The annual “Electronic Signature and Trust Services” information day (“Signature Day”) organized by the TeleTrusT Association has been presenting the broad spectrum of electronic signing processes and applications since 2010. It is regarded as the most important event for taking stock of the current use of electronic signatures and the use of trust services in Germany.
Signature Day brings together representatives from business, research, administration and politics in a unique way. Among them are mathematicians, computer scientists, lawyers, business economists and journalists. The participants exchange ideas in a critical and constructive dialog and gather valuable impulses and suggestions for their respective work over the day.
The Information Day 2024 will focus on EU Regulation 2024/1183 (“eIDAS2”), which came into force on 20 May and created a framework for European digital identity. It is the long-awaited revision of EU Regulation 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services (eIDAS).
The revised regulation marks a paradigm shift for digital identity in Europe: people and businesses across the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA) will have universal access to secure and trusted electronic identification and authentication.
The digital wallets for European digital identities (EU Digital Identity Wallets, EUDIW) should enable citizens to prove their identity and exchange electronic documents from their wallets easily via their smartphone. Member states must also accept wallets from other member states, allowing citizens in other EU and EEA countries to access online services with their national digital identification without having to use other identification methods or unnecessarily disclose personal data. In addition, EU Regulation 2024/1183 creates the legal basis for several new qualified and non-qualified trust services, for example to attest the attributes.
The European Commission has set itself the goal of 100% of EU citizens having access to a digital identity by 2030. The success of the European framework for digital identity is not completely guaranteed and there may be further delays. Germany lags far behind many other EU countries in the use of digital identities – only 22% of people with a valid ID have used the eID function at least once by mid-2024. The proportion of people with a functional online ID card is only 39%. (Data from the pre-publication of the segment in Digital Identities of the eGovernment Monitor of Initiative D21, published on July 10, 2024 – some other important findings from this report in a LinkedIn article by Jörg Lenz).
In Germany, a neutral, cross-application ecosystem is to be created for digital identities to enable the interaction of providers of procedures for identifying and managing digital identities with established providers of qualified trust services such as Namirial.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior and Home Affairs has launched a comprehensive public consultation process via the agency for leap innovations SPRIND, which also includes an innovation competition (“Funke Challenge EUDI Wallet Prototypes”). The aim is to develop and test prototypes of various wallet implementations for the most trustworthy, user-friendly and universally applicable European Digital Identity Wallets (EUDIW) for users in Germany. These wallets should also be compatible with applications in the EU and beyond and be usable for both natural persons and organizations. Phase 2 will run between September and December 2024, with phase 3 ending in June 2025. The information day will shed light on the status of the innovation competition.
Work on the technical details, standards and best practices for the provision of wallet attributes and functions is in full swing. Business models for private providers of wallets and trust services and their sustainability are under discussion.
The information day will provide a comprehensive overview of the progress of work on the legal and technical framework and its implementation:
- At the end of April 2024, the European Commission set November 21, 2024 as the date for the adoption of the implementing acts for the EU Digital Identity Wallet, including electronic attribute attestation.
- Implementing measures for additional qualified trust services, such as electronic archiving, the creation and management of qualified remote electronic signatures, the validation of advanced electronic signatures based on qualified certificates and electronic file management, are also in progress and should be available by May 21, 2025.
Comprehensive insights into the progress and challenges of past and future implementation will be provided in presentations and discussions by experts from:
- Ministries and other government agencies involved in the regulation and implementation of eIDAS and related topics – including the eIDAS Expert Group, the European Commission
- Institutions involved in the development and establishment of technical standards, such as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
- Organizations responsible for the evaluation and certification of technologies and services.
- Research institutes and innovation platforms working on the development of new technologies and prototypes in the field of digital identities.
- Organizations in the field of public administration that use or plan to use digital identity and trust services
- Private sector companies involved in large-scale European programs to test pilot applications for digital identities in wallets, including technology companies, banks and financial service providers.
The reintroduction of a service for resetting and activating PINs for electronic identities on the ID card following the abrupt stop of the free PIN reset letter at the end of 2023 due to high drop-out rates and insufficient funding to continue the service in 2024, as well as the Money Laundering Video Identity Regulation presented as a draft in spring 2024, are also expected to be topics at the information day.
Last but not least, the information day will shed light on the extent to which eIDAS regulation has been supported in Germany to date and which regulatory changes make the introduction of signatures, seals and other services easier or more difficult. Among other things, the Bureaucracy Relief Act, which provides for changes to the formal requirements in some laws – such as the Verification Act and the Temporary Employment Act – will be examined.
From recent Signature Days, PDF files of the following presentations of project reports on the integration of Namirial electronic signature solutions in German language can be downloaded from the organizer’s website:
Electronic Signature in Human Resources – What may be signed for and how in 2022? – presented at the Signature Day 2022 by Jörg Lenz, Namirial
Remote signature simplifies the electronic waste verification procedure eANV – presented at Signature Day 2020 by Alexander Marschall, Business Development & Innovations, Axians eWaste
Online mediation and arbitration based on trust services – presented at Signature Day 2019 by Ulrich Emmert, esb Rechtsanwälte and Jörg Lenz, Namirial
The Namirial team is looking forward to inspiring discussions on the signature day. We are happy to inform about:
- Success factors of successful signature digitization projects
- Procedure for legally binding electronic signatures, depending on their application
- Integrate trusted identification and signer authentication into workflow, both in indirect and in direct contact
- Integration of trust services into own system landscape
- Pros and cons to signature services in the cloud
The event is held in German language.