German labour eyes online authentication
Kable
Published: 28 Jun 2004 14:15 BST
Germany's pensions administrator and labour department are implementing online authentication systems in a deal worth almost €10m (£6.7m).
The Federal Insurance Institution for Salaried Employees in Berlin has signed a deal, announced on 25 June, 2004, to provide electronic smartcards for its staff and set up a trust centre to verify online transactions for Germany's statutory pension insurance scheme. The centre will also be used by the Regional Insurance Institution of the province of Rhenania and the other 22 German regional insurance bodies.
The German Federal Labour Office has also signed a deal with SBS for online authentication services as part of its Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
Digital signatures are a cornerstone of Germany's BundOnline 2005 strategy to put federal services online. The latest deals will enable more than 60,000 German public sector staff to authenticate their electronic communications and use legally binding digital signatures for online documents.
It will take SBS about a year to implement the new systems, according to a company official. The deal is worth almost €10m for the firm, which is setting up a development centre in Berlin for secure e-government. This is its first such contract in Germany, although SBS has a number of similar contracts in Italy, including a smartcard based authentication system, signed in January 2004, with the Italian defence ministry.
Germany's federal government has been working on digital signatures for some time. In January 2002 it announced the introduction of electronic signatures for more than 200,000 staff, following laws to make digital signatures legally binding. Under the country's BundOnline project, almost 400 government services are due to be available online by 2005.
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