Working from home became part of our life. Even if the measurements taken with current worldwide situation are less strict than before, some things are staying unreachable for now. One of them are conferences, even though some of them are adapting and transforming to online environment. The last one I managed to attend with Radovan Semancik and Katarina Valalikova was event of the Trust and Internet Identity Meeting Europe (“TIIME”) series in February 2019. Workshops and Unconference TIIME had 115 registered Internet identity guests from sectors like research and education as well as industry and public on the other hand. TIIME was held from Monday 11th February to Thursday 14th February in Vienna, Austria in event’s Partner premises at FH Technikum Wien University of Applied Sciences.
Speakers and Listeners
I remember it as it was yesterday. Radovan Semancik as software architect and representative of in community well-know project midPoint was a speaker at OSS IDM track facilitated by Peter Gietz from DAASI International. Radovan was co-speaking on titles “LDAP servers, current status, standard schema extension, interop” and “Connector framework future (Connld/Wren:ICF, etc.)”.
Katarina Valalikova as Evolveum’s Java developer & Identity engineer was an attendee and listener at OSS IDM track as well. For the 5th time she was one of people working on and working with Open Source IAM and discuss best practices, integration and solution stories about Open Source IAM.
I (Katarina Chovancova) as Evolveum’s corporate counsel was a listener at Legal track. The agenda of this conference track was being worked out with identity related topics in the area of GDPR, e-privacy and e-evidence. Legal track was facilitated by Prof. Nikolaus Forgó from University of Vienna, Department of Innovation and Digitalization in Law and had five speakers. The Legal track which was focused on legal aspects of IDM was divided into four topics and speakers are professionals at the field. Let me recapitulate for you the most interesting parts I remember.
GDPR and Identity Management
This track started with presentation with title “GDPR and identity management” by speaker par excellence Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Forgó who is a head of a new Department of Innovation and Digitalization in Law founded in 2017 at the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna, Austria. Department team is focusing on Legal Tech and innovations in the legal professional field as well as legal questions related with IP & IT law from a European perspective. One of professor’s publication I found interesting and useful connected with this topic is “The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): A Commentary”.
Federated Authentication Systems Used by the Austrian Chamber of Commerce
Legal track continued with presentation of Dr. Gerhard Laga and Dr. Walter Hotzendorfer with title “Federated authentication systems used by the Austrian Chamber of Commerce”.
Dr. Gerhard Laga is a head of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (“WKO.at”) located in Vienna and Dr. Walter Hötzendorfer is Senior Researcher and Senior Consultant at the Research Institute – Digital Human Rights Center (“researchinstitute.at”) located in Vienna. Speakers were introducing the WKIS – trust management which the Austrian Chamber of Commerce offers to its members as a service for free – Austrian companies and a membership could be an advantage to get this trust management system. Additionally, speakers presented interesting and practical use cases such as Compass, Wemap and Stickie~box that elucidated this topic even further.
Identity Management in E-Commerce and Business Law
After lunch break Dr. Martin Miernicki, a lecturer of Institute of Law and Economics, Department of Private and Business Law of the University of Vienna, was speaking bilingual in detail about “Identity management in e-commerce and business law”. The presentation was focused on various topics many corporate counsels may find practical and useful to master like e-IDAS, Trust services, e-signatures definition and types, legal effect and value of qualified e-signatures, their comparison with handwritten signatures, etc.
Legal Framework of E-Government
Mag. Gregor Schmied, Digitalisation & E-Government at the Austrian Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs and Austrian Permanent Representation provided information about Digital Austria project. The speaker deals with topics like portal, back office, e-Delivery service, e-ID and e-signatures, trust service providers, Austrian citizen card in detail. What I found inspiring was that he underlined the Identity and Trust are two different parts from legal point of view. Regarding to e-ID he mentioned that e-ID is not only data set, but also further attributes are included.
Conclusion
Altogether with my colleagues, we agreed that OSS IDM and Legal tracks, the unconference with session topics and networking in the evening were well organized and useful event. As a corporate counsel I learnt a lot of useful information and broadened my horizons in the field of IdM legal aspects. Even if current situation doesn’t allow us to attend more conferences, I am glad many found their place in the online world. All that is left is hope the next year will bring us more joy and possibilities.