope you can hear me now we are absolutely delighted okay and thank you so much you're very welcome i apologize really for all the problems that i've we have gone through before and i i i try now to to go back to my presentation which i i hope you can see so um first of all i would like really to to uh unc trial for organizing the event as i said earlier i hope you heard it and for the work that you have been doing to promote the adoption of digital technology to support trust confidence and predictability legal predictability which are key ingredients for global trade in this respect what i would like to do today is just to share what is indeed the european perspective which to some extent i would say builds on longer than 20 years i would say effort to introduce digital tools we started back in the 90s with the directive on 99 on on electronic signatures and before that we had a number of projects that working on on i would say interoperability of electronic signatures and pki related technologies to make a digital certificate to help transactions i remember when i joined the commission nt in 93 actually one of the first project in 94 was about uh belating in in the in the maritime domain and uh you know this goes back you know some 27 years so why i'm saying this because i mean you know for one reason uh i think that of course i mean we have to be all i would say aware of how difficult the confinement of the crisis related to kobe 19 was a for the entire world for people for mankind but i must say that in this domain uh kovid did much more in a few weeks in a couple of months than perhaps might have done in terms we might have achieved in 20 years of pushing and i'm saying this and not because of course i mean things happen overnight as i said we have a legal framework on electronic signature in europe since 20 years 20 years actually 21 years and we have actually since 2016 the yada's regulation which has been an enhancement of the legal framework to indeed make even more operational and more usable uh electronic signature electronic sales electronic registered delivery services time stamping electronic identification which had been in the past but you know changing the mind of people changing the habit i mean you have been talking about colleagues before about educating the business it is about indeed educating the business and let's not forget in the europe we have about a bit lower than 30 million uh small and medium enterprises in europe and for and in the country where uh where where the country where i come from we have a 98 in terms of numbers organizations that are very small enterprises of course i mean these shows this to say that i would say a legal frameworks can help technology certainly helps but then is the education and the the understanding of what is indeed that it is available to us that make the things to change the habit and to some extent the convert and the announcement that i show here in my slides do indeed pertain to those push that we had received during the confinement to go digital because digital was the only solution i'm saying this because of course i mean you know in the 20 years plus and since 2016 in europe we have been pushing in regulatory frameworks and here just just give you a bit of a snapshot where we have pushed the adoption of electronic signature for instance electronic cells but also electronic identifications which in europe is indeed recognized across border and as legal value up to the level of in-person verification of the the identity of the person that is relying on on such electronic identification means which are notified under the others regulation despite the pushing of these the resistance the i would say the um i would say attitude not to change because digital is a mysterious word was as such that all the the activities that we have done to modify the anti-money laundry directive to modify the payment service directive to modify the company loader regulation to make for instance companies to be able to rely in a way that is legally predictable and enforceable across the jurisdiction because europe is a region we are not i would say a federal a federal union we are a union so member states retain their responsibilities a lot of the competences in particular in the area of electronic identity reside in the sovereign under what i would say stays under sovereign uh sovereign responsibility of the member states but nonetheless andre servida is an italian citizen he's a european citizen he has been working in italy he's been working in belgium in the netherlands in the uk and he has the right to be able to conduct his organization his his his transactions and complete his his duties in a way that is seamless secure trustworthy and frictionless and this is what we have there you see they are the three the ones only principle across border we have in europe the first religious nation that allows a citizen and the company to conclude a number of procedures in a way that will we we can indeed provide or i would say we can make the evidence that are needed for the conclusion of the procedure like you know changing the the the the writing or uh in a country to rely on the automatic i would say fetching of data at the request of the user with the consent of the user based on the roaming of the electronic identification from one country to another i'm belgian i'm italian i live in belgium if i want to change my my i would say my residence and i need to provide a certificate about my age for instance or about my marital status or whatever i can as of 2023 activity technical system that will empower the administration in belgium with my mandate to make a request in the countries in italy where the my my my my authentic data are are about my my burden are indeed stored to fetch those data which will be checked by me and will be provided to the public by the public to the public administration under my i'm under my control and this is possible because the identity that i can use online to authenticate to the authority in belgium is indeed recognized because it's issued or is indeed i would say guaranteed if i'm sso from from the italian government