Two days after introducing “ monthly Subscription Plans “, today we announce the official launch of Tractis “Credit Packs”.

What are Credit Packs?

“Tractis Credits” –or, simply, CT- is Tractis virtual money. Think of Tractis as if it was a car and the CTs as the gas you need to run it.

“Credit Packs” give you the opportunity to acquire large quantities of Tractis credit while enjoying discounts of up to 45% on the Standard Prepayment Fees.

Credit Packs are available only to accounts already using the Enterprise Plan. In other words, contracting an Enterprise Plan -our most powerful plan- is a must requirement to receive the heavily discounted fees that the Credit Packs provide.

Plans vs. Packs: what is the difference?

The difference between Plans and Packs is in the type of Tractis Credit they provide. Whereas the “Plans” provide recurring “Monthly Credit” that has to be spent within the month, Credit Packs provide open ended “Additional Credit”, without an expiry date and that can be spent over several months once your account exceeds its monthly credit allocation.

As always, your credit -be it “Monthly” or “Additional”- is not tied-in to any particular Tractis service. You can use them in Identity, Signatures y Webservices indistinctly.

If you seldom reach the Monthly Credit limit in your Plan, it is better for you to continue with your current Plan and, in the rare occasion, pay for the extra transactions at Tractis Standard Fees. Having said that, should you one day be in a situation where your transaction volume is rising steadily and you are exhausting your Monthly Credit regularly, then you should move first to a higher Plan. Only if you are already in our top Plan, the Enterprise Plan, and you are running out of credit frequently, then, and only then, considering buying a Credit Pack would be the right thing to do.

As you will see, the Packs are addressed to large businesses with large transaction volumes that, once they use up their Monthly Credit, wish to continue enjoying heavily discounted Tractis fees.

What Credit Pack is right for me?

If you already have an Enterprise Monthly Subscription Plan, Tractis offers 4 different Packs. In ascending order:

• Gold (200,000 € one time payment): Gives you 200,000 TCs, 45% discount over Standard Fees and Premium support.
• Silver (100,000 € one time payment): Gives you 100,000 TCs, 40% discount  over Standard Fees and Premium support.
• Bronze (50,000 € one time payment): Gives you 50,000 TCs, 35% disocunt over Standard Fees and Premium support.
• Standard (2,000 € one time payment): Gives you 2,000 TCs, same Fees as Enterprise Accounts and Standard support. This Pack is oriented to businesses that once they run over their Monthly Credit want to continue with their Enterprise Plan fees.

Unlike Prepay Accounts and Plans that may be cancelled at any time, acquiring a Credit Pack represent some longer term commitment to the Tractis platform (eventually until all the Credit bought has been used up). Such longer term may be years, as it obtains from dividing the number of transactions in the Pack into number of your yearly transactions that go over the ones allowed by your Enterprise Plan.

Therefore and given the money amounts involved, a Credit Pack purchase has to be evaluated carefully. If you value more your freedom than the discounts offered, we recommend staying with the smaller Packs (Bronze and Standard). If you are sure that the Tractis platform satisfies and will continue satisfying your current and future electronic certification needs and you want to optimize your fees, we recommend opting for the higher Packs (i.e.: Silver or Gold)

Let’s talk

We at Tractis are at your disposal to study your use case with you. Send us an email to info@tractis.com including:

1. A brief description of your needs;
2. Type of transactions you require (Identity verifications, electronic signatures, validations, time stamps and/or preservation of electronic evidences); and
3. Estimated volume of transactions (daily, monthly or yearly).

On our side, we pledge to get back to you within 24 hours with a full report giving all the metrics needed to reach the best decision, including, among other, discounts applied on Standard Fees, transaction volumes involved, number of Packs needed per year, total cost for the first year, and average cost per year.

Today we announce the official launch of Monthly Subscription Plans in Tractis.

Until now, the Tractis platform has worked in a strict pay-per-use mode. As a user you can buy Tractis Credit, spend it in any Tractis services you choose and then reload your credit at your pace (or not). We believe this to be an extremely powerful proposal: maximum flexibility and zero permanence commitment. In two words: complete freedom.

Today we go one step further by, in addition, offering the possibility of subscribing monthly plans. In exchange for a monthly payment you will be able to obtain up to 30% discount on the regular Fees applicable to your transactions, and unlimited users and API’s, free clickwrap signatures. And, of course, you can cancel your Plan whenever you want. In short, the Tractis Plans allow you to have much more for much less.

Prepayment vs. Plans: Which consumption mode is better for me?

With the introduction of the Plans, all existing Tractis accounts change their name to “Prepay Accounts” and will continue to enjoy the same Fees applied until now. As of today, new Tractis accounts include 2 courtesy Tractis Credits and are limited to a single user, a single Tractis Identity API per account.

