The German eCard-Strategy
Moritz Horsch, Martin Stopczynski · 2011
The German government introduces various projects to establish a modern eGovernment and eBusiness. The projects imply or use smart cards for the authentication or verification of citizens ’ identities. The qualified electronic signature and the electronic identification enabled by such eCards increase the security level in electronic processes. The German eCard-Strategy intends to harmonize these projects and focuses on a ubiquitous and common usage of eCards. The German Federal Office for Information Security develops the eCard-API-Framework to achieve these objectives. The eCard-API-Framework offers a specification of common and homogeneous interfaces for a standardized usage of different eCards in various applications. The paper at hand introduces a brief overview of the projects involved with the German eCard-Strategy and describes the general architecture, technical details and an example of the eCard-API-Framework, highlights possible improvements towards a next generation API and sketches future project developments.