i think that this is where we we were heading this is the vision but to get there indeed as i said you know if we didn't have i would say um these unfortunate crisis we would have been much much i would say more behind why because it is only when we were confined we have seen that indeed as the colleagues before said that digital is an opportunity digital is a way to remain free despite the confinement is a way to make ourselves to exercise our rights and our obligation in a way that is a fully compliant and this is why you know we in europe we won't even to go beyond of course i mean as i said the others regulation provide a legal framework but as it had been i would say alluded to in previous presentation there is nothing like a legal framework which is not supported by a technological infrastructure we are talking about the digital we are talking about not a single way of doing things but we are talking about federated solutions because nobody may indeed i would say like to define in a multi-jurisdiction region like like europa what should or may be the identity of a person the identity in my country is notionally different from the identity in in sweden or or i would say in in in austria nevertheless one we are all of us a citizen that have rights obligation and possibility to exercise our freedoms across the different countries and of course the others has put the foundational element but what we see even more emerging is how digital identity and electronic signature could be used for instance to complete in a very automatic way steps like know your customers procedure under the anti-money laundering directly or customer due diligence under the anti-laundry direct and once it's done in country a for company for banks whatever everything that is related to the identity can be roamed from one country to another country this is what i we have done as as an activity in the context of this digital onboarding portability kyc why this is important because if indeed we can make it in in the in regulatory framework like the one related to banking and payments then we are reaching what is indeed very close to the experience of of of our of our citizens and that is the lesson learned that we have indeed i would say very much very much i would say learn through the years which makes at the political level even more urgent to go even beyond what has been i would say the original ambition of the others regulation and try to operationalize db the trust anchor that we have in the regulation in order to come up with something that will make a citizen and businesses because let's not forget the electronic the the other regulation covers in relation to electronic identification both private citizen and the businesses so any sort of identification which might be associated to the i would say with two legal entities which are uh which are registered in europe so the vision is the one of providing european digital identity that will make it possible for citizens to be even more in power than they are today in relation to few things minimizing the data which might have to be shared or which might have to be to be provided in order to complete fulfill authentication or audit our identification purposes which are needed to conduct a transaction this is very much the case for instance in any value related transaction but not only also in in in any transaction that might be associated to management of sensitive data could it be something related to health could it be something related to the exercise of of rights or obligation that we have as a private as a citizen of of of the country and of course i mean to do this we need to to be up to what is indeed that the technology allow us to to do which is indeed make it possible to manage only those credentials those properties those attributes that makes the intel interaction the secure interaction or the secure authentication possible if in order to get access to some service i need to prove my age or being of an age that is above a certain threshold and the need to prove that i'm a european citizen and i need to prove the time i would say a charter engineer i don't need to disclose what is my my gender i don't need to disclose where i was born i don't need to disclose where indeed i'm registered or where i live and i think that that is where we have indeed this motto that indeed digital identity should speak for us and not about us it should provide the digital identity should be managed as the i would say the channel or has the means that allow us to serve the purpose of providing those information which are needed to the transaction for instance you know to the extreme we can think that once we have done for instance a kyc in europe in the jurisdiction where there is an overarching legal framework which makes the kyc to be to be applicable in the same way more or less i would say with some caveats across the 27 member states what is related to identity which means to the person not the risk profile which is more related to the way in which activities or services may be offered once i've done the kyc to open a bank account in country a i should be entitled to allow the credential yes you have the koc to be shared with another bank which will actually could enforce or could enforce a decay that i'm relying upon should something goes wrong there is no point for me to provide the same type of information to open a bank account you know in country and country b i'm i'm proved to be at the end to be the right underserved which is legitimately i would say recognized will have all the identity related attributes that are needed in order to open a bank account then i should yes use a kind of a yes trusted yes which could be ported because of the identification roaming so i can identify myself in sweden in italy in france in spain in the uk in the same way as i do identify myself online in europe i think that that is important because the convenience part is a safeguard for security the convenience at least in this respect is where indeed we need to be one and this is where and i come 30 seconds to deal with what is the view the ahead the head is indeed i would say