State companies urged by Correo Uruguay to move on digital signatures
Uruguay’s state-owned companies must move to accept digital signatures as the fastest way to boost the transfer of electronic documents in the country, according to Fernanda Burgueno, head of electronic services at the state-owned postal service, El Correo.
The postal service was the first digital certification authority in Uruguay, and began providing services in 1998, Burgueno said. Since then, the only major player to have introduced digital signatures was the central bank, which accepts digital signatures from other financial institutions, using El Correo as the third party authenticator.
El Correo is one of four certification authorities in Uruguay, and as well as digital signatures it provides certifications for secure web sites, to enable electronic commerce, and personal certificates.
However, private sector usage remains very low, and a recent government decree providing stricter regulations as to the use of digital signatures could be a boost to greater adoption, she said. The government’s new portal, launched last week, offers certain online services with digital certificate services.
In particular, state companies for electric power, UTE, water, OSE, and identification, DGI, would be good potential customers for digital certificates, to reduce the amount of time people spend queuing to get their paperwork done.
Anybody can become a certification authority in Uruguay, and the decree, signed by President Jorge Batlle in mid-September, sets regulations to ensure that certifiers keep to certain standards, defines certification terms and validity periods.
Based on this decree, Uruguay’s utilities regulator URSEA signed a partnership late last month with El Correo to use digital signatures internally.
URL: http://www.bnamericas.com (C) Copyright 1996 – 2001 Business News Americas Ltda. All rights reserved.
