Dr. Niklas Auerbach

Study of Computer Science in Zurich and London. I hold a Master's Degree in Computer Science and Business Administration and a Doctorate Degree in Computer Science. After working in the financial services division of a Swiss Insurance company I joined the Information Management Research Group. With the University of Zurich I have participated in international e-Government projects and currently also work in projects with Swiss financial services companies.
My research focus in the domain of public administration lies on digital identity in e-government and especially privacy aspects related to the deployment of digital citizen cards. Further reserarch interests include issues related to IT strategy and IT controlling in the financial services industry. This also comprises the management of IT architectures and issues related to IT-governance.

• IT Strategy and IT Controlling
• Management of IT architectures
• Enterprise IT archtitectures
• Visualisation and communication of IT strategies
• e-Governance

• Digital Identity
• Privacy in e-Government
• Anonymous service delivery based on digital citizen cards
• Protection of privacy by use of pseuodnymous credential systems
• Agile IT-architectures based on Web-Services
• IT Strategy and IT Controlling

Digital Identity based on Pseudonymous Credentials

The ongoing implementation of e-government has prompted many governments to issue electronic identity (e-ID) cards. Such cards can be considered to be privacy-invavsive, as the bearer of an e-ID card potentially disclose their identity in every electronic transaction. It can be argued however, that an identitfication of the citizen is unneccessary in many application scenarios. As an alternative, e-ID cards can feature a heterogenous digital identity that comprises pseudonymous credentials as an element of the citizen's identity. A strong authentication becomes possible while the citizen can remain anonymous respectively pseudonymous.

Keywords: Anonymity, Pseudonymity, Pseudonymous Credentials, e-ID cards, Service Acess, JavaCard, Credentials, E-Government

FASME - Facilitating Administrative Services for Mobile Europeans

FASME is a pan-European research project with participants in 7 European countries. The acronym stands for 'Facilitating Administrative Services for Mobile Europeans'. The project leverages JavaCard technology to create a citizen-friendly C2A (Citizen to Administration) E-Government solution. The system facilitates processes that citizens have to perfom when moving house in Europe.

Keywords: JavaCard, Message-oriented Middleware, C2A E-Government

eMayor - Service Platform for Small and Medium Sized Governmental Organisations (SMGO)

The emayor project aims at creating a open, secure, interoperable and cost effective eGovernment platform. The service platform is aimed at the needs of small and medium sized municipalities. Such municipalities often have a lower amount of infrastructure (as compared to bigger cities), limited public funding, and a low number of specialised IT personnel.

Keywords: Service Acess, E-Government , Web Services, Service-Oriented Architecture, SMGOs

Journal Publications

• Niklas Auerbach: Smart Card Support for Anonymous Citizen Services (Journal Version), in IADIS Journal on WWW/Internet, 02/04, IADIS Press, Lisbon, Portugal, January 2004

Conference Publications

• Thomas B. Hodel, Niklas Auerbach, Alma Schuetter, Klaus R. Dittrich: Autonomic Databases: Towards Privacy Enhanced Database Management Systems To apper in: Proceedings of The Third Computer Ethics World Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 14-17 July 2004. International Society of Business, Economics and Ethics
• Niklas Auerbach: Smart Card Support for Anonymous Citizen Services, in Pedro Isaias (Editor), Proceedings of e-Society 2003, Lisbon, Portugal, June 2003
• Niklas Auerbach, Nico Maibaum: FASME - A Step towards European E-Government Solutions, in Proceedings of ECIS 2002: Information Systems and the Future of Digital Economy

EU Project Deliverables

• N. Auerbach, R. de Gier, T. Fiedler, S. Fuentes, S. Jung, P. Hoepner, A. Kaliontzoglou, A. Mitrakas, D. Nocera, J. Osuma, R. Riedl, A. Seeger, E. Serrelis: eMayor D2.1 Municipal Services - Analysis, Requirements and Usage Scenarios. Amsterdam/Brussels, March 2004
• Niklas Auerbach, Qing Chai, Suo Cong, Reinhard Riedl: FASME D6.2: The FASME Prototype. Deliverable to the IST Programme of the European Commission. EU Research Project FASME, IST-1999-10882, Brussels, 2002
• Reinhard Riedl, Clemens Cap, Suo Cong, Nico Maibaum, Lutz Richter, Alan Leibert, Niklas Auerbach: FASME D6.1: System Architecture for the FASME Project, Technical Report to the EU Commission (public). EU Research Project FASME, IST-1999-10882, Brussels, 2002