to push even more towards i would say verifiable credential and the you the need to make a technology to support the provisioning of attributes and and and credentials which are associated to verified identities which of course the others can indeed i would say i would say very much provide in europe and that is perhaps a model that we are indeed promoting very much an international level of course at the uncertain you're very much aware of it because the colleagues i've started myself with the colleagues they are continuing but we are doing also at the wto level and in international initiatives like the financial action task force why because here we're talking about digital to be a tool a means to make citizen businesses much more capable of expressing themselves and accessing in a secure accountable transparent and predictable way services that otherwise might indeed i would say just be provided with a bit of i would say um unclarity last words i would point to this study that the etsy so the european standardization body has done on the pki based the trust services because they have done their tour the world to see what is indeed that is up there and how indeed global trust can be built and with this i conclude my presentation thank you very much for your time andrea thank you very much for that um that presentation again apologies so thank you very much for your flexibility in a way i'm i'm glad that we had your presentation just now because it is a very nice segue into our next panelist uh thomas smittinghoff who will pick up on the discussions looking forward to perhaps future work uh within networking group four and and other types of their global efforts in the area of electronic identification um before doing so i suppose the two things to me there is the um we take notes of the electronic id speaking for us and not about us i think that's a nice little map from um and i suppose the other thing for us to all be aware of is the uh the what electronic id does for transforming transactions and easy business um that's certainly another takeaway um so i will with that it gives me that great present pleasure to introduce our final panelist thomas smittinghoff he is of counsel at the u.s law firm locklord based in chicago mr smittinghoff's practice focuses on information law and electronic business activities where he advises on emerging legal issues regarding electronic transactions identity management privacy information security and online authentication he is also actively involved in developing legislation and public policy in the areas of electronic business at state and national level within the united states moreover he has served as an advisor to the u.s delegation to onto trouble where he participated in negotiating the united nations convention on the use of electronic communications in international contracts and in developing the modern law on electronic transferable records most recently he has served as an expert engaged by the anti-trial secretary in its work supporting the current text being developed by working group four on identity management and trust services on which we may hear about a little bit more about very soon i should add that last year mr smithinghoff was recognized as a thought leader in data law by who's who legal for extensive experience in data privacy protection security and technology media and telecommunications matters now before handing over the floor to mr smittinghoff i just want to remind states who are in the room who would like to make an intervention after the panelists to please do so by identifying the state name in the q a section which will be actually activated during mr smittinghof's presentation so with that housekeeping matter i'm delighted to present mr smith off the base tom you have this law thank you and my thanks to the secretariat for uh the opportunity to present today um i would like to focus on the subject of identity management uh in particular on three things first i'd like to spend a few minutes talking about the goal of private sector identity management systems uh generally in e-commerce as well as responding to the covet issues secondly i'd like to talk about the importance of a governance framework to the operation of identity systems and then thirdly i'd like to talk about the opportunity and the challenge i guess for onsitrol to provide the sort of missing part of the overall legal framework that's required for identity systems to operate effectively and to flourish in the marketplace let me start with just two a clarification on two terms that i'll be using identity management and identity management systems identity management is a set of processes and procedures that really focus on two basic questions you know who are you that's the identification part and how can you prove it or in other words how can you prove that the information about a particular person relates specifically to you particularly when you are operating remotely and that's the authentication part of the process and for activity management systems i think it's important to recognize that an identity management system involves a group of participating entities all acting in ance with a set of rules and that set of rules is the governance framework that i'll talk about in a few minutes uh and and that and they utilize a set of processes policies and procedures that are specified in those rules for the purpose of either providing or using identity management services whereby an individual can identify himself typically remotely to any number of unaffiliated entities and the uh if you look at the global passport system that's perhaps an example of an identity management system with passports issued by various countries that are then relied upon by other countries for purposes of allowing individuals entry into the country uh it's also analogous to the credit card system where you have numerous different players participating in an overall system in that case for purposes of granting credit but you've got a large number of parties globally all acting in ance with the uniform set of rules to process those credit transactions identity management is