Interoperability of E-Government Information Systems: Issues of Identification and Data Sharing

Abstract

Lippmann in Luxembourg. His research themes include information systems modeling, computer-supported cooperative work, human-computer interaction, and information visualization.PATRIK HITZELBERGER is a Scientific Project Manager at the Centre de Recherche Public-Gabriel Lippmann in Luxembourg. His research interests include interoperability of IT systems, one-stop government, and business process modeling for information systems in the public sector. FERNAND FELTZ is a Scientific Director of the Research Department of Informatics,Systems and Collaboration at the Centre de Recherche Public-Gabriel Lippmann in Luxembourg. He is responsible for various R&D projects in the domains of e-government, e-business, computer-supported cooperative work, knowledge management, and virtual organizations.ABSTRACT: In business and government organizations, information systems often handle sensitive data about individuals and other organizations, using various kinds of identifiers. The growing cooperation of organizations results in the need to share and exchange such data. This collection and sharing, however, is affected by privacy concerns, and organizational and technical issues have to be solved and taken into account. This paper describes the results of an exploratory study in the government sector, focusing on the way public organizations manage identity-related data and the sharing of such data, either with other public agencies or with private organizations. Despite significant progress in harmonizing the legal and administrative provisions and technical standards in the European Union, there are still considerable cross-country differences regarding this subject. These differences-together with the growing mobility of goods, persons, and related data within the European Union-cause particular challenges for information systems in digital government in this region. After discussing and defining the key notions and methodology of the study, we present the status quo in 18 out of 25 EU member states and compare it to the results of a prior study by the same network done in 2001. Finally, we draw conclusions about identity management in cross-border contexts. OTJACQUES, HITZELBERGER, AND FELTZKEY WORDS AND PHRASES: data sharing, e-government, identifier, identity management, information sharing, interoperability, interorganizational information systems, privacy.THE COLLECTION, STORAGE, AND MANAGEMENT of data about individuals and enterprises in information systems are routine tasks in virtually all public or private organizations. Businesses, public agencies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) deal with customers, suppliers, employees, partners, and so on, as well as with the data related to these customers, citizens, individuals, or legal entities.The potential of electronic information systems, however, and their opening to the Internet have invoked more and more concerns and questions regarding privacy during the last decades. Hiller and Belanger [13] point out the following issues related to the "online world": fa...

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“…Hungary and Germany explicitly ban the use of a single identification number for citizens, citing data protection concerns, while France, Lithuania and Italy are very restrictive and limit the data directly linked to the identification number to a minimal data set. Similarly, countries like the Czech Republic do not allow shared databases across government departments (Otjacques et al, 2007).…”

“…The Austrian e-government initiative has introduced a novel technology-based solution, where all Austrian citizens are registered on a national Central Register of Residents but have a variety of identification numbers that link to the central records via sector-specific tags and strong encryption algorithms (Otjacques et al, 2007;Aichholzer & Strauss, 2010).…”

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