The Czech Republic claims to be the third country
in the world to pass electronic signature legislation, leaving most
of the European Union and even United States behind. No matter how
plausible were the efforts of a few young politicians to push the
Electronic Signature Act (ESA) through the legislative process and
thus bring the Czech legislation into the forefront of e-business
world, nothing much has changed since October 1, 2000 when the Act
came into force.
Drafters of the ESA were inspired by the UN
(UNICTRAL) and EC framing regulations (1999/93/EC), which were
introduced to stimulate governments to harmonise their legal
systems in order to follow the fast pace of technology progress.
The main priorities of the legislation were to amend some of the
key provisions of the Czech legal system, to equalize and bring
e-documents onto a par with written ones, to increase the growth of
e-business and last but not least to simplify and improve the
interaction between citizens and government through electronic
means.
The ESA aims to implement a "legal order" into the
usage of electronic signature by introducing definitions for key
terms such as electronic signature, qualified certificate,
certified data message, etc. Although the act does not specify one
particular "legal" way to sign and authorise e-documents, it should
increase security and trust in e-documents and further enable the
enforcement of possible claims arising from electronic signing and
sender's authentication. Implementing provisions, which would
regulate the certification authorities in more details are still
being awaited and it will be at least another few weeks or even
months before they appear.
The social democratic government, in conformity
with the recent eEurope+ initiativeFootnote 1 of EU
accession countries, strives to open up the state authority gates
to electronic scrutiny. As Karel Březina, cabinet member
responsible for information policy, says, he would like to see
taxes being returned electronically in the year 2002. A pilot
program has already been started on the communal level at one of
the Prague district town councils. Inhabitants of the district can
ask for information, file a request on a building licence or
exercise other minor submissions without an electronic signature
being requested. Although the draft of the government directive
provides for so called electronic mailing rooms at state and local
levels, it lacks the important amendments to the legal process
regulations, which would give e-documents the same standing as
paper ones and widen the range of state-to-citizen
interaction.
In the meantime people are questioning whether
there is any point in concentrating on something like e-Government
in the Czech Republic, when the ratio of people owning computers or
browsing the internet still remains much lower in comparison with
EU countries and the United States. About 25 percent of all
households (930,000) have a computer at home and just over a third
of them (380,000) are connected to the internet. Although these
figures show the Czech Republic to be ahead of its Central and
Eastern Europe neighbours, a great deal of work still needs to be
done to increase computer literacy. It is still difficult for the
majority of people to understand the concept of electronic
signature, and only a few would find an electronically signed and
authorised contract as credible as a printed and traditionally
signed version of it.
Although Czech legislators seem to be optimistic
about the changes, it seems beyond any doubt that the battle to
build a 21st century Czech e-Society is still too early to
call.
For further information, please contact Ian Parker
at ian.parker@cms-cmck.com or Ondřej Rob at
ondrej.rob@cms-cmck.com or by telephone on 00 420 2 21098888.
Footnotes
Footnote 1 During the EU Summit in
Gothenburg, the Czech Republic, together with other candidate
countries, signed the "Action plan eEurope+". This plan refers to
and in a way copies the "eEurope" plan of the European Union which
was signed at the EU summit in Lisbon last year. Candidate
countries in this way wanted to demonstrate their awareness and
adherence to the EU aim of building a new knowledge-based society
that is able to adjust and face new technological and economic
trends.