It is important to point out that the new Plans do not mean the disappearance of strict pay-per-use. Buying a Plan is not required to use Tractis. Both modes of consumption coexist. As a user you are free to choose the one you like better. No option is discontinued. Quite the opposite: there are more options now. Likewise, this new mode of payment DOES NOT restrict your freedom or creates “lock in” to the platform (you can cancel your Plan at anytime).

The main difference between “Prepay Accounts” and “Plan Accounts” is in the time you have to use your credit. As a prepayment user, your Credit never expires and you can use it as it suits you best. Conversely, as a Plan user, you get a “Monthly Credit” that you can only use within that month. Any Monthly Credit you do not consume will expire at the end all the month.

As you see, Plans are thought out for those users or businesses that, knowing they do a minimum number of transactions per month regularly, want to automate their Credit reloads, while enjoying better fees and functionalities.

Find out which Plan is right for you

All Plans have several advantages in common: multiuser accounts, unlimited API’s and free clickwrap signatures. There are 4 different Plans. In ascending order:

• Enterprise (599 €/month): 600 Credits/month and 30% discount on Fees. The Enterprise Plan gives VPN access, personalized SLA and other advantages oriented to large businesses.
• Business (199 €/month): 200 Credits/month and 20% discount on Fees. We believe that the Business Plan offers perfect balance between cost and features, and it is ideally suited to small and medium enterprises.
• Startup (49 €/month): 50 Credits/month and 10% discount on Fees. The Startup Plan is perfect for start-ups or companies that are starting to use electronic certificates.
• Basic (9.99 €/month): 10 Credits/month and same fees as Prepayment Accounts. For little money, the Basic Plan lets freelancers, the self-employed and small businesses enjoy the same advantages larger Plans have, that is, users and unlimited API’s and clickwrap signatures.

How do Plans work?

Controlling your credit use with a Monthly Subscription Plan is very easy.

When you sign up for a Plan, you get the “Monthly Credit” corresponding to your plan. The Tractis Credit (TC) that you might have in your Account before contracting the Plan will show up as “Additional Credit”.

Every time you do a transaction, Tractis will try first to charge it against your “Monthly Credit” at your Plan fees. Only once you have exhausted your Monthly Credit, Tractis will do the charge against your “Additional Credit” at the standard Prepayment Fees. In this way you are assured that you get the most from your Monthly Credit every month.

Should you cancel your Plan, your Monthly Credit will disappear and you will keep your Additional Credit, that now will be called simply “Credit” again.

That is all. We hope these new recurring consumption modes, additional functionalities and improved fees will be of your interest.

Thanks for using Tractis.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

- Steve Jobs. Stanford University Commencement address (2005).

In our last post we announced that the MiFirma platform had started collecting endorsements by electronic signature in protest to the unwarranted limitations imposed by the Central Electoral Board (CEB), as to the electronic signature formats admissible for endorsements.

We have just received the CEB response to the complaint presented on Friday, September 30^th. The CEB refers the question to the Census Bureau, as the body in charge of verifying (validating) the endorsements (signatures) collected. The CEB response is dated on Wednesday, October 5^th, although until the morning of Friday 7^th we did not receive the CEB call asking for a fax number to send us their reply (they do not use email). Today, Monday, October 10^th, we got that fax.

What was the reply?

You can download the CEB reply here. Be your own judge:

The Claimant expounds the limitations that restricting the type of electronic signatures admissible, as per the Addendum on Technical Specifications to Instruction 7/2011, of September 13^th, 2011, from the Central Electoral Board, regarding the procedure for validating signatures in support of candidacies to the Congress of Representatives, the Senate and the European Parliament as envisaged in Articles 169 and 220 of the LOREG.

The Claimant requests that other types be also accepted, as included in the standards in section III.4.4a. of the Interoperability Technical Standards implementing the National Interoperability Scheme, as approved by Resolution on July 19^th, 2011, from the Secretary of State for Civil Service.

The Census Bureau informs that they are not prepared to meet the request so it can be applied for the General Election on November 20^th.

Notwithstanding the imposed restriction above, any interested party can provide a verification system on their own, in compliance with section 5.6 of the aforementioned Instruction.

What does the reply mean?

It is a bit strange. WHAT IS NOT SAID is almost more important than what is said:

• Nowhere neither the CEB nor the Census Bureau go into the substance of the matter of MiFirma’s complaint, namely, whether the CEB has power to further restrict the signature formats accepted by the Technical Interoperability Standards (TIS).
• Nowhere neither the CEB nor the Census Bureau contradict the allegations in MiFirma’s complaint, namely, that the CEB cannot restrict unwarrantedly the signature formats accepted by the Technical Interoperability Standards (TIS). In other words, the CEB does not assert that they have the authority or power to restrict the signature formats, nor that political parties or platforms have the obligation of submitting to such restrictions.
• Nowhere in their reply the CEB imply it is compulsory to use only the signature format described in Addendum on the Instruction, they state simply that the census Bureau is “not prepared to meet the request” in time for the November 20^th election. What follows from that is not that the remaining signature formats accepted by the TIS are not valid, but that the Census Bureau does not have the appropriate verification systems to validate them.
• The last sentence recognizes the existence of an “imposed restriction” and states that, notwithstanding this, the interested party (MiFirma/Tractis) can provide a verification system complying with Section 5.6 of said Instruction of their own accord.

