eEurope Smart Cards Open Steering Meeting
11- 12 December 2001
Press release
International experts, smart card industry decision makers from the card issuer and the card manufacturer communities, together with European Commission, government and consumer representatives, attended the third eEurope Smart Cards Open Steering Meeting, hosted by ETSI, in Sophia-Antipolis (France) on December 11 & 12. This public meeting presented mid-term progress on the implementation of the eEurope Smart Card (eESC) Charter. All participants agreed that the initiative is on the right track and much progress has been made in the first year term of the two year project.
"I am really enthusiastic about the progress which has been made in the smart card area" stated Rosalie Zobel, Director “New working methods and electronic commerce” of the Information Society DG, European Commission. She reaffirmed her Directorate’s support for and continued interest in the realization of the Smart Card Charter objective of encouraging the deployment and usage of smart cards and thereby establishing Europe as a leading dynamic knowledge based society.
More than 150 participants attended the two-day meeting. On the first day, three major fields: interoperability, multi-application and identification/authentication were reviewed during parallel sessions, which provided ample opportunity to present the state of the art in each field, exchange knowledge and describe pilot projects. "We had a focussed set of high-value challenging presentations accompanied by very productive discussions with very dedicated participants and have made excellent progress in establishing a common agreed functional model for pan European interoperability " noted Jan van Arkel, co-chair of eESC.
On the second day, the debate was broadened during the plenary session. At a political level, representatives from the European Commission outlined the rationale and progress on eEurope 2002 and reasserted their support for smart card deployment. In addition to presenting the eESC accomplishments other regional experiences namely the Malaysian General Purpose Card and the Japanese METI & NICSS plans and achievements were presented. Lutz Martiny, co-chair of eESC, highlighted the successful mutual co-operation between the European and Japanese smart card industry which is giving an important international scope to the initiative.
Arriving at its mid term, the project is well advanced. The third eESC Open Steering Meeting delivered on the opportunity and objective to make public and share the results of this intense collaborative work spanning twelve trailblazer working areas, outlining progress in the two-year industry driven work plans and the deliverables expected by the end of 2002. Tangible eESC results were highlighted by reference to the draft working group reports destined for inclusion in the eESC common specifications and in the advanced plans for launch of demonstrators, subsequent large scale deployment, and standardization activities. “eESC deliverables will be used to support mass deployment of smart card systems which will benefit the entire community. Through this public meeting we can take the shared steps that will lead to the realisation of this vision" reaffirmed Henry Ryan, eESC Secretary.
Note to editors : Smart cards applications have developed in various different areas and are foreseen to become the intelligent key to a quality of life in the information age. The scope of the eESC initiative is correspondingly vast. It encompasses the use of smart cards in secure public identification and authentication, e-government, e-payments, health, transportation, etc. considering technical issues such as interoperability and security and consumer oriented requirements such as enabling easy to use services.
More information on the eEurope Smart cards initiative:
www.eeurope-smartcards.org
More information on eEurope Smart Card related projects and CEN/ISSS Workshops:
EUCLID (Public Identity)
Finnish Population Center , Mr Tapio Aaltonen
FASTEST Workshop (Facilitating Smart Card Technology for
Electronic Ticketing and Seamless Travel (public transport))
Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, Dr Stafan Kissinger
Embedded FINREAD Workshop (Smart card Accepting Devices Interoperability)
Groupement des Cartes Bancaires, William Vanobberghen
SINCE (Contactless technology)
Eurosmart, Mr Andrew Roberts
SMARTPAY (epayment)
Europay International, Mr Hervé Kergoat |
