* the actual code that will be made public (in particular enabling all sorts of things to be built on top of the Commissions policy / legal know-how and rules)
* the signalling, encouragement and precedent that this provides to other public sector instances that may have been sitting on the fence, unsure or even oblivious to open source
Keep in mind that the open source projects being mentioned as examples on this press release only tend to affect people established as residents in the European Union.
For example, from the press release:
> “ An example of the benefits of open sourcing is eSignature, a set of free standards, tools and services that help public administrations and businesses accelerate the creation and verification of electronic signatures that are legally valid in all EU Member States.”
In order to use an eSignature, you need to have an eID (electronic ID) card from an EU member state, which is placed in a smart card reader. Some people in the EU do not have eID cards yet. Yes, some countries have apps that allow you to use an eSignature, but generally speaking, your eID is your best bet. Typically, your eID provides the highest authentication level, in terms of security, when dealing with EU or national (country) level services.
> In order to use an eSignature, you need to have an eID (electronic ID) card from an EU member state. Some people in the EU do not have them.
This is false. eIDs are a common way of doing it, since they already have a process for verifying identity obviously and are smartcards matching the required security level, but not required, you can just get a generic matching smartcard loaded with the cert.
In practice, countries recognize only eID cards they produced and signed themselves (well, ordered from Gemalto, Giesecke and Devrient or IDEMIA).
Now, once the use of eID cards expands, all these use cases will require software. So far, countries do on their own. Belgium writes its own software, Estonia as well. The point is that most of that software could be reused.
So far, only open source parts are reused, like opensc.
The Estonian e-signature software is fairly well written, open source and easily extensible to other countries eIDs. Latvian and Lithuanian are already supported.
>Typically, your eID provides the highest authentication level, in terms of security, when dealing with EU or national (country) level services.
Not really, at least in here (Poland). "Qualified electronic signature" which you can buy from several approved suppliers, provides highest authentication, you can use access all government services with it and is legally equivalent to paper signature. Meanwhile "personal signature" you get on government issued electronic ID is not eIDAS-compliant, isn't equivalent to paper signature, and some government services are not available (like these VAT tax forms using Adobe Reader plugins, ugh).
* the actual code that will be made public (in particular enabling all sorts of things to be built on top of the Commissions policy / legal know-how and rules)
* the signalling, encouragement and precedent that this provides to other public sector instances that may have been sitting on the fence, unsure or even oblivious to open source