In short, the CEB and the Census Bureau leave the door open to any signature format complying with section 5.6  of the Instruction, as long as the interested party brings with him a verification system capable of validating the signatures that the CEB-Census Bureau system cannot validate at present. And what does Section 5.6 of the Instruction say?

5.6. The collection of signatures by means of electronic signatures shall be always deemed valid whenever it complies with Law 59/2003, of December 19^th, on Electronic Signatures, as amended by Law 57/2007, of December 28^th, on Measures to Promote the Information Society. Therefore, the signatures shall have to be executed with an electronic certificate recognized by the Electronic Site of the INE (https://sede.ine.gob.es). To that end, the representative of the candidacy or of the group of voters shall inform the competent Electoral Board of the electronic signature and verification system used, which shall include a time stamp of the signature. Hereto attached is an Addendum containing the statistical criteria for certification by sampling and the technical specifications for signature systems.

Why all the fuss?

From reading Section 5.6 one could deduce that MiFirma and Tractis are creating unnecessary fuss about something that was already clear in the Instruction. After all, 5.6 says that the collection shall be valid if it complies with the law on electronic signatures, employs certificates listed by the INE and goes on to mention that the electronic signature and signature verification system used may be selected by the user. The problem comes in the last sentence of the paragraph. The paragraph has 2 parts: a first part that acknowledges everything that MiFirma defends in their complaint. And a second part, the last sentence, that includes a reference to an Addendum laying down the “technical specifications for signature systems“, but this Addendum only mentions one signature format, the one that can be validated by the Census Bureau in time for the elections of N20.

In short, far from being trivial, the claim by MiFirma is very relevant and the CEB response very enlightening. Relevant because MiFirma’s complaint denounced precisely the inclusion of that last phrase (or “imposed restriction”, as the CEB themselves recognize). Clarifying because the CEB reply is very careful not to mention “other signature systems” different from those in the Addendum, and only says that “other verification systems” are acceptable. Without any wish of a forced interpretation, we understand that, when resorting to 5.6, the CEB are referring really to the first part of the paragraph and not to the second (last sentence) and, thus, open the door to the endorsements collected by MiFirma.

The “fuss” was needed and very much so. It is extremely important that precedents setting unwarranted limitations (e.g.: certain signature formats) to the use of electronic signatures by political initiatives are not established.

What is MiFirma going to do now?

With six days to the end of the endorsement collection period, their plan is continue doing exactly what they have done since October 5^th: collect endorsements by electronic signature for various political parties, in the format generated by Tractis (internally detached) and then, based on (part of) Section 5.6 of the Instruction and the response from CEB, provide their own verification (validation)system and request that all collected endorsements be accepted.

Since MiFirma official launch in May, the platform has been growing in functionality, members and, most of all, ambition.

Today MiFirma faces their first real life test. A coming of age that has been quite bumpy, subject to pressures from all sides, hard to get and withheld information, seemingly impossible deadlines, controversy, but, at the same time, lots of excitement, determination and activism “of the good kind”.

As of today MiFirma starts collecting endorsements by electronic signature for minority political parties wanting to take part in the Spanish election on N20.

And they will do so in defiance of the Instruction on technical requirements issued by the Central Electoral Board (CEB). This post explains the reason for such decision.

Majority parties: Changes to the Organic Law on the General Electoral Regime

In January, 2011, the Organic Law on the General Electoral Regime (OLGER) was changed with the support of the PP, PSOE, CIU and PNV political parties. This change set a new requirement for a political party to take part in an election: new parties (those that had not won a single seat in the previous election or those newly created) have to collect endorsements (signatures) from 0.1% of the electorate on those districts they want to run for. The change went unnoticed at first, but as the economic situation deteriorated and the elections drew closer, more and more people started to worry about the new requirement and its implications. Minority parties had to collect thousands of signatures in a 20 day period, beginning with the official election call.

On the one side, PP and PSOE proclaimed that the measure served to show that a minority party had sufficient endorsement to participate. On the other side, minority parties said that this was a PP and PSOE ploy to favor a two party system and to make entry harder for new political groups, ideas and new ways of doing things. The polemic was served.

Collecting thousands of signatures in 20 days is no easy task if you are a nascent political party. On top of that, the cost and effort of the signature collection pre-campaign adds work and costs to the political party campaign proper. Faced with the sheer size of the looming task, several political parties started addressing MiFirma asking whether it would be possible to use their platform to collect endorsements for the N20 election, instead of for Citizens Initiatives (CI) as was MiFirma original plan. The idea was welcomed and MiFirma set to work to prepare for collecting endorsements.

