e-Government

WISeKey's track record in assisting governments and International Organizations since 1999 is impressive. So far, WISeKey has assisted governments understanding that E-government is not just about technology and electronic service delivery; it is about using security, legislation, information and communication technologies to improve the delivery, quality and accessibility of public services built around the needs of the citizen and customer. It means doing things in radically new and different ways. Service delivery is reengineered away from the historical departmental structure towards a model based upon and focused on the needs of the citizen; there is consequently a sharper democratic accountability with greater citizen participation and community involvement. E-government is an integral part of all levels of government modernisation.

To bring about this change every government needs a commitment at the highest level. It is not only a commitment in broad terms to achieve the vision of an e-government, but also a commitment to undertake the practical necessary steps. First there must be a clear strategy. Then the policy, procurement and technical issues in that strategy must be driven forward. Partnerships need to be developed. At all levels throughout the government, a culture of innovation and learning has to be fostered.

Governments have recognised the need to change their procedures to provide services and information centred on the citizen. By harnessing the advances in technology, making services more accessible through multiple channels and more responsive by providing joined up services, the citizen has access to information relating to services through a unique point of contact.

To address the issues and challenges raised by the move to Information Age government, WISeKey has developed a strategy that brings WISeKey technologies, applications and skills together to enable all tiers of Public Services to move towards electronic government.

Applications such as Secure Service Portals, Secure E-Marketplaces, Customer Interaction Centres, and Business Intelligence enable Governments to provide seamless and personalised access to services through the most effective channel, at the time and the place the citizen wishes.

The WISeKey E-Government Solution enables organisations to build a ‘joined-up’ government-community-citizen infrastructure that provides one point of contact for the citizen to access information relevant to them and their community. This infrastructure allows for information to be provided across different departments, agencies and public sector bodies to ensure the citizen can interact with Government in an easy and efficient manner. Integrating a very high level of security in secure portals, guarantees the citizen's identification and only this guarantee allows the implementation of valuable e-government services on-line.

A Secured E-Government Portal for each country.

By using WISeKey solutions as the backbone for effective electronic government, other applications can be integrated to provide proactive and personalised service delivery, using customer profiles and providing a complete view of the citizen and their interactions with respect to a determined level of privacy.

The WISeKey E-Government Portal is a suite of applications providing a breadth of functionality with the double objective of communicating actively to the citizen or business as well as to gather knowledge about the citizen or business within the community, and then use this to provide a better degree of service provision. Information is key and the capture of information each time there is an interaction or ‘touch-point’ with the citizen/business enables a 360 degree view of the citizen/business to be created - interactions from cradle to grave. Such a complete view of the citizen/business means the most appropriate level of service can be provided accordingly.

This information enables governments to continually develop and improve services to meet the individual citizen needs and is vital in extending capabilities to offer further service provision where appropriate e.g. providing additional relevant service information. This approach also helps to address the need to make it simpler for the citizen to inform government of changes in circumstances, for instance, change of address, and for government to apply these changes across all relevant systems. This further enables government to proactively deal with the citizen. The change of address could mean a reduction in Tax, which could be processed automatically upon receipt of the information.

An important role of a democratic government that can be dramatically improved by the establishment of a portal is the support for exportation. By centralising company indexes and product catalogues, such a portal can increase the visibility of the local production worldwide. In that context, business processes and transactions can also be considerably rationalised. The impact on the economy of a small country is noticeable.

By integrating the E-Government Portal with such applications as Marketing, a more targeted, personalised and proactive approach can be taken regarding communication with public. By utilising the knowledge pool, customer profiles can be determined, enabling government to raise awareness of services, consult consistently with citizen panels and focus groups. This can also help to address social exclusion issues, such as ensuring that the right citizens are made aware of available benefits, by running targeted campaigns that can be generated across all the available channels.

Implementing these applications will enable government to:

• Maximise the power and speed at which information resources can be delivered
• Provide the framework for a consistently reliable and professional service based on a one-point-of- contact standard of efficiency
• Makes complex services more accessible, more personal and widens citizen choice
• Determine resource allocation through satisfying high demand services and discontinuing or cutting back on low demand services
• The Changing lifestyle of the Citizen – a Problem for Governments
• Today’s citizens are far more mobile and have less time available to be able to visit government offices during working hours. They more frequently relocate for work, often to other countries - requiring updating of records, they spend their weekends away and they do not find spending time travelling to visit a government office as a priority over their work commitments. Consequently people get lost in the system requiring increased resources to correct records or chase up citizen obligations such as taxation returns.

The cost to government, the loss of productivity for the economy and the inconvenience to the citizen through these inefficiencies is something that can be avoided and is expected of the government by its citizens. It is not just a matter of image, it is a real cost that can and should be avoided.

Security is a key issue in electronic transactions. To facilitate the development of e-business, a large number of Governments have taken the lead to put in place a public key infrastructure for the conduct of secure electronic transactions.

The Solution

Governments the world over are now recognising the need to adapt their services to accommodate their citizens’ changing lifestyles and thus now taking the provision of e-government services as a priority. WISekey is providing Governments with generic and modular e-government solutions as their citizens and businesses are demanding better and more convenient services. The services WISekey provide to Governments allow them to improve citizen services, creating efficiencies to reduce costs, and improving economic competitiveness.

There is no denying the considerable cost savings, increased efficiencies and convenience to citizens provided through the provision of government services on-line using the Internet. However the need for security and identification for these on-line services is paramount.

Internet on-line services like electronic taxation returns, electronic health records, one time change of address updating by the actual citizen – where all relevant records in multiple locations are updated and even electronic voting, provide substantive savings to the government whilst bringing government services to the everyday convenience of the citizen. Those savings are achieved through:

• Avoidance of manual data input duplication
• 24 hour by 7 days a week access to services without staffing costs
• Reduction in the need to maintain distributed office outlets
• Rapid processing and retrieval of data
• Accuracy of data improvement through allowing the actual citizen to correct relevant fields
• Providing citizen access to their own government’s service regardless of where they are residing or visiting in the world
• Citizens and governments alike however, need to be sure that unauthorized users cannot tamper with records and that their confidentiality and privacy are protected.

The new security infrastructure developed by WISeKey in cooperation with the International Telecommunication Union, allows governments to communicate electronically with the general public, delivering cost savings and efficiency improvements by reducing the overheads and time associated with current paper-based systems. In addition, the use of e-security is already improving communication internally, accelerating the processing and administration of Government proceedings in a trusted and secure electronic manner. WISeKey, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system, is the technology that forms the security core of the ITU E-Strategy WORLDeTrust project http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/e-strategy/MoU/world_e.html

The Public Sector has always been a very strong and strategic market for WISeKey. WISeKey has provided this level of required security for the implementation of the first Internet electronic government voting system in the world in the heart of democracy, Switzerland. This system allows Swiss citizens to participate in elections regardless of where they are residing or visiting in the world at the time of the election. The complexity of the security required to avoid misuse of the electoral system, provides one time voting access to the voter and still provides confidentiality and anonymity for the actual vote, has resulted in WISeKey providing a level of security and identity authentication expertise far beyond that normally required for other on-line services.

In addition, through its partnerships with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nations Industry Development Organisation (UNIDO), governments and others, WISekey is able to provide digital identity authentication registration services in almost any country in the world, with those digital identities being recognised and accepted by all member countries of the ITU and UNIDO. As a result, the citizen is able access government services tailored for their requirements through access privileges based upon their location and nationality from anywhere in the world. This means that expatriate citizens can be provided government services, by both their host country and country of origin with those services tailored to their needs.

WISeKey on-going E-Government projects

Top of page