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By Kate Hanaghan, 17 May 2002 10:20

NEWS The Office of the E-Envoy has hinted that another round of PKI trials could be in the offing as part of the government's continuing effort to get citizens transacting on its websites - and this time, the open source community may be invited to join in. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is way of authenticating identities for transactions which could include such things as paying car tax or renewing a passport. There have already been two rounds of trials, neither of which had an open source representative. While the E-envoy claims the trials showed greater interoperability between the vendors' technology, there is still no service provider able to make it a reality for citizens. The open source community has argued that the best way forward for PKI is therefore a non-proprietary system. Steve Marsh, director of security policy at the Office of the E-Envoy, told silicon.com: "It is certainly my intention to have an open source entrant. When we got close to the last round of trials it became clear more work would be needed to get open source involved." However, he warned the open source community that there is no guarantee that things will go their way. Things are still "very much up in the air," he said. The government has had to face the reality of a commercial environment that has not risen to the challenge of PKI. Malcolm Herbert, government business development manager at Red Hat, said: "The government initially thought that there would be greater commercial take-up of PKI, but they have found themselves leading the market in this area." Red Hat claims that if the trials were to go ahead, it would be in a stronger position to bid than it was six to nine months ago. Herbert added: "The E-envoy needs to look at a longer engagement process with the open source community - a partnership approach." The UK government is also working with IBM to investigate the possibility of using chip technology to impart signatures during transactions.