It is interesting that the EU, whose Esignature Directive generated much of the impetus and direction for the ETSI TS 101 903 and the W3C XAdES standards, has now acknowledged that they have not been successful in standardizing electronic signatures for cross border use of member states. I suspect that the trusted credential infrastructure challenge referenced in my paper XML Electronic Signatures has created at least part of the problem.
The original European Directive mandated that they would have interoperable e-signatures and electronic identification for government by the end of 2009, but it doesn’t look to me like they will make it. It seems that they now have an “Action Plan on e-signatures and e-identification to facilitate the provision of cross-border public services in the Single Market”
Gosh – and I thought that they were so far ahead of us!
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The overwhelming complexity and confusion caused by the Qualified Signature is the cause of this lack of adoption. Making a signer obtain a Qualified PKI cert, go through the process of getting the cert, then trying to figure out how to use it is much more complicated than just using the post. Until the EU stops giving praise to this Qualified signature, and refocuses on their base level Advanced Signature which can be accomplished without PKI, it will continue to flounder.