ESIS Extension / Latvia / IS Promotional Activities / Update Memo 6

The Cabinet of Ministers has accepted Concept on legal status of electronic documents in Latvia. It’s basic principle – a complex solution of the problem, without limitation on legalisation of electronic signature only.

The Concept envisages the importance of making necessary actions in order to use electronic documents for legal activities in various spheres. It is necessary to create the normative basis for processing legal issues concerning the use of electronic documents. It should be equally to the normative basis for traditional paper documents. In order to make full value electronic transactions, the legal system must recognise electronic documents as an equivalent of the document that is worked out in traditional manner on paper – not with a secondary importance relatively to paper form but as an independent and legally equivalent document. It should be possible to realise civil rights and protect lawful interests in any public institution and court:

In order to realise these tasks, it is necessary to elaborate and to approve normative acts for regulation of number of items. Law On electronic documents should be elaborated, secondary relative technical issues have to be mentioned in corresponding regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers. It will be necessary to correct valid normative documents after approving new normative acts.

Legal status issues of other electronic data should also be solved in normative documents in addition to electronic documents, including status of data collected in databases. Exceptions, where use of electronic documents is not permitted, also have to be determined.

Special regulation for use of electronic signature is envisaged, all functions of the signature should be guaranteed:

Electronic signature will be based on unique electronically ciphered and interconnected pair of private and public keys. Special institutions – Certification service providers will be established. Their main tasks are to support public keys and to identify belonging of public keys and information on their owner. They will give certificates for this purpose.

In order to realise this solution, activities of the certification service providers should be regulated by the normative acts. The provider should correspond to several requirements. Observation of such requirements could be achieved by establishing some Steering institution, which will realise accreditation, and steering of certification service providers, their interco-operation regulation, international co-operation as well as further development of the normative basis.

Responsibility is one of the most sufficient items. It corresponds to the certification service providers especially on several issues:

Normative acts should distribute the responsibility among the certification service provider, the steering institution and the author of the document.

Normative documents will regulate the issues related to the competence of foreign certification service providers, use of certificates issued by providers of EU Member States will not be limited.

Certificates issued by the certification service providers will also contain personal data of physical persons. Formed at present Data protection inspectorate should supervise certification service providers in the context of personal data protection.

In order to encrypt information, it should be used public key technology and recommended by the steering institution algorithms that are compatible with those used by ES Member States. Method of encryption should be selected depending on confidence and value of the information. Regulations Nr. 106 of the Cabinet of Ministers that were approved on 21 March 2000 Security regulations of information systems classifies information and determines which information and on what level it should be protected by encryption methods. When persons agreed mutually, another methods can be used sometimes.

Documents are substantial information source independently of their type and format. Electronic documents also are the component of the National archives fund. They should be collected and stored to guarantee rights of the state residents, to control activities of the public institutions, to ensure functioning court system, to provide necessary information for decision making by national and municipal institutions and for scientific investigations.

Loss of information can be forecasted when technologies and software is updated or changed without special preservation activities. It will form white spots in the history of our country, state archives will not perform their basic task – to collect and to preserve documents that would protect rights of each individual and society as a whole, that would ensure their uninterrupted and transparent actions.

Introduction and control of the electronic document interchange in public sector institutions should also be envisaged to collect electronic documents with appropriate legal status and to ensure their authenticity.

Introduction of electronic documents is a volumetric project with large resonance. It is a novelty not only in Latvia but also worldwide. Even countries that have introduced electronic documents do not have a lot of experience in this field. In such situation introduction of electronic documents should be made gradually.

Please note that this report has been prepared under the sole responsibility of the ESIS II contractors.
It does not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission, nor does the Commission accept responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of information contained herein.
The ESIS Team of contractors welcomes any additional information or corrections.