Breaking the barriers of e-participation: The experience of Russian digital office development

Abstract

Digital signature is the key factor of e-government and e-participation processes, as it is the main security mechanism we have to use to implement the dematerialization process. The scope of digital signature is definitely not restricted to the e-government setting, existing a large number of contexts (like e-commerce, e-banking, etc.) where the need of strong authentication of people arises, so that digital signature may be a full solution ensuring both the identity of the user and the integrity of the digital document the user signs. On the other hand, open government and e-participation development is strongly connected to citizens' engagement in online services and connections through web portals. As a consequence, the authentication systems and its characteristics (such as simplicity, usability, security, etc.) are very important for the success of the digitalization process. Unfortunately, often registration procedures do not fully satisfy the above properties, thus introducing an obstacle to the diffusion of e-participation. For instance, this is the case of online services and e-participation portals in Russia. In this paper, we deal with this problem, by referring to the Russian system as a case study, and by proposing a protocol of distant primary registration to solve the abovementioned drawbacks. Such useful experience could be exported to other cases in the sphere of electronic services development, to fully involve citizens in the electronic society. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.