important of course for its role in remote electronic commerce uh particularly things like signatures contracting online access and so forth i would like to emphasize also that it's very very important for data security purposes as granting access to anyone to a system obviously requires that you know who that person is and what they are allowed to do but the covet pandemic that we are currently dealing with has really accelerated the need for remote identity management i think almost all of the speakers have have really already made this point um in fact i've been working from home for the past several months uh it really is becoming the new norm in many cases uh and so much more is being done remotely because we really need to uh and so the overall push for electronic commerce that we have seen in the past is only getting accelerated uh by you know by the um the copa challenge that we're seeing we're also seeing uh that kova is introducing new identity requirements and there's been a lot of discussion uh and of course there are many privacy and data protection issues to be resolved but uh there's much talk about the need for new data attributes about an individual such as whether they have tested negative or positive whether they have the code antibodies and so forth as well as discussion regarding credentials that might for example certify that a particular individual has tested negative or is otherwise coveted free and of course over the the next months we will see many many more discussions regarding these kinds of issues but it really emphasizes the need for adaptability in identity systems generally i would say the private sector is in a unique position to provide identity systems generally for purposes of e-commerce and other electronic activities uh it's it's really leading the way developing a variety of different types of systems to support different types of economic activities uh it's experimenting with with all kinds of different models including a variety of user-centric models designed to allow the individual to control the data for his their own identity and so forth so from many respects it's the private sector is leading the way and i think ultimately will be the primary source of identity and identity transactions for the purposes of e-commerce it obviously will never replace government foundational identity but from from a commercial perspective uh the private sector i think will really be the key driving force uh similarly we're seeing the same on with respect to the covet issues i think the private sector is typically going to be best able to react quickly to the challenges uh with the adaptability and the flexibility of the speed that's needed to do that uh and as an example i would point to the covet 19 credentials initiative that's currently underway to try to deal with those issues on an international basis uh and it's an initiative that's that's really open to anyone as far as i'm aware but the challenge with any identity system is that it's a complex multi-party system and again think about the credit card systems that you're familiar with payment systems they involve multiple participants and multiple roles that need to be filled and they involve numerous and often critical processes of identification authentication encryption and so forth that need to be accomplished and need to be accomplished correctly so in order to put together an identity system uh there needs to be a basis upon which to coordinate the activities of all of the participants and in effect make sure they do the right thing at the right time the solution uh that we see there both in the public sector and in the private sector uh is what i will refer to here as a governance framework a governance framework is is nothing more than a written set of rules it's uniquely designed for a specific identity system and those rules address the business technical and legal issues necessary to the operation of that identity system and most importantly those rules are legally binding on all of the participants in the identity system uh in in discussion you may have seen the term governance framework but it's also referred to by several other terms including trust framework ski rules operating rules assistant rules and so forth but again it's analogous to the to the rules that the credit card systems or the payment systems operate under today its purpose is first and foremost to coordinate all of the different parts and pieces and entities about so that they operate correctly so that the system functions but it also serves to define the rights and responsibilities of the participants and most importantly from a from an e-commerce perspective or really from any perspective the purpose of a governance framework is to make sure that this specific system is considered trustworthy for the purpose for which it is uh set up so that's going beyond um merely functional and and kind of stepping it up to the level necessary to be considered trustworthy by the people who would use it now where do governance frameworks come from in public sector systems they are typically set out in statutes the ad act in india the identity documents back to the estonia regulation you are all examples of public sector statutes or regulations that fill that role uh in the private sector of course it's done by contract uh and i've set out here some examples of various um trust frameworks or governance frameworks uh that are available on the internet and but again the parties have to agree to those by contract in order to participate in the system this is just a quick overview of the types of issues that a governance framework might address and and i've grouped them into business and technical issues on the left and legal uh contractual based legal issues on the right and again in a private sector system the participants would agree to these um different would agree to the governance framework setting out these rules as necessary for the role that the participant is is filling um so what we have though is is a key issue with respect to the overall legal framework and that is that the governance framework that governs a particular identity