Digital government depends on trust between parties, which can be enabled through cryptography and identification mechanisms. However, cryptography must itself be trustworthy to establish trust, as technology is difficult to control and math implementations get weaker over time. Trust is also fragile and important for digital ecosystems that span borders. To fully realize digital government's benefits, systems must balance tactical gains with strategic consequences like maintaining long-term trust.

1. Cryptography and trust
Andres Kütt
Information System Authority, chief architect
June 9, 2015

2. In this speech
• Thoughts on digital government
• Trust and digital government
• Cryptography and trust

3. Thoughts on digital government

4. We should talk about digital-embracing
government, not e-government
E-government implies a separation between the “e“ and the government
while the point is to embed digital into all aspects of governance

5. I speak for Estonia but
suspect wider applicability
The strategic choices we face are fundamental in nature

6. Digital government is useful
• It makes plain old economic sense
• Provided it is used as a change enabler rather than a bolt-on
• Corporations have been doing kaizen, six-σ and lean for decades,
why not governments?
• In Estonia we are seeing tangible, substantial and sustainable
profitability of digital government
• It makes social sense
• Faster feedback enabled by technology allows for more flexible and
agile society
• Emerging social structures are highly efficient and clearly valuable

7. Digital government is unavoidable
• Estonia cannot afford not to gain the benefits described
• Too high prime minister per capita ratio
• Geographic location on the edge of everything
• All the demographic ailments of the western world
• Few options but to embrace digital change
• Provide the services or face someone else providing them for you
• Globalisation and technology are inexorably shifting the concepts of
“state“ and “government“
• To have a chance, Estonia must change the game

8. Trust as an enabler

9. Trust enables digital government
Digital government assumes a level of trust between parties
• Digital world cannot be perceived directly
• Electronic vs. physical voting
• Complexity levels have grown beyond our cognitive abilities
• Therefore technology must be trusted to behave in a certain way
• Complexity is still an issue: how deep is that rabbit-hole?
• This is a serious issue with using the public cloud
• Contactless interaction requires trust in identification mechanisms
• On the internet, everybody assumes you are a dog
• Bi-directional mapping between a person and a portfolio of their
rights and obligations

10. Trust enables digital ecosystems
A digital ecosystem requires its parties to be able to digitally trust each
other
• Digital government brings value as part of an ecosystem, not by
itself
• To cooperate, trust is required between
• agencies on local, European and global level
• government agencies and corporations
• citizens and other stakeholders
A digital ecosystem cannot be limited to a single country

11. Trust is a fragile property
of a complex system
Lack of trust leads to less reasons to trust and vice versa.
Small actions can trigger important consequences

12. Sacrificing trust means
loosing digital government
Balancing tactical wins against strategic consequences is non-trivial

13. Cryptography and trust

14. Cryptography is firstly about math and then
about technology
Technology makes math practical but is not that useful in itself

15. To enable trust, cryptography must be
trustworthy
We can mostly rely on math but not necessarily on technology

16. And technology is effectively out of control
There is no way to prevent people from implementing mathematics.
Think Bitcoin

17. Time is rapidly becoming a factor in trusting
cryptography
Estonia has ten years worth of legacy digital signatures
getting weaker by the minute

18. Summary
• Digital governance is desirable but depends on trust
• Cryptography can help provide trust if it is trustworthy itself
• Digital ecosystems span borders and share trust

19. Thank you!
Andres Kütt
andres.kutt@ria.ee