Comparative Analysis of Electronic Signatures of EU Member States
Becker Jörg, Hofmann Sara, Räckers Michael
Abstract
Electronic signatures have become more and more important in the last years. This is, amongst others, owed to the fact that one of the main application areas of electronic signatures, the eGovernment sector, takes a fast development leading to high security demands for electronic transactions. Although the European Communities have set up a framework for electronic signatures the national solutions in Europe differ strongly. In this paper we investigate the relation between eGovernment maturity based on the study of the consulting company Capgemini and the maturity of electronic signatures by comparing the signature solutions of five selected European Member states according to a previously developed criteria catalogue. Although we found out about strong differences between the national electronic signature solutions, a linkage to the maturity of eGovernment applications could not be detected.