However, there was a big problem: the lack of necessary information made progress on several front impossible. Despite the fact that the Electoral law has been changes in January, there were no additional regulations specifying how the endorsements were to be collected. The minority parties complained of being left in the dark as to what data and how had to be collected from each endorser, whether a copy of their DNI had to be collected or not, whether electronic would be allowed or not, etc. Without this information progressing in the development of a number of parts of the platform was impossible.

Minority parties: an obstacle race

On July 29^th, president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced an early election for November 20^th. The minority political parties asked repeatedly the CEB for their pronouncement and for concrete information on how the endorsements had to be collected. The CEB informed the parties that they would meet after the summer to agree on and communicate the details about the collection of endorsements. Minority parties (and MiFirma) resignedly waited fully aware that, once the election was officially called, they would have only 20 days to collect thousands of endorsements whose final content and collection procedure were still unknown.

On August 18^th, with the purpose of advancing as much as possible while waiting for the CEB information, the Catalonia Pirates Party created the YoAvalo.org platform, and invited the other minority parties to join. YoAvalo.org was a webpage that informed citizens of the new requirements for collecting endorsements, of the difficulties of collecting the signatures in such a short period, of the lack of information and offered a tool where interested citizens could leave their email to be notified when the endorsement collection period began. The strategy was clear: given that it was not possible yet to collect endorsements, they would try to create a data base where people interested in endorsing could give their data beforehand. This way, as soon as the endorsement collection period started, the minority parties could send all those interested an email soliciting their formal endorsement.

On September 15^th, the CEB finally published an Instruction establishing the requirements for each endorsement and allowed the use of electronic signatures while admitting that “The imposition of these requirements demands from the Electoral Administration that they clarify those details of the procedure for collecting and validating the signatures that are not fully specified in the current legislation”. The Addendum to the CEB Instruction set out the technical requirements that the electronically signed endorsements had to meet. There were 66 days remaining till election day.

On September 26^th, president Zapatero officially called the general election for N20. The 20 day period for minority political parties to collect endorsements and gain, under the new legislation, their right to take part in the election had started. They had all of 6 working days to adapt to the technical requirements laid out in the CEB Addendum to collect endorsements by electronic signature. Not being capable to adapt their systems in that short time, they begun collecting signatures on paper, not without some difficulties, hoping to have the adaptations needed ready with some time left to be able to collect electronic endorsements also. There were 55 days left before election day.

On October 16^th, the period for minority parties to collect endorsements, both with and without electronic signatures will come to an end. Only then, after the signature collection and presentation marathon, minority political parties will be able to concentrate 100% on their election campaign proper. There will be 35 days left before going to the polling station.

MiFirma reinforces its development team

Since its creation, the MiFirma platform has never ceased to reinforce itself and grow in the number of its collaborators. MiFirma development is divided in two parts: “MiFirma Platform”, a web service for collecting signatures accessible through mifirma.com, and “MiFirma Community”, the code base on which the mifirma.com platforms runs. Faced with the situation described above and the requests from minority political parties, the MiFirma decides to merge all developers into a single team and concentrate all efforts on the adaptations needed in the “MiFirma Platform” to collect the endorsements and to postpone all work related to making the “MiFirma Community” code open.

MiFirma reinforces its legal team

In September MiFirma announced that 4 true experts in new technology law, administrative law and electronic signatures had joined its team:

• Javier Prenafeta, lawyer expert in information and communication technologies.
• Julián Valero, professor of Administrative Law at the University of Murcia and promoter of  “Río de firmas”, the first CI for which the CEB accepted electronic signatures.
• Samuel Tejado, lawyer and Legal Counsel to the ADIF Board and General Secretariat.
• Nacho Alamillo, well known expert in electronic signatures, worked in the creation of CatCert (the Catalonian Certification Agency), Cesicat, and in drafting of the world wide electronic signature standards.

Working in step with the development team, the recently beefed up legal team decided to concentrate on getting the CEB to accept the use of Tractis and electronic signatures for endorsement collection and they set down to work on it. The reasoning being that “certifying” the MiFirma front-end was not worth the effort, but rather the Tractis back-end. Once the CEB admitted the validity of signatures in Tractis, this “CEB blessing” would cascade down not just to MiFirma but also to:

1. Any other platform for collecting signatures running on the “MiFirma Community” code, once this becomes open.
2. Any other platform for political initiatives built on the Tractis back-end.

First submission: To the Madrid Provincial Electoral Board

On August 11^th, MiFirma files its first brief with the Madrid Provincial Electoral Board (MPEB). In this document they inform MPEB that Tractis is a Certification Services Provider registered with Ministry for Industry in all the categories it operates (signature validation, time stamps and preservation of long dated electronic evidences), they include the relevant technical information about the platform, and they request from the MPEB that:

With utmost urgency and, in any case, with time enough for us to collect the signatures in due and timely form, you, the Madrid Provincial Electoral Board, declare that the system employed by Tractis to collect electronic signatures to the aforementioned ends (endorsements) is as provided by the Law.

