To review the subject of digital identification technologies I needed firstly to separate two big issues in it: legal and technological. Structurally one of it depends on the other but in theory to review them we need to have their independent development and should separate one from other. It is also required to identify the target of this review, as the literature of authentication systems is enormous and it is impossible to completely full review it in this small report. Nevertheless the most important studies are discussed below. We are focusing on new technology of digital identification in the age of e-business and e-governance. Defining the objective of the research we are aiming to identify the turning-point when most of authors start to write about stupendous demand of new authentication systems and define the new technology for these systems. Some authors define the goals for these systems, others mainly describe systems and operations.

The main study that is very closely related to this research is so far an article Electronic Government: Towards New Forms of Authentication, Citizenship and Governance, (2006). According to the authors the great demand of authentication systems in systems of e-government and e-commerce consumers’ relations. The author argues that the design of Identity managements (IDM) systems should not be examined because of the technical issues in the framework of establishment better e-government or e-commerce systems but also as wider and fundamental exploration and incorporation of social design issues concerning more deep relations within consumers and citizens with governments and companies (Lips et al., 2006). Of course, their work pays attention to the fear that any new IDM brings with the possibilities of society surveillance, which always exists while integrating these new systems. Most interesting presentation in the article is the framework of the project used in the research. Project “Privacy and Identity Management for Europe” (PRIME) has been developed and implemented by group of scholars who aim to identify the needs of authentication systems in Europe and to find technical solutions for it. The most interesting achievement of PRIME project is the establishment of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). PET mainly offers personal data control to users rather than to service providing organisations and, at the same time, protects the security of e-relationships through the use of encryption techniques. This focuses on users definitely determines the future of authentication technologies: User-Centric identity management. Here the systems offer users to define the degree of anonymity they would like to have in e-service relations.¹ In the third chapter of this article the author go for IDM innovations and describe mainly future IDM systems and nowadays developments. They state that this development will bring grate citizen empowerment and perfect democracy and it would reinforce powerful actors in becoming ‘bigger brothers’ than ever before. The most important part of work is the further analysis of two lenses on modern authentication systems policy design: the Government Gateways Project, UK and DigiD initiative, the Netherlands, both of which are e-government’s identifications systems. Examining these projects from Technical and Internal Governments Lenses she came to conclusion that technical standardisation of these new authentication and identity management systems for e-service provision may appear to be an obvious development, with similar policy design but different methods of implementations.

Here we can clearly see the importance of researching and developing of Digital Identification Technologies to establish good eGovernance in EU.

Albert Poghosyan

1. LIPS, M., OII, TAYLOR, J. & J. O., O. (2006) Electronic Government: Towards New Forms of Authentication, Citizenship and Governance. Oxford Internet Institute. [↩]

In my opinion technology of electronic governance will revolutionize social communication in very near future. Although there are lots of aspects in eGovernance and eGovernment Systems, I am going to focus mainly on authentication systems as it is one of the most important issues in Modern Internet Society.

As this is the first post devoted to this category it should contain my vision of the future and perspectives on Authentication systems which, actually, I dream to develop. I am strongly sure that these systems will change the life of all people on earth – maybe turning it to be easier.

Authentication systems are created by nowadays authorities and developing organizations based on super databases. I am confident that this way of development is wrong. Authentication systems of the future should not be based on databases at all. Instead of developing systems with super defence, user-centric systems must be created and all information should be carried by a person. During each authentication transaction the main information should be transferred from user (citizen) to server (organization). This process should be authorized by the government by special authorization body. The Government should only provide information for authorization process but services should be provided by different companies on the market bases.

The authorization process should be conducted on “Two-factor authentication” principle but besides password or PIN that should be provided, the user also should have an URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) and a hardware which generates the codes. This will be the cornerstone of this future system. The hardware, provided by company who supports authorization services, will connect to citizens’ general database on the moment of the transaction. The user will keep his info on this universal hardware as well as it will be cryptographic. The hardware will provide encryptic code which will be transferred to organization with user information and must also be authorizied by governmental database at the same time (during the transaction). So in this case the government should not keep all citizens’ private information in one place and citizens can easily manage it. This concept will replace passports and all other biometric authentications in future and will help to fight against all kinds of frauds.

I completely understand that in order to express these sort of thoughts (or better to say imaginations), one must have an extraordinarily sharp-sighted prospection. At least it is all I have for now.

Albert Poghosyan

With the development of Internet Economy the importance of representing the citizen’s identity has been raised increasingly.

Nowadays, lots of websites providing different kinds of online services as well as even governmental agencies providing core services on the Internet are in need of very strong and user friendly authentication systems. This should mainly help in decreasing the Internet fraud and increasing user confidence and probably even e-citizens’ participation in eGovernance processes. This very important issue has its own history and evolution, which brought the author of this paper to conducting empirical research in this field.
Authentication is the act of establishing or confirming something (or someone) as authentic, that is that claims made by or about the thing are true (Wikipedia, 2006). Authenticating a person may mean to identify that the person is who he/she says he/she is. In case of organizations they can present their Trust Certificate, but in case of a person – it is just impossible without special technologies. However, in many cases the authentication is the most important stage of Internet Interaction. For a long time authentication procedures in the area of service provision were, of course, paper-based (even now some companies request scanned copy of passport by email). And, probably, the best examples of self identification were passport or driving licence. Meanwhile with the arrival of digital technologies to our society that enabled the development of online services, it became clear that new forms of authentication are required for situations in which the digital user’s identity must be checked as part of an assessment of service entitlement. In last decade lots of complicated systems have been developed aiming to solve this issue. But let’s go a little deeper into evolution of these systems.

Read more

My learning experience on the module “Key Issues in Information Systems Development””

The most extraordinary work that I have done so far this year was the paper entitled by me as “Locked in Technologies in Information Systems Development”. Even if I do not know what I will get from this paper¹ but I am sure that this is probably a bigging of something new although I wish it to be a begining of a new book. So, please, try not to be too critical as these are just my thoughts and imaginations…

Introduction to any work is similar to preparation for diving on big submarine. This introduction will allow the reader to make his time to prepare for difficult diving into the world of technologies and human rationalism. So, please, prepare every single thought and all ideas that you have about these subjects, as the journey into deep ocean of Technology and the Information Systems will bring you immediately to complete denial of reality and will probably change some of your thoughts.

Read more

1. I am talking about the mark [↩]