Paper presented at the
Workshop on Trans-European Generic Services
Brussels, 4 March 1998.
Avenue Beaulieu 9, 1160 Brussels, Belgium

The Internet Citizen Address Service.

A. Serra, L.Navarro,J.Turro,O.Ardaiz
cANet-UPC, Centre for Internet Applications.

1. Conditions for an electronic market.

For developing e-commerce, you need an extense e-market. You cannot have a profitable e-market without e-consumers. You cannot have e-consumers without e-citizens.
As Rand Co. suggested in 1995, the "Universal Access to E-mail" report, this is the school where the people will learn about information society and information economy.
TEN-Telecom as a program dedicated to R&D on TransEuropean Internet Services can be the right place to develop such a service.

2. What is the ICA Service?.

The Internet Citizen Address is the local Internet address of every citizen in our community. (f.e. first name.family name@district.city.nation).
That will be complementary with your Internet Professional Address (IPA), given by your company, university or ISP.
The ICA is the Internet address given by local authorities to every citizen in every democratic city in order to fulfil the basic requirements for a digital citizenship and it is a condition for an extensive electronic market.
It is founded in the local democratic culture that organized the cities based in residential addresses (demos: local circunscription). Now Internet is the new digital space for creating digital communities. We want joint both cultures, the democratic-civic one and the high tech one.
Within Internet, this local service can be expanded to every democratic country worldwide.
An Internet version of "Universal Service" (as in Post or Phone).

3. What are the ICA goals?

4. Where are the dangers?

5. How ICA Service works?.

Creating an Internet directory of citizens (based on local census ), with citizen data (f.e. names, address,...) including the IPA. The implementation can be based on X.500 or LDAP) supported basically by the local Administration.
Reserving a city domain as neutral domain for every member of your community (it is not a property of the City Hall). This domain will define the Internet Citizen Addresses.
Creating a redirection service that forwards messages from ICA to IPA. This service can be supported by a new organism or by the same ISPs.
Protecting the identity of their users with a digital certificate (issued by a public certification authority) that will provide the proper security and confidentiality to their members.
Additional measures to avoid misuse of the service (junk mail, spamming, etc.)

Launching a community public debate about this service.
Creating a public-private partnership based in a civic organism with participation of the City Hall plus local civic actors (companies, ISP, universities,...) to develop the system
Establishing an organisation to manage the service, funded by all interested parties.

The local administration doesn't provide the Internet connectivity but the citizen directory and partially the redirection service.
The ISP will provide the Internet connectivity, and partially the support of redirection service.
The public certification authority is still to be defined.

6. European and global objectives.

V FP (1998-2002). Experimenting the service in some European pilot sites (cities like Barcelona and others). Joining projects with the USA and Canada.
VI FP (2002-2006). After the end of the European Monetary Union process in 2002, opening the goal of giving to every European citizen his/her own Internet Citizen Address. Objective 2006: An European Electronic Market of 360 Millions of e-citizens and e-consumers.