A Three-pronged Approach to Increasing eIDAS Trust Services Uptake

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.