In this article we present the results of a Web site content analysis of all Portuguese municipalities performed in 2013. A three-dimensional maturity model was used to categorize e-government development. The results are compared with others obtained in 2010 in order to characterize local e-government evolution in Portugal. The main conclusion of this study is that, although the results of municipalities have globally improved between 2010 and 2013, the gap between municipalities to what respects e-government development is also growing. Indeed, a non-negligible percentage of municipalities worsened their results in this period.

In a world where people must subject themselves to high scrutiny in every process they initiate, and in a world where the digital environment grows incessantly, we anticipate more online services asking for personal attributes and their need to trust in such attributes. For tackling such need, we describe a proposal for a secure, decentralized and shared repository of certified personal attributes. Individuals benefit because they have full control over the disclosure of their set of certified attributes (e.g. to assert their identities to service providers). The certifying entities benefit from a blockchain-based, resilient and decentralized infrastructure, avoiding the higher costs of an always-on, centralized infrastructure, while retaining the power to issue and revoke certified attributes. Finally service providers benefit from the correctness and freshness of the certified attributes that individuals disclosed to them.

Assuring security and privacy is one of the key issues affecting the Internet of Things (IoT), mostly due to its distributed nature. Therefore, for the IoT to thrive, this problem needs to be tackled and solved. This paper describes a security-oriented architecture for managing IoT deployments. Our main goal was to deal with a fine-grained control in the access to IoT data and devices, to prevent devices from being manipulated by attackers and to avoid information leaking from IoT devices to unauthorized recipients. The access control is split: the management of authentication and access control policies is centered on special components (Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting Controllers), which can be distributed or centralized, and the actual enforcement of access control decisions happens on the entities that stay in the path to the IoT devices (Gateways and Device Drivers). The authentication in the entire system uses asymmetric cryptography and pre-distributed unique identifiers derived from public keys; no Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used. A Kerberos-like ticket-based approach is used to establish secure sessions.

This paper contributes to the knowledge body by establishing the current situation in terms of need, adoption and advertising of privacy policies in the websites of Portuguese local authorities, and by collecting evidence of its compliance with privacy practices. Websites of all the 308 Portuguese municipalities were surveyed for the presence of privacy policies, the usage of tracking cookies and measures taken to secure user credentials. A conceptual analysis was performed on privacy policies to categorise their content. Results were compared with other international studies. It was found that only 26% of the municipalities provide privacy policy statements and many of those exhibit significant gaps considering the information that can be expected in such documents. Furthermore, evidence of non-compliance with the advertised privacy policies and the legislation was also collected. The presented conclusions are useful for both academics and practitioners in the areas of e-government, privacy assurance and local government.