The need for a digital rights management framework for the next generation of e-goverment services

The amount of government information is huge and relies mostly on traditional systems, inaccessible to citizens and often to government departments. In today’s digital era, most of this content can be more intelligently processed and integrated within e-government. In the world of the future, where ambient intelligence and e-governments are a reality, citizens will interact with the available services in all areas of their lives; a situation that presents new challenges in the area of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Taking into account the nature of the information and the needs of different governmental departments and citizens, any e-government research must give full attention to DRM. In the process towards successful e-government, properly handling privacy, security and trust is an indispensable precondition for reliable legal safeguards, reliable technology and secure business, and for achieving acceptance by citizens. Therefore, we propose to establish a Network of Excellence (NoE) for a framework for policy, privacy, security, trust and risk management for DRM. The NoE will consist of experts from various disciplines and will conduct and guide on-going and future high quality research on e-government related domains. © 2004 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.