Chile’s Government Digital Transformation Strategy identifies DI as one of six strategically important lines of action to support the digital transformation of the Chilean state (MINSEGPRES and DGD, 2019[3]). This follows from President Sebastián Piñera’s first address of June 20th 2018 and the Presidential Instruction on Digital Transformation on January 24th 2019, identifying DI as one of four strategically important lines of action on its state modernization plan (Presidente de la República de Chile, 2019[2]). There is not only a clear statement of political intent in recognising ClaveÚnica as the preferred model for DI in Chile but a comprehensive mandate which requires teams within government to recognise it as such.
Whilst adoption is therefore mandated for service providers in government there is no legal requirement for citizens to be in possession of a DI. This contrasts with the legal requirement for residents over the age of 18 to be in possession of a Cédula de Identidad. This is common in those countries like Chile which have a national identity register and a physical identity card but Chile may wish to extend that requirement to the possession of a DI as is the case in Denmark, Estonia, Korea, and Portugal.
Law No. 19,799 first implemented in 2002 provides the legal basis for the use of electronic signatures in Chile. In Article 3 it identifies the functional equivalence between the act of signing something by electronic signature and a handwritten signature on paper.
Chile is developing data protection legislation to reflect the OECD’s Recommendation on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder flows of Personal Data (OECD, 2013[5]). Law No. 19,628 covers several important areas for underpinning the successful implementation of DI in Chile. They include the principles of:
Legality in the processing of data (the use of personal data only with the consent of the holder or Legal provision)
Purpose (use of data only for the purposes explicitly indicated)
Proportionality (use of data limited to the purpose explicitly indicated)
Quality
Responsibility
Security, and
Information (provision of access to policies on data processing)
The existence of this law makes provision for some of the ambitions for interoperability contained within the Government’s Digital Transformation Strategy and an imagined future where the country is able to work in a paperless fashion (MINSEGPRES and DGD, 2019[3]). The development of ClaveÚnica on the basis of open standards reflects a similar opportunity to champion interoperability. In both these cases the Technical Interoperability Standard in the State of Chile is an important document for supporting the implementation of DI and transformed government services.
One way in which the governments of Austria, Canada, New Zealand and Portugal have chosen to enhance their legislative framework in support of interoperability, data protection and DI is to prevent different government agencies from using identical identifiers for the same person. This approach means that any information being stored about an individual by one organisation is not easily joined to information held elsewhere if it is accessed by nefarious actors. The example of Austria’s SourcePIN discussed earlier ensures that only the information which is necessary for a service to meet a need is ever stored.
A further important legal development related to the adoption of the ‘once only principle’ is found in several of the surveyed countries including Denmark and Portugal. The Presidential Instruction on Digital Transformation on January 24th 2019 considers the "Cero Filas" (Zero Rows) policy that mandates government departments not to require citizen documentation that is already in the State's possession, taking the necessary steps to interoperate and access the required information (Presidente de la República de Chile, 2019[2]).
Latin American and Caribbean countries have strengthened their cooperation on digital government, especially through the e-Government Network of Latin America and Caribbean (Red de Gobierno Electrónico de América Latina y El Caribe, Red GEALC) in recent years and are initiating conversations about developing a regional equivalent to the eIDAS regulation seen in the European Union, initially in the context of mutual recognition of digital signatures. Chile is developing a standards based approach to ClaveÚnica that could support cross-border identity but there is no regulatory provision for such an approach. Nevertheless Chile’s recognition of Argentina’s digital driving licence demonstrates the potential for enabling such cross-border services. Achieving regionally interoperable DI would not be a quick undertaking but one which may prove beneficial.
A final area of the legal and regulatory framework which is not currently in place in Chile relates to the interaction between the public and private sectors. The nature of this relationship in terms of the model for identity underpinning ClaveÚnica is still to be confirmed, but as Chile works through its understanding and implementation of the provision of identity, the use of that identity and the reuse of any data associated with that identity this legal and regulatory framework will need to be developed. The experience of the United Kingdom in managing the federated nature of its identity provision may be instructive. By developing several Good Practice Guides the UK set out its expectations for providers of identity in a way that didn’t have legal weight but which established the criteria by which their involvement would be approved or rejected (UK Cabinet Office, UK Government Digital Service and UK National Cyber Security Centre, 2018[6]).