Microsoft Corp and WISeKey win €17.4 million e-Government Citizen Services Platform (CSP) project

Microsoft Corp. and WISekey today announced at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) that they were selected by the Regional Government of Biscay for the delivery of a comprehensive e-Government Citizen Services Platform Geneva


Geneva and Houston 10th July 2008 - Microsoft Corp. and WISeKey today announced their partnership to deploy the Diputación Foral de Bizkaia (DFB) e-government project based on the new Citizen Services Platform (CSP) developed by Microsoft with the support of WISeKey that will make it easier for governments to interact with citizens, streamline processes and, as a result, save time and taxpayer budgets. This announcement was made back-to-back with the award today to Microsoft of the full Biscay e-government “BiscayTIK” project.

WISeKey is proud to announce its key identity management contribution to the “BiscayTIK” project signed today. This €17.4 million project includes a leading edge identity federation that enables the establishment of private citizen portals adapted to the needs and the interests of each citizen in a real WEB 2.0 environment, where the citizen will have the control over the portal contents on an identity basis. This advanced WISeKey service is tightly integrated with Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 platform and allows secure and private access to the full scope of the DFB city-halls’ on-line services. This unique combination establishes a world reference for a community of over one million citizens and one hundred town halls and can be easily replicated in many other e-government scenarios and therefore contribute to the further advancement of the e-government promise.

According to Mr. José Luis Bilbao, Deputy General of Bizkaia, “BiscayTIK shall allow our citizens to benefit from leading edge services that propel our region into the 21st century at the forefront of social and economic development. And this will be accomplished with support of first class partners such as Microsoft and WISekey, fully committed to joining us in developing our world class technology centre”.

Microsoft has long recognized the responsibility to enable access to technology in ways that help people realize their full potential,” Michel Van der Bel Vice President Public Sector of Microsoft International said. “We are working closely with partners like WISekey with governments around the world on progressing technology policy issues and providing technology solutions that address the unique IT needs of governments, educators and non-profit organization.

WISeKey long experience in securing e-Government services and its unique Trust Platform and ID Portability standard is a major asset for a global deployment of the CSP among Governments around the world said Carlos Moreira, Founder and CEO of WISeKey.

From London to Stockholm, from Porto, Portugal, to Aalter, Belgium, governments of all sizes are communicating with citizens in a variety of new and innovative ways. Even with the diverse needs of these cities, many of their government agencies deliver a common set of services to citizens. A culmination of partnerships, programs and projects conducted with governments over several years, the CSP has been developed to answer the needs seen across diverse government offices and help deliver the best of these services across different regions worldwide.

CSP is a comprehensive solution designed to help local governments worldwide to serve citizens and businesses to meet their needs for communication applications, search, citizen portal, interactive forms, geographical information systems (GIS), intranet portal, Web space, citizen contact center, citizen relationship management, case management, as well as document and record management. Microsoft has engaged leading partners like WISeKey to integrate their technology with the CSP for security, and with existing technology platforms used by local and regional governments.

Part of the solution to be delivered by WISeKey is a new generation semantic validation system which leverages the Web 2.0 functionalities and goes further by taking Citizen services into Web 3.0 interactions. Essentially, citizens will be able to access and transact through citizen services online with different logon mechanisms. Depending on the logon mechanism used, the Citizen portal will be adapted automatically to the functionalities allowed by the logon mechanism used. For example, with a high security electronic identity card, a citizen would be able to undertake the most complex citizen transactions whilst the use of a simple login/password mechanism would limit the functionalities available to the Citizen. This also enables the Citizen to decide how far they wish to have their citizen services enabled online.

WISeKey is a Swiss company with strong focus on PKI, ID management and public services. WISeKey was selected in 2007 by the World Economic Forum as one of the 100 New Champions during the first-ever meeting of the New Champions in Dalian China. The Community of New Champions is composed of rapidly growing companies that have both the aspirations and ability to successfully expand outside their domestic markets.