Trusted profile as a way of dealing with official matters. NIK report

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The Covid-19 pandemic period is also a time of investment in technology tools, which does not bypass any sector – including public administration. Recently, the sector has been undergoing a dynamic transformation which is mainly driven by citizens’ demands for modern public services. This is confirmed by the latest report of the Supreme Chamber of Control, in which the Chamber examines the functioning of ePUAP electronic system, both from the perspective of the citizens and the public administration.

The number of trusted profiles and the number of e-services are growing

Undoubtedly, the period of the pandemic and further restrictions introduced in 2020 influenced the greater interest of Poles in the ePUAP platform and the Trusted Profile. This is confirmed by statistics published by NIK in its report , “NIK on public services for citizens using the ePUAP platform”. They show that in the period 2016-2020 the number of citizens with such a profile increased more than three times.

As emphasized by the NIK, three factors contributed to the increased interest in the Trusted Profile. The first relates to the current situation with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has affected the difficulty in completing official matters. The second relates to the numerous educational campaigns organized by the Ministry of Digitization about the advantages of the Trusted Profile. The last factor that could have had the biggest impact was the possibility to set up a temporary, three-month-long Trusted Profile during the pandemic. This solution has quite significantly facilitated the whole procedure related to creating such an account for a citizen.

According to NIK , “By June 30, 2020, 12.0 thousand temporary trusted profiles were established. In May 2020 the eDO App was launched. enabling the establishment and confirmation of a trusted profile and logging in to e-government services with the use of eID and short-range communication technology in a smartphone (so-called NFC). By July 2, 2020, the app had been downloaded 44,000 times and 3,800 confirmations of the trusted profile had been made using eID, and by July 9, 2020, the number of eID logins to government services had reached 41,000.”

On the other hand, from the point of view of public administration, during the period covered by the audit, the central state administration bodies expanded the number of available e-services. NIK reports that from January 2016 to the end of June 2020, the range of such solutions increased from 72 to 148. In the report, the chamber also publishes data on the popularity of individual e-services (survey conducted in 2016). They show that Poles most often indicated the need for services related to document exchange (61%), health (51%) and vehicle registration (45%).

Incompatibilities

The report also draws attention to irregularities in the functioning of electronic systems. It singles out, among others, problems with low accessibility and actions of local administration. The first of them refers to the calculation of availability of ePUAP and the Trusted Profile in contracts between the Ministry and COI. NIK points here to the low level of availability of both solutions included in the contract between these entities. According to the Chamber of Control the level of availability at 98% and 99% may lead to a situation, in which the ePUAP and the Trusted Profile solutions may be inactive for citizens even for 7.3 and 3.6 days respectively during a year.

The NIK audit also concerned the functioning of the ePUAP platform and the Trusted Profile in the local administration. According to its findings, the most important problems include:

• In only one office, no action was taken to inform citizens about the possibility of the settlement.
• There was no Information Security Management System (SZBI) in 16 offices.
• 11 offices lacked complete and up-to-date information on the possessed IT resources for data processing.
• Mandatory information security audits were not carried out in as many as 16 offices.
• In 12 units, where the annual audit was carried out, recommendations were formulated to strengthen the security of information processing.
• In 9 offices, the accounts of 59 former public office employees were still active.
• 10% of employees covered by another study were able to install any software on their computers, even though they were not employees of IT services.