Dated September 28^th the MPEB responds to MiFirma. Instead of answering to the request that they audit and validate the Tractis platform, all MPEB did was to copy-paste in their reply the CEB Instruction taken from the BOE (see attached). You can download the MPEB response to MiFirma here.

Second submission: To the Central Electoral Board

According to the Law on Electronic Signatures, signatures produced on Tractis are “recognizes electronic signatures” and, therefore, the equivalent of hand written signatures. According to the CEB, they are not. In theory, yes. In practice, no.

Why is that?

In the Addendum to their Instruction of September 15^th the CEB, of its own accord, limit the formats and technical profiles of electronic signatures accepted. More precisely, they impose the use of the XAdES format “enveloped” in format (embedded in an XML document). Whereas Tractis uses signatures in the XAdES format in “internally detached“ format. Without going into details, XAdES signatures or “XML Advanced Electronic Signatures” support different profiles and formats: “enveloping” (when the signature contains the document), “enveloped” (when the document contains the signature), “internally detached” (when the document and the signature do have a parent-son relationship, but are equal rank “siblings” within the document) and “detached” (when the signed document and the signature reside in separate containers)

It is important to point out that all these formats are equally valid. All of them produce recognized electronic signatures in agreement with Spanish and European electronic signature legislation. Nevertheless, the CEB has decided –unwarrantedly, in our opinion- that the only valid endorsement are those collected under one of the formats. This decision is particularly grave taking into account that if was communicated only 6 working days prior to the beginning of the endorsement collection period, leaving practically no time for parties and platforms to adapt.

Can they do that?

We believe they cannot.

Article 4.1 and 4.2 of Law 59/2003 on Electronic Signatures, of September 19^th, states:

In order to safeguard due procedural guarantees, Public Administration bodies shall be able to set additional conditions to the use of electronic signatures in procedures. (Such additional conditions) shall be objective, proportionate, transparent and non discriminatory and in no case shall hinder the delivery of certification services to citizens when one or more bodies from the national Public Administration or belonging the European Economic Space intervene.

We believe that there is no objective and publicly understandable justification for the decision. At least, the CEB did not justify it in their Instruction.

Law 11/2007 and its implementation regulations have laid out the conditions for which a citizen to interrelate with the Public Administration, both in the Royal Decree 4/2010, of January 8^th, whereby the National Scheme for Interoperability (NSI) is approved, and in the Technical Interoperability Standards (TIS) developing its implementation in the matter of electronic signatures, approved by Resolution of the State Secretariat for Public Administration, of July 19^th (BOE of July 30^th). Specifically the NSI states in its Motivation Preamble:

…the Royal Decree 4/2010, of January 8^th, regulating the National Interoperability Scheme in the realm of the Public Administration sets out, in its first additional provision, specifies the set of Technical Interoperability Standards that are to be compulsory observed by Public Administration bodies. And that the objective of the NSI is: ”the creation of the necessary conditions for guaranteeing am adequate level of technical, semantical and organizational interoperability among systems and applications used by the Public Administration, allowing the exercise of rights and the fulfillment of obligations through electronic access to public services“.

Paragraph 1.2 of the NSI states that that the content of the TIS shall be applicable to all certificate based electronic signature developments or policies adopted by any Public Administration. In other words, the requirements for the use of electronic signatures are contained in the TIS, thus making superfluous for the CEB to redefine them in their Instruction. In fact, were an Administration body to set specific requirements, these would have to necessarily comply with the TIS, doing otherwise would mean a violation of citizens rights. Just what the CEB did with their Instruction.

What are the standards on formats and profiles laid out in the TIS as mandatory for all Public Administration bodies? 5 types in total (not only the 1 the CEB require), and they are listed in sections III.4.2 and III.4.4.a. Among them, XAdES signatures under technical specification ETSI TS 101 903, version 1.3.2, in “internally detached“ document format, that is, those used by Tractis.

The Technical Interoperability Standard established for Public Administration, and legally binding for them, includes the format used by Tractis. And yet, the CEB says in their Instruction that they do not allow it.

What can we do?

We asked ourselves the question. There were two options:

1. Shut up and go along with the limitations, that we thought unjustified;
2. Speak up and defend our arguments, that we believed solid.

Although we could have implemented the system required by the CEB, we opted for the second option. For a number of reasons:

1. Implementing the system required by the CEB in the record time of 6 working days given by their Instruction, but that would entail forfeiting the support in Tractis of the DNIe APDU commands , the ones that allow signing without the need to install the DNIe drivers. Forcing citizens to install the DNIe drivers would increase their frustration, their calls for support, and a drastically reduce the number of signatures collected.
2. Accepting the CEB restrictions would leave citizens and minority political parties defenseless and set a precedent that would weigh down heavily on future political initiatives using electronic signatures.

On Friday, September 30^th, we filed a brief with the CEB expounding the above arguments. We believe that our document is well reasoned and presents strong arguments. Judge by yourself. You can download the document MiFirma sent to the CEB here.