system must comply with existing law just like any contract must comply with existing law so at the bottom of this slide i you know i included three boxes uh representing the governance frameworks of three different identity systems um and just to emphasize that each of those contract-based governance frameworks has to comply with whatever existing law applies in that case including uh toward law privacy law any covalent restrictions if it's involved in that processing and so forth uh but it's it's sort of just a basic fact that any contract needs to comply with existing law the problem for online remote identity systems private sector identity systems is that existing law also raises a number of problems that they have to deal with in some cases it presents barriers to what they want to do in other cases ambiguities that make the application of existing law somewhat unclear in the context of an identity system uh some cases rules may be inappropriate or in some cases they may literally be prohibited from doing what they want to do so i think the challenge for uncetral is to develop an instrument uh that recognizes that each of these private sector identity systems is different and unique and needs to be governed by its own government governance framework so this instrument that uncitral would develop needs to address any problems that existing law creates for identity systems that cannot be addressed via their own governance framework and it's that sort of gap that is really critical in addressing here so that the bottom line is the uncitral instrument needs to facilitate flexible and adaptable governance frameworks for a variety of different identity system solutions in the private sector it needs to allow the private sector to experiment um and to work out whatever needs it has and and whatever system will address those needs that are best for its particular circumstances so what onset is working on and and needs to really finish is the the middle level in this chart uh it's some sort of instrument that will help states develop identity systems law that fills the gap between what governance frameworks uh do best and and do best for the unique type of system that they are developing and the problems that are caused by existing law and it's filling that gap which can help facilitate the operation of governance frameworks for different identity systems and really help promote uh online identification and promote the e-commerce uh and online activity that we would like to like to encourage um so it's it's it's critical that um each governance framework in each unique identity system uh work out for itself what rules are appropriate and it's only where it can't do that basically or it needs help from an intervening law which i call identity systems law that the uncetral instrument would help fill in that gap in this kind of process and just to conclude in the the last slide i just listed some of the types of things that the uncentral instrument might address some of the types of issues that seem to be coming up with identity systems that cannot completely be addressed by the evidence framework that those systems put together um and of course stating these is much easier than working out the solution to many of these issues and there are presumably several others but it's it's filling that gap that i think offers uh both a challenge but an opportunity for unsettled to come up with sort of the missing piece on the legal framework that's necessary for private sector identity systems recognizing that it's really the private sector identity systems that are going to facilitate much of the commercial activities that we see today uh so with that i will conclude my remarks and turn it back to alex thank you tom thank you very much and that last point i think is something for us to bear in mind in this next section on perhaps on on that states they wish to address or people from the from the floor in the q a function so again thank you very much tom for that very interesting um uh presentation so now is the time for us to move from the panel uh session to the state intervention session uh with that i'm delighted to to pass the floor back to um your chair to in um to invite those states of expressing interest to to do so i see that we have a number of states that have already um uh requested to take the floor and i'd like you to call on them and do everything thank you alex but i would like first to to thank to each panelist for their interesting and illustratory presentation saying that i would like now to open the floor for state interventions i have on my list the distinguished representative of children chile has asked the floor please thank you can you hear me please yes perfectly good because we have some problems before and thank you chair for giving me the phone let me first congratulate the secretary for organizing this series of webinars which we are sure will demonstrate the relevance of constitutional major legislative tools in the economic recovery efforts of countries and hours affected by the public pandemic the topic of the webinar this webinar in particular is very relevant for the international trade factors of our country and region from others powerful and medium enterprises for them to be able to use online sales platforms for their transactions is very important and more so in the current circumstances and that those transactions are done in a safe and secure environment as well mentioned by mrs carla digital economy is also an issue that is being discussed within the pacific alliance and if i'm not wrong also the past we can see that what the finalists have told us today we will be useful also for the discussions that are taking place in the working group 4 on the coming of the commission on electronic commerce thank you thank you again mr chairman thank you very much and now i will pass the floor to the representative of singapore good day can you hear me yes thank you first firstly we would like to uh uh congratulate and and thank uh the institutional secretary for organizing this uh series of virtual panels um it's been it is a clear demonstration of the relevance of the nc