A-Trust, A Blockchain Public Sector Use Case

A-Trust GmbH starts a Blockchain Project for Austrian City Halls based on Nxt

November 2017 — A-Trust GmbH, Vienna, Austria

A-Trust is the entity responsible for providing digital identity/citizenship for Austrian citizens. Digital citizenship enables access to almost all services offered by the Austrian Government by merely using a laptop or smartphone. The system provides digital signature functionality which allows users to sign contracts as a single person or to use multiple signatures on one document. The digital signature has the same legal status as the handwritten equivalent.

A-Trust provides easy-to-use digital signature solutions

The so-called Handy-Signatur®, provided by A-Trust GmbH, is a powerful tool. With nearly 1 million Handy-Signatur®-users all over Austria, the need for secure authentication is growing. And, there is more to come, since the introduction of eIDAS throughout Europe, the Handy-Signatur® is valid in all 28 EU countries.

To sign an application with your Handy-Signatur®, you log in with your mobile phone number and your signature-password. You will then receive a text message on your mobile phone asking for explicit identification and a TAN-code. After typing the TAN-code and clicking the “Sign here” button, the work is done. You can also use an alternative way of replacing the TAN code, by scanning a QR Code after logging in with the mobile phone number and the signature password.

A-Trust Nxt blockchain application

A-Trust teamed up with Jelurida and the ANG (Ardor Nxt Group) to initiate an enterprise application based on Nxt Blockchain technology, which will enable Austrian municipalities to publish their announcements on a digital bulletin board created for this purpose. Creating a powerful and trustful application using Blockchain technology seemed to be the perfect complement.

At the moment, municipalities in Austria publish their information for the citizens as hard copies, and send them via newsletter systems, or post them on websites they create. Although a majority of municipals are doing an excellent job with information-flow to citizens, the platform created by A-Trust and based on Nxt blockchain technology will help to make the process of citizenship-information to the next level. On the one hand, citizens can quickly crawl through the platform and get recent updates of activities not only of their main residence municipal but also of their secondary residence. On the other hand, municipal officials have a powerful tool to post the information on a safe, immutable online storage platform, with nearly no extra-efforts. This helps to store the valuable information for generations and, as said before, makes it even easier for the citizens to find the information they are looking for.

From the municipals officers perspective, thanks to the combination of the A-Trust citizenship identification system, the platform will identify the concerned municipal and the individual rights associated with the specific account. The information will be credited, validated and secure.

Without a doubt, 2018 will be an exciting year in which we could see more public blockchain-based initiatives like this one. A-Trust has a lot of ideas on how blockchain technology can help to improve electronic government in Austria in additional ways.

Michael Butz, CEO of A-Trust:
“We have monitored the blockchain space very carefully for the last two years. As a Qualified Trust Service Provider, acting for European citizens and the Austrian Government, we have to make our decisions with the highest amount of care. With Jelurida and the ANG, we found trustworthy partners and an excellent developer community structure. Besides that, the environmental aspect of the proof-of-stake algorithm, running without any interruption, is the third key factor which made us choose Nxt.”

Lior Yaffe, Nxt core developer and co-founder of Jelurida B.V.:
“We are excited to work with A-Trust to help bring the blockchain revolution to the area of electronic certificate and trust service providers. Our Proof-of-Stake Blockchain technology is ideally suited for private blockchain applications which help solve identity management challenges.”

About A-Trust GmbH

Compliance, integrity, and convenience have been the backbone of A-Trust since it was founded in 2000. The company is a qualified trust service provider for electronic certificates and operates on the basis of the eIDAS Regulation. A-Trust is subject to periodic checks by the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications (RTR).