Electronic Trust Services and E-Government: Operational Principles and Problematic Aspects

The article is devoted to the implementation of the state digital policy in Ukraine in the context of creating E-Government initiative and adopting the Law on Electronic Trust Services. The author explains that from the moment of its introduction and hitherto, there are issues in electronic services’ usage, their consumer orientation and usability. Analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of implementing digital policy in Ukraine, the author focuses on the national concept of digital state development and concludes that it is limited to the government services. Instead, in the author's view, it would be advisable to promote the digital government as a collaboration between the state and citizens. The author also did not miss the features of electronic trust services, their components and importance for practical implementation: online purchases, participation in public affairs, electronic workflows in court, recognition by mobile phone, etc. Reaffirming the importance and necessity of state digital policy, the author refers to a comparison of the practices of its implementation in Ukraine and Estonia, whose successes in this way are indisputable and often serve as an example to be followed. It is underlined that there is scope for building a functional digital service system in Ukraine, however, different principles of user data protection were already doubted because of security issues, since the creation of a common digital data space was announced by the Government of Ukraine. It is emphasized that the lack of measures to preserve the user’s data protection of digital government systems will create high risks to a national security and the manipulation of confidential user information. Thus, the digital data space has legislative regulation but in a very schematic level and without practical tolls, which does not in any way create a “trust environment” in the cyberspace of Ukraine. In such circumstances, it is impossible to guarantee a high motivation for using such electronic trust services. All in all, the author underscores the need to introduce interoperability not only as a legal standard, but above all as a measure to introduce digital literacy programs.