Impact

The MultiPKI Validation Platform is the first major centralised service aimed at providing free horizontal electronic services to all the public administrations of the country. This is really an exceptional case in Spain, where already 134 eGovernment services are actively using the validation system (37 public authorities from the central administration; 17 regional governments and more than 18 local governments). The MAP claims this project as one of the essential pieces for the already ongoing development of the eID and the electronic signature in Spain, and from which all eGov services are already experiencing the benefits, with no cost for them. Having in mind that by 2010 50% of the Spanish Public Procurement must be made by electronic means (eProcurement), that the eGov service suppresses the legal obligation for citizens to present paper photocopies for administrative transactions (already providing 100.000 transactions through the MPVP but expected to double in the next few months), and that 6 million citizens will already be in possession of the eID card, the number of transactions will increase dramatically in 2008, possibly up to 2/3 million transactions per month. The current ROI, having in mind the technical investment and the number of transactions performed by the service, shows the following balance: - Investment during 2006 + 2007: 3,5 mill € - Transactions already made: 3 million (end May 2007) - Expected figures: 8,2 million transactions expected by the end of the first year. - Cost per transaction at the moment: 0,43 €. This means a cost-effective service, much rational than a distributed structure with all public administrations having to develop and implement SW modules to handle eSignature creation/verification and certificate validations against all CSP in the country. A realistic assumption is to estimate a total cost of 3 € per traditional administrative transaction, having to move physically to the office (papercost, time spent by the civil servant, time spent by the citizen or business company…). Taking into account the cost of investment for developing each eGov service, it appears quite a large margin to assume that the ROI for the MPVP has already been met. With a population of 44 million, a 100% penetration of eIDs card in the medium term, only 20% of it making eGov transactions in the next few years (low profile assumption) and 5 transactions per year, the estimation adds up to 44 million transactions per year. As the system must also count with companies and civil servants making eGov transactions, the figure could increase up to 60 million transactions per year. With these estimated figures, the unitary cost per transaction will be reduced to 0,07 € per transaction, assuming also expenses of 4 million € per year as the service must improve to be able to handle the increased number of transactions.

Track record of sharing

In order to create a European interoperable eID Management by 2010 allowing the mutual recognition of other country’s eID and eSignatures, the MPVP is a good case to extend to the rest of Europe as a proxy or centralised national eID verification service. Other countries could also create a common and centralised eID and eSignatures service for their own eGovernment applications existing within their borders in a rational and cost effective way. Also, the existence of a national eID Service in each country would help to create a European eID Management scheme where each nation would offer and exchange eID and eSignature verification services of their nationals living abroad through the interconnection of the various national front-end services, helping to create and deploy pan European eGovernment services and also the free movement of citizens and companies.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - The MPVP has already being pointed out by the EU Commission in the context of the IDABC Preliminary study on Mutual Recognition of eSignatures for eGovernment Applications across Europe, as a very good example of efficient validation for eSignature: “The limited number of supported CSPs is a major barrier to interoperability. If every application would have to support all European established CSPs, the situation will quickly become unmanageable. A very good example of efficient validation has been set-up in Spain. The way how Spain has solved the validation problems would certainly be a good practice to take into account at the European level”.

Lesson 2 - This centralised building up approach to create a common service providing eID and eSignature features to eGovernment applications has been proved to be a rational and cost effective approach and a key enabler for the eID in Spain. It has unburden eGovernment applications of the hard tasks of developing SW modules to deal with the creation/verification of the eSignature, the handling of crypto libraries, CRL and OCSP protocols for the verification of digital certificates or the need of physical network connection to all Certification Service Providers of the country.