Collection of endorsements in defiance of the Instruction from the Central electoral Board

With no reply from the CEB forthcoming and not being able to wait any longer (there were just 11 days to the end of the endorsement collection period), MiFirma spoke with several small political parties and together decided to start collecting as of today endorsements by electronic signature in defiance of the unjust restrictions imposed by the CEB. It is our intention to submit all the signatures collected by MiFirma to the CEB and see if they decide to reject them despite being “recognized electronic signatures”. Should this be the case, in collaboration with a number of political parties, we would file a brief opposing the CEB Instruction as patently detrimental to citizens’ options and to the success of small political parties, not only for this particular political event but also for other in the future.

It is not for a politically neutral platform such as MiFirma to make pronouncements on whether the way the matter has been handled or the timeframes set were appropriate; nor to elaborate on their effect on the probabilities of success of small political organizations in the coming election. We leave that to the concerned parties, and that belongs in some other forums. Having said that, we do believe that it behooves all those that collaborated with MiFirma to show our disagreement with the technical requirements set by the CEB for the collection of endorsements by electronic signature, with the timeframes accorded to meet them, and with the precedent these restrictions might establish going forward.

Limiting the presentation of endorsements to a single syntactic type of electronic signature among all those accepted in the NIS without sufficient justification is, in our opinion, a non objective condition completely out of proportion, lacking any reasonable explanation and, finally, clearly discriminatory. More so when taking into account that the verification systems implemented by the Public Administration and, more precisely, @firma from the Ministry for Territorial Policy and Public Administration, can validate XAdES internally detached signatures. The CEB is not accepting some technical formats and profiles because they cannot validate them, but because they decided not to do so. Without any explanation or justification. No matter how much you ask for them.

DNIe and other electronic certificates are a very powerful tool (fearsome) in the relationship of common citizens with the Public Administration. They should not start life handicapped from square one. That would be a dangerous precedent set for future use of electronic signatures for political initiatives. Your endorsement on MiFirma today not only would let a small political party to participate in the coming N20 election; each signature bears testimony, reinforces further the message that people want to use their DNIe without unwarranted curtailments imposed by Public Administration bodies.

MiFirma has reached the point where the debate is no longer whether they can collect endorsements meeting the CEB restrictions, but whether the CEB or any other Public Administration body has the right to impose such restrictions in an unjustified fashion. The first argument regards just the present moment. The second argument has far reaching implications not just for collecting endorsements, but future collection and for political initiatives making use of electronic signatures. This second one is a far more important battle than the first.

A lot depends on winning it.

Update 2011.10.06: The parties listed below have already enabled the collection of endorsements through MiFirma, despite the uncertainty on whether the CEB will finally accept or reject the endorsements thereby collected. We thank all them for using MiFirma and for giving their support in opposing the unjustified restriction of signature formats on the part of the CEB.

1. Bloc-Iniciativa-Verds-Equo-Coalició Compromís.
2. Izquierda Anticapitalista.
3. Escaños en Blanco.
4. Partido de Internet.
5. Partido Pirata.
6. Partido Azar.
7. Partido de la Libertad Individual.
8. Convergencia por Extremadura.
9. Pirates de Catalunya.
10. Iniciativa Legislativa Ciudadana.

Until now, Tractis users could choose between two types of Account: Personal and Business. The latter gave users a number of added advantages and features: multiple user access, library of business templates, API access, personalized logo and Tractis interface colours, etc.

We have decided to merge both types of Account into one. From now on, each User belongs to one Account, and each Account can have one or several Users.

The merger of Accounts that we announce today is part of the restructuring process we anticipated last February when we launched the new Accounting system.

Why unify Accounts?

For a number of reasons that boil down to only one: Simplification.

1. To make Tractis value clearer: From the feedback received, it seems that a large number of Users created a Personal account in Tractis and stayed there, not being aware that they could upgrade to a Business account, much more powerful and also for free. This made these Users continue using the platform or abandon it without getting a good feel of all the power, sophistication and advanced features that Tractis has to offer. We decided to display the full “value proposition” from the very start.
2. Lower support demand: The process for upgrading from a Personal to a Business Account was not as intuitive as it should and often times it required the assistance and valuable time from our support team. With this merger the need for an additional configuration disappears, and all Users get the advanced features by default and without the need for additional support.
3. Better integration with Plans: We will be soon announcing monthly subscription Plans in Tractis. We came to the conclusion that the combination of multiple Account Types and different Plan Types would give rise to a level of complexity and support not compatible with the goal of simplicity and clarity we strive for continuously at Tractis. 

What are the changes Account unification entails?

From now on, al Tractis Users will enjoy the same advantages and advanced features with no need for them to make any configuration changes:

• Multiuser access for all Accounts.
• Access to the Account Team Library, where you can share Contact Templates with all your team members.
• Access to the Tractis Contracts API.
• Be able to configure the level of guaranty of the autentication method by default for all Account Users.
• Be able to configure the level of guaranty of the signature  method by default for all the Contracts in the Account.
• Be able to personalize the Look of the Tractis interface (logo, colours) for your Account, Authentication gateways and Signature gateways.
• Access to other advanced services we will be telling you about pretty soon

How do these changes affect me?

