Security of eGovernment Systems

The project ‘Security of eGovernment systems’ aimed at assisting policymakers in discerning policy options for meeting future challenges in securing eGovernment systems. The project focused on upcoming challenges of eGovernment security in delivering public services across borders. Through identifying key security barriers and enablers, the project points to promising avenues of policy development in an environment of rapidly changing ICTs and changing socio-economic concerns in the EU. The most important contribution of the project is the development and assessment of 11 policy options. Policy Option 1: Develop a policy strategy for improving the security of IT-systems used in Europe ; Policy Option 2: Stimulate development and use of security checklists (short-term) ; Policy Option 3: Policy Option 3: Encourage the development and use of highly secure components (mid-term) ; Policy Option 4: Encourage the development and use of highly secure systems (long-term) ; Policy option 5: Create stronger institutional supervision and oversight of security ; Policy option 6: Build a ‘Privacy by Design’ knowledge base ; Policy option 7: Substantiate the data minimization principle by using anonymization techniques in all European eGovernment systems ; Policy option 8: Stimulate technical and legal solutions that avoid or limit privacy risks caused by re-identification of previously anonymized data ; Policy option 9: Make Privacy Impact Assessments of eGovernment systems mandatory and public ; Policy option 10: Use gateways to achieve interoperability of different national eGovernment security tools, but aim at Europe-wide availability and usability of tools ; Policy option 11: Ensure open and transparent evaluations of the trade-offs between privacy, security, usability, interoperability and costs of an eGovernment system.