The Nordic countries have led the world in digital adoption and innovation for some time now. They often top most digital competitiveness rankings like the 2017 Digital Evolution Index.

The index places the Nordic countries in a leading position in terms of user trustworthiness of the digital environment, quality of user experience and consumer behaviours in the digital space. This digital edge percolates into other sectors of the economy and the Nordic countries therefore lead in areas like fintech, digital commerce and online service delivery.

Leading by Enabling

One of the most important prerequisites to create a truly digital economy is to provide businesses and users with the tools to effectively and safely transact in a digital environment. User identification and authentication is one of the first and perhaps one of the more important steps in digital service delivery. For financial services, it becomes even more critical with the need to ensure compliance with CDD (Customer Due Diligence) and KYC (Know Your Customer) norms and to build robust barriers against money laundering and other financial crimes.

The Nordic countries present an ideal case study for the type of Digital Single Market that the European Union would like to create across all its Member States. That is the main objective behind various EU initiatives like the eIDAS regulation and its supporting guidelines which are critical enablers for the creation of such a pan European Digital Single Market.

Letting the numbers do the talking

The biggest success perhaps in the Nordic countries though has been the high adoption rates. The following table illustrates just how widely are the national eID and eSignature schemes in used Denmark, Sweden and Norway:

These figures are indicative of the trust that the consumers have placed on these schemes as well as the ability of these schemes to successfully deliver what is required of them. In a matter of years, these electronic IDs have become pivotal in the delivery of all manner of services – both through the private sectors as well as governmental agencies. eIDAS aims to replicate this success and even take it a few notches higher by allowing for cross border usage of electronic IDs as well.

In Part 2 of our series on the success of electronic IDs and eSignatures in the Nordic countries, we will look at them in somewhat greater detail and analyse what has made them so successful with such impressive adoption rates. Such an analysis will help us distill the key ingredients to the success of such schemes and gives us a window into the future of larger initiatives like eIDAS.

References and Further Reading

• Leading the Digital Change – eID and eSignatures in Scandinavia, Part 1 (2018), by Gaurav Sharma
• Leading the Digital Change, Part 2 – Turning eIDs into universal tools (2018), by Gaurav Sharma
• Leading the Digital Change, Part 3 – Successful Collaborations (2018), by Gaurav Sharma

• 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 Authentication (2014-today), by Heather Walker, Luis Balbas, Guillaume Forget, Jan Kjaersgaard, Dawn M. Turner and more

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

Image: Viking Shadow, courtesy of Shannon Kringen, Flickr (CC BY 2.0)