YEARS OF EUROPEAN ONLINE ANNÉES DE EN LIGNE ...

WORKSHOP
the chain of conidence is a reliable process for producing electronic documents
which can be authentic and oficial. Usually the chain of conidence
utilises certiication and digital signatures. It is important that there are
methods for the diagnosis and veriication of the integrity of the process and
of the different phases.
the chain of conidence may cover only a part of the production process,
such as the inal steps of preparing the publication from the materials received
from the ministries and the parliament. At the moment, there are very few
experiences of either worklow or chain of conidence.
Practices
AUSTRIA
the e-Recht (e-law) project has prepared a separate worklow for the ministries
and for the parliament. the basic ideas were:
• to replace printed legal texts by digitally signed electronic documents;
• to provide an electronic worklow for producing legal texts (e.g. laws,
regulations, announcements, treaties);
• to enable oficial publication of the Austrian federal Law Gazette on the
Internet.
the legislative process in Austria has been reformulated in the following
way.
• A draft of a bill is prepared by a ministry.
• the ministry sends the draft bill for internal consultation (expert’s opinion) to
different interest groups (e.g. trade unions, chamber of commerce).
• the draft bill can also be put into the RIS legal information system.
• A decision on it is taken at the Council of ministers (which is a weekly
meeting of the Austrian federal ministers).
• the draft bill becomes a government bill and has to be put into RIS.
• the government bill is transferred from the Government to the Parliament,
which runs an independent system.
• the government bill is discussed by the Parliament.
• the decision of the Parliament is transferred back to the federal Chancellery.
• the bill is signed by the federal President and countersigned by the federal
Chancellor on paper.
• A server-based electronic signature is provided by the federal Chancellery.
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