I. Preface

One of the major goals of the Mid-Term Plan for the e-Government, being promoted by the Executive Yuan since the year of 1998, is to help the government agencies, enterprises, and the public obtain innovative electronic services through multiple ways at any time, in any place. However, it must depend on the secure mechanisms of authentication and encryption following Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to prevent data from eavesdropping, rewriting, personating, and repudiation during the transmission phases. Since most of the government services are demanded by the public, the Citizen Digital Certification (herein after as MOICA, a digital certification in electronic form which is issued by Certification Authority of Ministry of the Interior) seems so natural to satisfy the needs of protecting the online transaction through Internet. MOICA Issuance Plan, executed by the Information Center of the Ministry of the Interior, can be briefly introduced as the followings:

1. Major Role

MOICA serves as “Internet ID” for those who wish to show their identities for online applications of any kind, among government agencies and people. It ensures secure data confidentiality, integrity of transaction, and non-repudiation, as well as privacy. It also is the most significant infrastructure of promoting e-government policy of .

2. User Benefits

People may access to the government’s around-the-clock service from anywhere through the Internet. There have been more than 14 million entries authenticated by the online application services with MOICA, published from the Certification Authority of the Ministry of the Interior. Furthermore, MOICA provides functions to secure the content of electronic mail with the data encryption technology. Since MOICA certification is based on the PKI hierarchy, it is capable of providing high flexibility and security to prevent confidential data from eavesdropping, rewriting, personating, and repudiation during the transmission process. Therefore, MOICA is quite reliable to protect users’ data assets in any kind of online services, and profitable to save cost of traveling to the government agencies as well as convenient to get governmental services anytime.

II. Achievements

1.According to the statistical data released by the Department of Statistics of Ministry of the Interior,a total of 1,261,443 electronic PKI certificates of MOICA have been published to the citizens by the end of 2007. 72 percent of the certificate card holders had a chance to use it to apply for online services in the previous year. In other words, more than 900,000 people of the nation have used MOICA through internet.

2.To cooperate with the e-Taxation, an Online Income Tax Filing from the National Tax Administration, Ministry of Finance, the administration agency of MOICA has advertised a series of promotion programs and operations to the general public about how to file income tax under the online tax filing system through internet. In 2007, the number of completed income tax filings with MOICA totaled 431,000, which was increased by 50 percent than a year before whereas approximately 288,000 MOICA holders used it to file their personal income taxes in 2006.

3.During these years, the service items of MOICA applications have been populated nationwide.According to the official figures shown by Certification Authority of Ministry of the Interior, more than 1,386 items of online government applications have been created to serve the public. Besides, 565 service items with MOICA accessibility have been developed within government agencies to serve the staffs and their local computer systems. There have been more than 14,300,000 entries triggered by the users nationwide to access the MOICA applications which could save at least 1,400 million NT dollars based on an estimation of 100 NT dollars for each transaction, including traveling cost and time lost from office hours. Evidently, MOICA issuance has reached a remarkable milestone in regard to the project perspectives prescribed in 2002.

4.In order to actuate the staffs’ morale in the household registration offices nationwide, a  performance rating forum of issuing MOICA by their districts was held on national Household Registration Day on June 21^st, 2007.

5.The Certification Authority of Ministry of the Interior opened 20 classes to offer the training procedures and discussions to support the relevant works over the household registration office staffs, as well as another 24 classes of Application Programming Interface (API) to the public.

6.The preservation procedure of applying for MOICA was called off since January 1^st in 2007. Applicants can obtain the service at any time during the regular office hours of the district household registration office.

7.On February 1st of 2007, the Executive Yuan approved the proposal of MOICA Issuance and Development Plan, and granted the relevant budget.

8.The second annual evaluation contest for outstanding MOICA applications was held in July 2007, in which five outstanding applications of the year over the nation were selected by the committee and will be awarded in the annual ceremony of MOICA, expected to be held in April 2008.

9.The MOICA Management Center has been granted the qualification certificates of ISO27001 and GPKI for the Guidelines Governing Security Auditing in December 2007.

10.On January 2nd of 2007, the Executive Yuan approved the proposal of MOICA Valid Date Extension Plan which will provide the extension of a 3-year’s good standing to each MOICA when its expiration date is due.

III. Users’ Count Statistical Analysis

1.There have been 1,386 MOICA application systems developed by government agencies and enterprises nationwide. Up to July 2007, statistics derived from accumulating users’ entry counts for each application said that over 14.3 MOICA issued, including 7 million entry counts were recorded in 2007, a significant growth of 42% over that of the previous year 2006, indicating the high appreciation of the general public.

2.Up to December 2007, Bureau of Labor Insurance Council led the pack in online surf count with MOICA at 5.7 million entry counts for its online authentication of service systems for laborers and farmers, followed by land information system of Land Administration at some four million counts; and the tax filing system of Financial Data Center reached 431,125 MOICA certificated tax filing entry counts in May 2007 which accrued to 50% growth over the previous year. There are many other MOICA online application systems which are popular to the public, such as immigration information inquiry, household registration office service, land office electronic gate service, electronic motor vehicle and driver information service, and health insurance information inquiry

3.The following table denotes nine most popular online service systems with their MOICA entry counts.

