The e-government of tomorrow: Austria as a role model

This year's ADV e-Government Conference on June 21 and 22, 2023 attracted a large number of representatives from public administration, the IT industry and business to the Messe Congress Graz for an exchange of experts under the motto "Austria's path to Europe's digital decade". Austria is one of the European role models when it comes to digitalization - especially in the area of e-government. It is now time to build on this together: This was the central message that ran through the event.

"Austria is at the center of the digital revolution"

It is these important words that conclude the video message from Roberto Viola - Director General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Commission - and illustrate the significant digital lead of our rather small country.

The first keynote of the day already addresses the key factors for successful digitalization: Reinhard Posch, CIO of the Austrian Federal Government, cites the constructive and critical engagement of business and science with the topic of digitalization on the one hand and an open exchange on the other as essential aspects.

Authentication in the digital world: potential for administration & business

It is also shown that not only the administration can benefit from identification and authentication based on eIDAS, but that there is also a lot of potential for the private sector that is currently still untapped: For example, more security through the authentication of an online store's customers, which means that payment on account can also be offered to "first-time buyers" without risk. This could easily be made possible, for example, by logging in to a page with a Handy-Signatur, ID Austria or xIDENTITY.

In the A-Trust presentation "Signed and Sealed: The latest innovations for digital administration", not only the qualified signature is presented, but also the qualified seal: not only natural persons can authenticate themselves, but also legal entities - i.e. companies or organizations. This means that the recipient(s) can see at a glance and quickly check that the documents originate from a trustworthy source and have not been altered. Compliance and legal certainty are the key to the digital world and are thus linked to your own brand message.

Data protection and sovereignty at odds with the cloud and AI

The major challenges of our time are not left unaddressed either: The topics of data protection, security and sovereignty are discussed critically, particularly with regard to the developments surrounding cloud solutions and artificial intelligence.

As a qualified trust service provider, it is precisely these topics that A-Trust deals with intensively. With the „Signatur-Box“ on Premise, customers are offered a solution in which only a hash value is transmitted to the Austrian high-security data center when documents are signed, meaning that no sensitive data leaves the company. However, maximum data protection and data sovereignty are not only the focus of the „Signatur-Box“ and all A-Trust solutions, but are also the top priority, which is why - in contrast to most other companies - no data is evaluated for marketing purposes and (non-essential) cookies are completely avoided.

A-Trust also presents innovative solutions for the less serious challenges of everyday work: For processes that are not yet (or cannot be) handled without media discontinuity throughout, A-Trust now also offers a way to make qualified signatures on printed documents verifiable by means of a QR code in the signature image and to have the signed document immediately available again electronically with the media break-proof signature.

No time for (digital) standstill

In the spirit of the event, the wide variety of specialist presentations from different areas and the subsequent networking invited participants to engage in an open discussion and exchange ideas and perspectives in order to continue to jointly promote digitalization in administration and business. After two days of intensive discussions with leading experts, it is clear that we should not rest on our laurels, as there is still a lot of potential to be exploited and challenges to be overcome.