ELENA (procedure)

ELENA ( German elektronisches Entgeltnachweisverfahren - the procedure for the electronic transfer of earnings data) is a procedure adopted and implemented in Germany to reduce management costs during data exchange between the employer and other authorities (currently, about 60 million paper certificates are issued in the country).

According to the law of the Gesetz über das Verfahren des elektronischen Entgeltnachweises, all salary data for residents of the Federal Republic of Germany will be encrypted in the Central Data Bank ( Zentrale Speicherstelle, ZSS ). Access to the information stored there can be obtained by various departments when drawing up social and other benefits, but only with the sanction of the individual applicant. Moreover, such a sanction will be possible only with the use of a smart card with electronic signature (the initial name of the project is JobCard, at the current stage of the project, in order to increase the popularity of digital signatures, the certificate can be used on various smart cards in circulation in Germany: debit cards , Geldkarte , national electronic identity card, electronic residence permit, etc.). In addition, each hired employee will be assigned a secret digital code issued by the Central Registration Service ( Registratur Fachverfahren, RFV ), so any information will be issued only if the digital code is known to the employer and the code is encrypted in the digital signature of the employee, which should exclude one-way access to the data . Access verification will be performed by ZSS and RFV .

Among the critics of the project, the inexpediency and danger of storing a huge array of confidential information about almost all residents of the Federal Republic of Germany are noted (in addition to the basic data, the information collected includes information on sick leave , reprimands, warnings, etc.), in particular, in 2010 the Federal Constitutional Court was filed with the Federal Republic of Germany collective complaint.