How to establish a legally significant electronic document flow of counterparties in Russia and Kazakhstan?

Work to expand the cross-border trust space based on the use of the Electronic Signature Validation Service (ESP) and the services of a Trusted Third Party (TPA) is actively ongoing. This time we will talk about a pilot project in the framework of which a service was created to verify foreign electronic signatures in Russia and Kazakhstan.

The project participants are: from the Russian side - SVEP LLC "UC GIS", from the Republic of Kazakhstan (RK) - the TPA of the Republic of Kazakhstan represented by the trusted operator of the TPA of the Republic of Kazakhstan National Information Technologies JSC and the representative of the Russian business - Rail Commerce rail exchange.

An agreement on mutual verification of electronic signatures (EPs) between the TPA of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the CES of UC GIS LLC was concluded in May 2019 and currently the active testing of the work scheme as applied to the business tasks of the carriage exchange is being completed.

According to the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On electronic document and electronic digital signature”, a foreign electronic signature with a foreign registration certificate (in Russia - with a certificate of a verification key for electronic signature) is recognized on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan subject to the registration of foreign CAs and EIAs in the TPA of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In particular, SVEP LLC “UC GIS” was successfully registered in the Republic of Kazakhstan as trusted.

SVEP LLC “UC GIS” was built on the basis of the PC “Litoria DVCS”, which implements the protocol of the electronic signature verification service and certificates of electronic signature verification keys (DVCS, RFC3029). This is not the only protocol that allows you to implement this service, but it has several advantages that are key for use in cross-border legally significant electronic document management (UZEDO).

The main customer of the project LLC “RAIL EXPERT” is the exchange of railway cars. This is an electronic marketplace for rail freight. The site is focused on key participants in the freight transportation market: cargo owners, car owners and rolling stock operators. With its help, cargo owners are able to quickly deliver their goods to destinations, and car owners find customers and avoid car downtime.

Communication of service customers occurs via the Internet and often among residents of different countries. Thus, the main problem of the railway transportation market customers is the high transaction costs for document management. At the moment, the company serves more than 2600 user companies, which is about 12% of the entire CIS market.

The implementation of cross-border paperless trade as estimated by UNESCAP allows companies to reduce export procedures by 44%, and export costs by 31%.

The interaction technology of the three listed project participants is shown in Figures 1 and 2. Let us consider in more detail the processes that accompany this technology.


Figure 1.

Figure 1 suggests that the organizer of the bidding is a Russian company, and the participant is a Kazakhstan company.

The bidder and bidder may be in other jurisdictions. In this case, the interaction pattern changes in a mirror. If both the participant and the organizer are in the same jurisdiction, then transnational verification is not performed.

Let us follow the steps in the algorithm, where the step number corresponds to the numbering on the arrows in Fig. 1:

1. KZ (), .
2. , , , (DVCS-) RU.
3. , , , KZ .
4. KZ ( ), DVCS- RU.
5. RU , .
6. The bidding organizer receives an application along with a set of receipts confirming the signature of the bidder, which are legally significant evidence of the signature in the Russian jurisdiction.

Figure 2.

Consider the interaction of participants in the process of recognizing the results of tenders, presented in Figure 2, when the operator of the rolling stock is in the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and bidders - both in the territory of the Russian Federation and in the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

1. The bidding organizer sends an act with the bidding results to the carriage exchange server in the form of an electronic document (ED) signed by the EP on the standard of Kazakhstan.
2. , , , , , . (DVCS-) RU KZ.
3. KZ, , , , ( , .
4. RU, , , , KZ .
5. KZ ( ), DVCS- RU.
6. RU , .
7. , , .

Thus, this pilot project is a typical implementation of electronic document management in cross-border business interaction. It should be noted that there are a lot of such business processes in the context of the dynamic development of business, economic and infrastructural international relations, and on the basis of this pilot project, the idea of ​​creating a single gateway to the electronic signature verification service for common tasks is currently being actively developed, but this is topic for future publications.

Sergey Anatolyevich Kiryushkin,
Ph.D., Advisor to the General Director of Gazinformservice LLC

Vladimir Nikolaevich Kustov,
Doctor of Engineering, Professor, Advisor to the General Director of UC GIS LLC