E-government is a term which includes usage of various tools, methods and information and communication technologies with aim to provide and improve public services for enterprises, companies and citizens [9].
It is e-business service in public sector. E-government delivers government services to companies (G2B), citizens (G2C), employees of public administration (G2E, government-to-employee) and among various government organizations, institutes and departments (G2G, government-to-government).
The main objective is to bring the public administration closer to citizens and companies in an efficient and cost effective manner. Its main idea is to provide citizens with constant access to public services as well as to improve efficiency of (internal) public administration operation.
There is also broader term – e-governance – which represents the development, implementation and enforcement of policies, laws and regulations which are necessary to support an operation of governmental units.
E-government can realize following activities:
In order to make use of some of the above-mentioned e-government services it is necessary to adapt the Law on electronic signature (e-signature) [10].
E-signature is the electronic version of a handwritten signature which is associated with a person indicating his adoption of the document.
It can be a digitized image of a handwritten signature, a symbol, voiceprint, etc., used for identification of authors of an electronic document, message or report. E-signature is vulnerable to copying and tampering, and needs proprietary verification software. Examples of e-signing systems are eSign (Adobe), DocuSign, Sertifi, RightSignature. On other hand, a digital signature relies on a special mathematical scheme which ensures authenticity of the document.
The digital signature is based on PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) technology. It guarantees signer identity and intent, data integrity, and the non-repudiation of signed documents. The digital signature cannot be copied, altered or tampered with.