Information Technologies and Communication Authority President Ömer Abdullah Karagözoğlu attended the TÜRKKEP 10th Year Launch event held in Istanbul, where topics such as the Registered Electronic Mail System (KEP) and the future of e-transformation were discussed.
Speaking at the event attended by high-level participants from the public sector and private sector, Karagözoğlu stated that KEP enables the sharing between parties in the electronic environment to be carried out in compliance with legislation, international standards, and in a technically secure manner.
Karagözoğlu said, “Nowadays, many processes such as intra-institutional and inter-institutional correspondence, all kinds of legal notifications between public institutions and private sector organizations, real and legal persons can be carried out with the KEP system,” and added that the Information Technologies and Communication Authority also plays an important role in the KEP System, which handles this intense transaction traffic.
Emphasizing that the secure electronic signature, one of the important indicators of Turkey's transformation into an information society, plays a significant role in ensuring the legal validity of KEP, Karagözoğlu stated, “For the implementation of secure electronic signatures in our country in terms of legal and technical aspects, there are 8 authorized Electronic Certificate Service Providers continuing their operations under the secondary regulations prepared by our Authority in accordance with Law No. 5070 on Electronic Signature. As of the end of September 2023, a total of 8 million 53 thousand 882 Qualified Electronic Certificates have been issued by these service providers for use in generating secure electronic signatures. 2 million 360 thousand 663 of these certificates are actively in use.”
Noting that records regarding KEP accounts belonging to users in the KEP system are kept in an infrastructure called the KEP Directory, President Karagözoğlu said, “As the number of KEP service providers increases, problems have begun to arise due to the prolongation of processing times in the use of the distributed architecture KEP Directory for verifying the accuracy and currency of KEP account information.”
President Karagözoğlu stated, “The necessary infrastructure has been established in our Authority for transitioning the KEP Directory to a centralized structure, and the regulatory studies have been completed. Test works between all KEP service providers and the test environments established in our Authority have been completed, and the final stage has been reached regarding the transition of the KEP Directory to a centralized structure. Considering the potential increase in the number of KEP service providers in the coming period, it is evaluated that the centralized KEP Directory will make a great contribution to overcoming the existing disruptions in the sector.”
Underlining that another important step taken by the Authority on the path of digital transformation is the Regulation on the Process of Verifying the Applicant's Identity in the Electronic Communications Sector, Karagözoğlu concluded his speech by saying, “With the Regulation, for processes such as subscription agreements, number portability, operator/service provider change, qualified electronic certificate applications, registered electronic mail applications, and SIM card changes in the electronic communications, electronic signature, and registered electronic mail sectors, when documents are created in the electronic environment, the procedures and principles regarding the process to be applied—taking into account elements such as identity verification, integrity, non-repudiation, and security—have been determined to verify the applicant's identity through a provable declaration of will.”