IV. Future Prospects

1.The Certification Authority is looking forward to extend the validation period of MOICA when it is expired because the original valid period of a MOICA is for five years, according to the GPKI CSP guide lines approved by the Executive Yuan on April 30^th 2003. Eventually, the earliest MOICA will get expired no later than the date of April 30^th 2008 and more thereafter. The MOICA card holders are supposed to re-apply a new certificate when it runs out of the expiration date. By considering the interests of the public, Ministry of the Interior held the steering committee of MOICA responsible for discussing the expiration extension in December 2007, in which the committee members, agency representatives, and specialist scholars made a conclusive resolution to extend 3 more years to each currently valid MOICA. As expected, the issuance extension plan got approved by the Executive Yuan on January 2^nd 2008. Several measures of the issuance extension plan must be completed as in the following.

(1)   The Certification Authority has made an amendment of the essential MOICA Certification Practice Statement (MOICA CPS) to include the issuance extension regulations, as well noticing the mastering agencies of Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission and the Ministry of Economy. Also, the Guidelines of MOICA Issuance and Management have been modified, in which all household registration offices are responsible for following up.

(2)   The extension procedures of MOICA expiration have been revealed to all of the government agencies and the public by several ways, including sending official documents to notify the government agencies, posting the relevant information over the electronic and printing media, as well posters, advisement brochures, and electronic news.

(3) The Certification Authority has scheduled a series of training courses of system development and operations for the household registration office staffs nationwide, staffs from the inquiry service center, and system maintenance engineers from the certificate administration center. Also, the system software adoption for extension operations must be finished to support both the online and over-the-counter services nationwide.

(4)   Procurement of the relevant software and hardware has been deployed to cooperate with the certificate issuance extension procedures since this proposal was officially granted by the supervisory agencies. In order to ensure smooth process of development, a detailed meeting schedule has been set to uphold all required procedures and works.

2.Vigorously promote the MOICA applications as the following.

(1) MOICA Application Promotion Team should assume its role of coordinating various government ministries and agencies to find ways to utilize MOICA in developing key applications to meet the public’s urgent needs.

(2) To examine the operation process and legal aspects of different data book users among various government units and actively promote the use of electronic data scripts instead of the printed ones.

(3) To pick up role model application systems and hold outstanding application award forum to promote the development of MOICA applications.

(4) Hold education training courses of MOICA Application Programming Interface and offer API kits free to help organizations shorten the time of developing MOICA Applications.

(5) Hold sufficient seminars to deliver the information of MOICA issuance and the interface functionalities of the card-embedded IC chip in order to reveal more sophisticated utilization to the public, which supposedly is the most essential interest of government projects.

(6) Free the unused IC chip storage space of MOICA to empower each application development team to develop more valuable applications.

3.Boost the propaganda activities for MOICA as the following.

(1) Holding Internet marketing activities through various web sites to make known to the public about what services and interests the MOICA can offer.

(2) Participate in various exhibitions to familiarize MOICA with the public, i.e. Computer Fair, Information Month, etc.

(3) Put ads on different media, vigorously propagandize the use of MOICA and its applications.

(4) Design posters, brochures, and flyers and send them to organizations that can help post or distribute them to individuals.

(5) Periodically send out e-news reporting the current MOICA software systems or portal web sites to get MOICA benefits to be familiarized with the public, to motivate them to apply for one and make use of it online through the network.

4.It has been the Certification Authority’s core interests to boost the effectiveness of issuing MOICA at the household registration offices by integrating the billing system, started on January 1^st 2005 approved by the Executive Yuan, with the certificate issuance system developed earlier and simplify them into one new system in 2008.

V. Conclusion

A verifiable Internet ID and the capability of secure data transmission over the Internet are the indispensable essences of infrastructure for e-government. The MOICA Issuance Plan is proved to be on the right track and complied with the international trend. Now the population of MOICA is over 1.26 million. The accumulated usage counts of all MOICA applications are more than 14 million and 300 thousand entries and there have been 1,386 MOICA application systems developed. These facts all revealed people’s great needs of using MOICA. In order to keep on serving the public with fine, convenient internet applications of e-government, the continuation of issuing MOICA is necessary. The ministry of the Interior will actively coordinate among different government ministries to speed up the process of developing killer applications of MOICA. Thus the expanse of MOICA applications will be broadened, so are the quality and extension of services users will look forward to. Using Internet instead of the road traveling, our citizens can truly enjoy an all-weather, no-bad-day government services around the clock everyday. How we make MOICA known to the general public will motivate the public to apply for a personal certificate smart card. It in turn will make our e-government services one of the role models in the whole world.