If you had a Business Account already, the changes do not affect you al all.

If you had a Personal Account, you will see that there have been minor changes to the Tractis menu at the top.  It differentiates now between you User Profile and you Account Profile.

User profile

• You can Access your User Profile by clicking on you name on the menu at the top.

• Once you access your User Profile, you can edit both the information in your user profile and your Tractis personal use preferences (change email and authentication  methods associated to your User).

Account profile

The information and configuration of an Account Profile is only accessible to the Account Administrators.  All Personal Account users are now Account Administrators for their Account. To access your Account Profile, you have to click on the Account name.

• If you did not fill out your company name on the Account Profile, you will see a link called “Account” by your name:

• If you filled out the your company name on the Account Profile, you will see a link with the name you gave to your Account:

• If you are not the Account Administrator, you will see that the link to the Account Profile is shadowed and inactive:

• If you are the Account Administrator, you can click on the Account Name to Access the Account Profile. Once there, you will find the following options:

• Profile: Lets you complete the contact and billing information (if you are a business). You need to fill our this information if you need invoices from Tractis.
• Preferences: Lets you define the authentication and signature methods allowed for all Account Users.
• Users: Lets you invite, suspend and change permits to the Users in your Account.
• Orders: Lets you look up and manage all orders you place in Tractis (Credit reloads and, very son, more stuff we cannot reveal now), for all Users, in one location and in real time.
• Credit: Let you check the Rates applied to your Account and gives you full visibility to all  Inputs y Outputs applied to your Account, for all Users, in one place and in real time.

We keep working on improving our services. Keep an eye on the site as we will be announcing many more interesting things in the coming weeks.

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

Howard Aiken, primary engineer behind the Harvard Mark I.

On Wednesday, April 16, I am presenting Tractis at Suscipe.

Suscipe is a forum for entrepreneurs coorganized by the student associations in Spain of the London Business School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Standford University, as well as by the Association of former interns of “la Caixa”, in collaboration with the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

The following is event’s program (pdf). The event is free of charge and you can attend only the parts you are interested in:

• 19:15: Innovative Project: Tractis
• 20:00: Special Guest: Angel Iglesias, founder of Ikusi, a Spanish company with over 700 employees present in more than 80 countries
• 21:15: Networking event

My presentation will be focused on the project itself, whereas Angel Iglesias will talk about his activity and entrepreneurial experience. The event will take place in the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales de Madrid, Room 3 (c/ José Gutierrez Abascal 2. Zona Paseo Castellana – Nuevos Ministerios).

Francisco Hernández, one of Suscipe’s coordinators, told me that 113 people have already confirmed their assistance, but there is still room for more. Whether you use Tractis or not, if you are starting your own project, or are interested in spending some time with people that want to make a difference, I will be happy to meet you in person.

Update 2008.05.26: The organizers at Suscipe have just uploaded the video of the presentation of Tractis.

Although somewhat late, I am happy to announce the winners of the 4th Edition of the Glider Awards (December 2007).

The Glider Awards are the awards Negonation gives its most valuable collaborators. What’s new to this edition is that all awards have been decided by the Negonation staff (vs. collaborators votes in past editions). This comes in response to a strategy that we have been following since mid last year in order to decrease the number of collaborators and increase the intensity of the collaboration with a few.

The first winner, with an award of 1000 €, is José Luis Gordo Romero. José Gordo is a regular winner of these awards: he already received recognition in past editions and, this time, he’s won first place again, being the first collaborator in Tractis history who has received the title of Glider Hacker twice (the first time being in the first edition of the Awards). Over the past few months –actually, since the beginning of the project–José has been helping us on a regular basis with system administration, server configuration, server certificates, DNS administration, back-ups, etc. Working with him is a real pleasure. He is professional, competent, and honors all of his commitments. Tractis wouldn’t be the same without you, José!

The second Glider Award, also worth 1000 €, goes to Choan Gálvez. We met Choan through Diego Lafuente, our Creative Director. Choan is a true magician of javascript and the creator of Protomean–the contract editor used in Tractis. In addition to handling himself really well in the, poorly documented, javascript world, Choan is an enthusiast of short stories and board games.

Despite not receiving a prize in cash, a special mention goes to Tatiana Nubiola, our linguistic guru, guardian of the style guide and enthusiast of the Academy of the Spanish Language and its dictionaries. She is responsible for most of the English translations and copy choices you see in Tractis. This makes Tatiana the first collaborator awarded with a Glider that (1) is a woman, (2) lives abroad (NY State, for those of you who were wondering), and (3) doesn’t program a single line of code. Tatiana is proof that you don’t need to know how to program to be a hacker.

