Minister Angelkova: All the services offered by the ministry are now accessible by clicking or showing the face through a smartphone

01 December 2018

The access to qualified electronic signature for e-services of the institution will be free during the first year

All the registration services that the Ministry of Tourism offers in accordance with the Tourism Act will be accessible with just one click and via a smartphone since Monday.  In addition to the usual method involving a personal identification number (PIN), the qualified electronic signature will also be placed by means of face recognition. This has become possible after the development of a special platform for electronic services for the ministry, said the Minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova during its presentation today. She clarified that in this way, the requests for the issue of all types of permits and services of the institution can be sent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from all corners of the world. In order to use the platform, you need a preliminary registration which takes about a minute, after which the application will be submitted for about 15 seconds, explained the minister.

We are the first state administration providing this type of electronic services in Bulgaria, we are also pioneers in the EU, where such a platform is to be introduced by the Ministry of Digitalization of Austria, said Minister Angelkova.

The qualified electronic signature for the users of services in the institution is expected to be free during the first year following the launch of the platform. Then, the users will have the opportunity to have 5 free electronic signatures a year and after the cessation of this option, the monthly subscription will cost 2 levs, said Minister Angelkova. It can be terminated and extended at any time and the citizens and the business will not be obliged to maintain their subscription permanently. The minister also clarified that this platform had been developed in four months. All the requirements of the legislation and the norms of GDPR have been observed and the protection of all personal data is completely guaranteed.

The platform has been developed in accordance with all the legislative requirements and is also very easy to use, said Prof. Georgi Dimitrov, a representative of the supplier of verification services Eurotrust, which is the author of the platform. He gave a detailed presentation of the method of registration and use of the services and also stated that after we specify the service we would like to use, we provide identification using our personal ID number, telephone number or e-mail address, all the necessary data are verified and automatically entered in the application. When registering via the telephone camera in case of face recognition, 84 facial points are analyzed in order to verify the identity.

The new platform will significantly facilitate the access of the citizens and the business to the services of the ministry because they will not have to observe the working hours of the institution and this can be done in all corners of the world, said Prof. Dimitrov. He also added that the project significantly optimized the work of the administration and the applications will be processed after being submitted. This will save people thousands of working hours and, compared to the minimum hourly wage, the financial effect will be enormous. Prof. Dimitrov clarified that by the end of the month the electronic services of the Ministry of Tourism will be used by consumers in all EU Member-states.

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