eGovernment and Identity Management: using Biometrics to Reduce the Digital Divide C. Urdiales 1 , C. de Trazegnies 1 , J. Vazquez Salceda 2 and F. Sandoval 1 1 Dpto Tecnologia Electronica, ETSI Telecomunicacion, Campus de Teatinos s/n, University of Malaga, 29071 Malaga, Spain cristina@dte.uma.es 2 Institute of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Utretch, the Netherlands email javier@cs.uu.nl Abstract. This paper presents an analysis about some of the factors that could reduce the impact of eGovernment in current society. These factors are evaluated from a technological point of view. Then, we provide some guidelines to design systems that could be easily accepted by users. We focus on security, which is one of the main concerns of Information Society Technologies (IST) users. Regarding the aforementioned guide- lines, we discuss di®erent security options and propose a design based on biometrics, speci¯cally on signature veri¯cation. Some preliminary tests to support the proposed design have been succesfully conducted and are also presented in the paper. 1 Introduction In recent years, the impact of technology in society is increasing. Particularly, Internet has become one of the most important links between people and tech- nology in the last decade. N ielsen reports in 2002 state that a 40 % in average of people in developed countries is connected to the web. It might be of inter- est to note that the on top of the statistics are some European contries, like Sweden (67,86 %) or Denmark (62,99 %), over countries like US (59.85 %) or China (59,55 %). It is also estimated that the percentage of connected people in countries below a 40 % will increase exponentially in the following few years. Because of the in°uence of Internet, one of the best examples of the Informa- tion Society Technologies (IST), people have quickly adopted new ways of com- municating both in business and in personal life. However, it has been extracted from search patterns and browsing statistics that Internet users are becoming less and less patient [12]. Nowadays, society expects information and services to be online and available around the clock in our homes, schools, libraries and work places. Government is responding to these new demands. eGovernment is the use of IST in public administrations to improve public services and democratic processes and to support public policies. Government agencies are meant to work together to use technology so that they can better provide individuals and businesses with government services and information.