Evaluation and Assessment of Editable Signatures for Trusted and Reliable Public Sector Data

Due to the increased application of information and communication technologies in the public sector, the amount of data being produced and processed by the public sector has been constantly growing during the past years. As these data can also be useful for the general public and the corporate sector, current initiatives attempt to make these data publicly available. Recent work on this topic has shown that publishing of public sector data potentially raises several issues regarding data integrity and authenticity. These issues render the implementation of solutions based on trusted and reliable public sector data difficult. However, recent work has proposed electronic signatures in general and editable electronic signatures in particular as adequate means to address these issues. While a variety of editable signature schemes has been introduced in literature, their capabilities to assure the integrity and authenticity of published public sector data has not been assessed so far. This renders a concrete implementation of solutions based on editable signatures impossible. To overcome this problem, this paper identifies and discusses legal, organisational, and technical requirements that need to be met by editable signature schemes when applied to public sector data to be published. Afterwards, different existing editable signature schemes are examined and discussed in more detail. Based on the previously identified requirements, the different editable signature schemes are then assessed in detail. The conducted assessment reveals that blank digital signatures, which are a novel approach representing a subset of editable signature schemes, are especially suited to meet the predefined requirements. The results obtained from the conducted survey served as input and basis for the implementation of solutions based on trusted and reliable public sector data.