The last few years have been exciting for all stakeholders involved in the implementation and use of the eIDAS toolbox. Some important milestones have been reached, and new initiatives are taking off. However, to significantly increase the uptake of eIDAS-enabled services, a three-pronged approach is needed to bolster the main growth drivers. This approach is based on the feedback received from the various respondents in a recent ENISA survey and its accompanying report.
Integrating the Services
The first prong is integration, which needs to happen at several levels. Firstly, the national-level approach taken by various EU countries towards trust services or eIDs needs to be harmonized. This standardization would make things easier for all stakeholders and allow governments to improve their service levels and delivery.
Secondly, integration needs to happen between the various market participants. Developers, service providers, consultants, businesses, regulators, etc., need to work together to achieve integration at the business level.
Finally, the integration of trust services and eID’s needs to happen at the level of individual business processes. This would make the benefits apparent to users in their daily lives.
Enhancing the User Experience
Any service or application designed to be used by the mass market needs to focus on the user experience (UX). This enhanced UX has driven the success of various mobile and digital platforms. Along with interoperability and security, usability is one the most important elements of modern service delivery and critical to increasing eID and trust services uptake.
The second aspect of this is providing training and creating awareness about the capabilities and features of trust services.
All stakeholders like enterprises, citizens, governments, and organizations must be targeted with appropriate informational campaigns and their understanding enhanced through webinars, infographics, videos, and other tools. A harmonized approach to electronic identification and trust services across the various EU countries would greatly increase usability as stakeholders don’t have to grapple with varying approaches.
Building the Environment
To increase the uptake of trust services and electronic identification, creating the necessary environment, which means a combination of standards, applications, and compatible services, is essential. Large chunks of commercial and public sector services have low digitization, and bringing them into the 21st century would be a huge boost to the aim of the Digital Single Market.
Innovation must also be encouraged, and new service synergies must be explored like using eIDAS trust services in things like eSeals, eTimestamps, eInvoicing, advanced biometric electronic signatures, use cases for IoT devices, blockchain-based eID systems and so on. Related directives like the Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) also provide many opportunities to use the eID tools and trust services enabled by eIDAS.
Conclusion
This three-pronged approach of integrating, enhancing, and building can go a long way in promoting the adoption of electronic IDs and trust services enabled by eIDAS. Eventually, though, it simply boils down to creating awareness, providing a delightful and safe user experience, and creating the needed technical environment for these technologies to flourish.
References and Further Reading
- Benefits of the eIDAS Toolbox – Case Studies from Various Industries (Part 1) (2018), by Gaurav Sharma
- Benefits of the eIDAS Toolbox – Case Studies from Various Industries (Part 2) (2018), by Gaurav Sharma
- Digital Trade and Trade Financing - Embracing and Shaping the Transformation (2018), by SWIFT & OPUS Advisory Services International Inc
- REGULATION (EU) No 1316/2013 establishing the Connecting Europe Facility, amending Regulation (EU) No 913/2010 and repealing Regulations (EC) No 680/2007 and (EC) No 67/2010(12/2013), by the European Parliament and the European Council
- Selected articles on Electronic Signing and Digital Signatures (2014-today), by Ashiq JA, Gaurav Sharma, Guillaume Forget, Jan Kjaersgaard , Peter Landrock, Torben Pedersen, Dawn M. Turner, and more
- Selected articles on Authentication (2014-today), by Heather Walker, Luis Balbas, Guillaume Forget, Jan Kjaersgaard, Dawn M. Turner and more
- eIDAS webinar 1: Using electronic Identification, Authentication and trust Services for Business (2018), by the European Commission
- The European Interoperability Framework - Implementation Strategy (2017), by the European Commission
- Proposal for a DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL amending Directive (EU) 2015/849 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing (2016), by the European Commission
- REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) (2016), by the European Parliament and the European Council
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Proposal for a REGULATION concerning the respect for private life and the protection of personal data in electronic communications and repealing Directive 2002/58/EC (Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications), (2017), by the European Parliament and the European Council
- Revised Directive 2015/2366 on Payment Services (commonly known as PSD2) (2015), by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union
- REGULATION (EU) No 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market and repealing Directive 1999/93/EC (2014) by the European Parliament and the European Commission
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DIRECTIVE 2013/37/EU amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information (2013) by the European Parliament and the Council