The Electronic Data and Document Safe

Project: The Data Notary Concept: a Trustworthy Operator of the Electronic Safe

General information
Systems for the safe storage, administration and targeted sharing of digital data and documents are essential for simplifying electronic administration for the general public and businesses. The electronic safe provides the general public, businesses and the public sector with an easy to use tool that can be used for communicating and the trouble free exchange of documents whilst complying with data protection laws.

An electronic data and document safe is a virtual safe for storing, administering and sharing electronic data and documents. It is based on modern information and communication technology and accessible via electronic media. A safe such as this can come in different forms and be at the disposal of the general public, public administration or third parties.  Thus the public sector can access important data for processing without encountering any format discontinuity problems. This opens up the potential to optimise processes even further. With the help of electronic documents, businesses can communicate with public administration in a more efficient manner and deal with recurring electronic processes more quickly.

They should also use the safe to exchange data with their clients electronically. The general public could also use it to make certain documents available to relatives, friends and third parties.

The High Performance Portal working group, a research group that is internally supported by the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, has been working on this topic since April 2008.

Interoperability and the concept of a data notary are amongst their main areas of focus. They explore relevant concepts together with partners from industry and public administration. The aim here is to create open approaches that improve and complement existing solutions in a useful way. Redundant developments are thus purposefully avoided.

The Electronic Safe and Interoperability

In the future the interoperability of the safe and the ability to transfer its contents will play an important role as the use of existing and newer electronic safe solutions continues to increase. In order to create user friendly eGovernment it should be possible for each solution that meets existing standards requirements to exchange electronic documents with public administration (technical interoperability). Semantic interoperability between safes should also be set up in order to simplify the organisational and cross-border use of data such as the safe’s master data.

The safes should also support the simple transferability of the complete data contents including directory structures and any possible metadata to competing solutions (organisational interoperability). Applicable exchange and data structure standards should be used, adapted or newly developed where needed to ensure the interoperability of the data safes and their data.