eID and e -Voting in Estonia

1. eID and e-Voting in Estonia Arvo Ott, PhD Member of the Management Board e-Governance Academy arvo.ott@ega.ee

2. Estonian national ID card First national document • Issued by: • Department of Citizenship and • Migration • Subcontractor: • TRÜB Switzerland • First card issued: 01.01.2002 • 1.000.000 issued as Oct 2006 • Satisfies the requirements of: • ICAO Doc. 9303 part 3 Based on 16 Kb RSA crypto-chip: 2 private keys; authentication certificate; certifacate to issue digital signature; A file with personal data

3. Estonian national ID card • Compulsory for all residents as first document– distributed 1.000.000 as of October, 2006 • Includes digital information (ID number) about the person • Includes a certificate for his/her digital signature (used together with a personal key) • Includes a certificate for authentication service (used together with another personal key) • In connection with this program: unified e-mail address to everybody: firstname.name_xxxx@eesti.ee

4. ID card as key • ID-card is key component • e-police • e-health record • e-school • e-elections • ...

5. ID card based public transportation tickets Population register Phone/GSM ID-tickets Internet bank Service points ID-card is used to purchase ID-ticket and on validation

6. T SS – security server AS – adapterserver IS of the Tax Board services Popula-tion Register services Vehicle Register services … Other IS x 5 Banks a) authenti-fication b) pay-ments c) services X-Road sertification center National Databases Register (IHA) HELPDESK Monitoring Main server II (Elion) AS AS AS AS AS AS Main server I SS SS SS SS SS SS X-ROAD - Internet Public Portal Institutional view of the StateThematic view of the State http://www.riik.eehttp://www.eesti.ee ID-Card Sertification Center SS AS KIT (Citizen’s portal) Private portal (subject and his/her rights identified) EIT (Business’ portal) AIT (Civil Servant’s portal) State databases/information systems Banks X-Road center Sertification Center Tools centrally developed by the State, i.e. the State Portal

7. Other developments • E-finance • E-treasury • Book-keeping on-line • E-legal (approval cycle for draft bills) • E-taxation: • Legal persons – VAT, payroll tax, Soc.Sec., • Physical person – personal income tax • E-customs: digital customs declarations + payment of duties

8. History of e-Voting in Estonia • Municipal elections, 16 October 2005 • 9317 (1.8%) e-voters • Project costs: ca. 300 000 euro • Price per voice: ca 32 euro • National elections, 4 March 2007 • 30 243 (5.4%) e-voters • Project costs: still to be determined

9. Internet Voting? • In October 2005 Estonia had first-ever pan-national Internet Voting with binding results • ~80% of voters had a chance to vote via Internet due to the ID-card • ~2% of participated voters used that possibility

10. Internet Voting ? • Not a nuclear physics • Just another application for ID-card ...with some special requirements & measures...

11. I-voting Main Principles • All major principles of paper-voting are followed • I-voting is allowed during period before Voting Day • The user uses ID-card • System authenticates the user • Voter confirms his choice with digital signature • Repeated e-voting is allowed • Only last e-ballot is counted • Manual re-voting is allowed • If vote is casted in paper during voting days, e-vote(s) will be revoked

12. Voter registration • Missing • All citizen (residents) should register their place of living in central population register • Only voters with registered addresses are eligible • Population register is used

13. Architecture Central System List ofVoters List ofCandidates Voterapplication VoteForwardingServer VoteStoringServer VoteCountingApplication log log log Key Management Audit Auditapplication

14. Activity By Day

16. How old is The i-Voter ?

17. Lessons learned • I-voting is not a killer-application. It is just another way for people to vote • People’s attitude and behavior change in decades and generations, not in seconds • I-voting will be as natural as Internet-banking but even more secure • Internet voting is there to stay

18. Study: • Determine who votes over Internet • Explain the choice of voting channel • What is the impact of e-voting on participation? • What are the political effects (if there are any) of electronic voting

19. Subjective estimation of participating in the absence of e-voting

20. Subjective reasoning for choosing e-voting

21. “Dangers” of e-Voting • Technical – somebody “spoils” the elections • Social – opinion of the society will not be reflected adequately • Political – someone wins and someone looses, political balance changes • In reality: if observe two people with identical social – economic background, but different political views, there is going to be NO difference in their choice of e-voting

22. E-Voting lessons learnt • e-Voting is NOT a “monster” • e-Voting does not require actronomical expenses on special software • Integrated information systems, unified identification and authentication makes life a lot easier • Corrections of election procedures are possible and needed • Even very good solutions need time, to overcome inherent conservatism of people • Trust towards new appears when there is enough experience with the “new”. To gain experience somebody has to make first steps and approve the results

23. Thank you for your attention!Questions? arvo.ott@ega.ee Check for additional information WWW.EGA.EE