Advanced Biometric Electronic Signature in Practice - Lessons for the Public Administration from a Hungarian Case Study

Abstract

Signing documents is one of the most general requirements in our daily lives, including routines in Public Administration. After significant development of e-Administration, the question arose as to how the clients can sign documents electronically. The European Union legislated this question by the Regulation (EU) No. 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market and repealing Directive 1999/93/EC. This Regulation (henceforward: eIDAS) gives a technologyneutral and high-level framework for using electronic signatures in the EU, it refers several implementing acts and standards, records applicable concepts and definitions, and declares several obligations for all Member States. The Regulation does not contain strong provisions for advanced electronic signature, but it defines four requirements for it. All electronic signatures which fulfil these four requirements have to be considered as advanced electronic signatures. In most of the cases, creating an advanced signature is easier and more cost-effective than creating a qualified signature, therefore it may be an alternative solution for signing documents in Public Administration also. This paper intends to summarize the relating legal environment and it demonstrates an implemented solution of advanced biometric signature in the private sector. Finally, we discuss the technical conditions of the applicability of advanced biometric electronic signature in Public Administration by discovering similarities and differences of application and acceptability.