Congratulations to the winners!

PS I apologize for the late post, I promise to post sooner next time.

This is the third post in the series entitled “Smart cards in Europe”. In the introductory post, we affirmed that Europe is about to receive 1 billion “smart cards with strong authentication and digital signature capabilities” which have the potential to change the way we do electronic commerce. The source of the card avalanche is two-fold:

1. Smart cards issued by governments to identify their citizens (Electrionic Identification Cards: e-IDs).
2. Smart cards issued by banks to substitute magnetic strip cards (EMVs).

This third post describes the second type. We’ve analysed the situation in 31 european countries (EU-27 plus Liechtenstein, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland). This is what we’ve found:

In 2010, all European bank cards, some 590 million of them, will be smart cards (EMVs) with strong authentication and digital signature capabilities.

If you don’t believe us, read on:

European banks that plan to launch EMV smart cards

Short answer: all of them.

In 2000 the European Commission decided that to foster innovation (Lisbon Agenda) the single market must make it easier to move money around the EU. Specifically, cross-border payments should not cost more than domestic payments. In other words, you can use your bank card in another EU country and they won’t charge you any more commission to withdraw money as they do in your home country. This initiative is known as the Single Euro Payment Area or SEPA. The SEPA zone encompasses 31 european countries (EU-27 plus Liechtenstein, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland).

To make SEPA a reality, all the EU banks need to agree on the same standards and implement the same procedures to ensure interoperability at the moment of accepting a card. To give an example, a cash machine (ATM) in Austria should be capable of accepting and understanding a card issued by an Italian bank. Said and done: the standard was developed by Europay, Mastercard and Visa and they called it EMV (the initials of the three companies). EMV will mean that there will be no difference between national and transfers within Europe. EMV will make SEPA a reality – meaning cheaper payments and faster money transfers between countries in the eurozone.

The EMV standard is based on “Smart cards with a microprocessor chip” and this microprocessor chip is capable of storing not just financial applications (EMV) but also other types of application such as strong authentication and digital signature. As you can see, EMV cards are (or have the capability to be) similar in functionality to eID smart cards. The only difference is that they are issued by a bank instead of a government.

EMV deployment phases in Europe

The banks of these 31 countries are obliged by SEPA to migrate all their magnetic strip cards to EMV smart cards. They have from January 2008 to 31st December 2010 to do the migration.

Experts consider that most of these countries will have completed the migration to EMV by 2009, one year before the deadline:

• 2006: United Kingdom has already completed 90-100%. France 50-90%. Rest 10-50%.
• 2007: United Kingdom and France will have completed 90-100%. Rest 50% to 90%.
• 2008: All will have completed 90-100%, except for Germany, which will have completed 50-90%.
• 2009: All will have completed 90-100% of migration to EMV.

Conclusions

If you live in Europe, you will soon have an EMV smart card in your pocket.
Europe is the undisputed leader at global level in EMV deployment (since 2002 – see slides 3 and 5 of this presentation). Europe has more than 50% of the total number of smart cards in the world (of the 590 million smart cards worldwide, 300 million are in Europe). Europe has more smart cards than magnetic strip cards (of the 587 million bank cards in Europe, 300 million are smart cards). The obligations imposed by SEPA on European banks mean that Europe will increase this lead.

We’re not saying that all EMV cards will be capable of digital signature (like the majority of eID cards). We are saying that (1) if the banks want to use it, the technology is there and (2) many do plan on using it. In our conversations with the main card issuers in Spain, the majority have plans to incorporate signature certificates in the chips. The objective is that the client identifies his/her self and signs online with a card and the look and feel of the bank. Once the adverts start, it’s difficult to imagine the rest of the banks failing to offer the same functionality.

EMV around the world

Europe is not alone: Banks in various countries are migrating their magnetic strip cards to EMV smart cards (Turkey, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia etc.).

As of year-end 2006 there were 3 billion bank cards in circulation. Of these, between 515 (source: GIA Cartes Bancaires) and 590 million (source: Deutsche Bank) were microprocessor smart cards:

• Europe: 300 million smart cards.
• Asia/Pacific: 150 million smart cards.
• South America: 140 million smart cards.
• USA: Has no EMV-compliant cards and, as with e-ID cards, is reluctant to introduce them.

Given the benefits of smart cards, it is just a matter of time before banks around the world change from magnetic strip to smart cards. The growth potential in this sector lies in the prospective migration of the 2.5 billion magnetic strip cards in circulation. Deutsche Bank estimates smart card growth of 18% CAGR in the payments industry between 2006 and 2010. In 2006 430 million smart cards were sold – 12% penetration, with France and Germany leading the way. In 2007 544 million were expected to have been sold (34% attributable just to EMV migration). In 2010, 600 million smart cards are expected to be sold every year with 26% penetration.

By 2010 there will be 830 million EMV cards in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Something is changing, don’t you think?

Next post (and the last in the series): “Smart cards in Europe: Conclusions”.