Greece Opens €415.6 Million Citizen Identity System Tender

Greece’s Ministry of Citizen Protection has opened a procurement valued at €415.6 million for an integrated system covering citizen authentication, biometric collection and the production of security documents. Bids are due September 10.

The contract calls for a Citizen Identity Hub that supports national electronic authentication and compatibility with eIDAS 2.0, the European framework governing digital identity and trust services. It also includes qualified electronic-signature certificates, document intake, biometric capture, personalization and quality control.

Under the notice, the winning supplier will have 18 months to implement the new system, followed by a ten-year operating and maintenance period. That structure makes the procurement both a technology deployment and a long-term managed identity-document program.

Production estimates illustrate its scale. The first three years cover approximately 6.42 million ID1-format documents, the card size used for national identity credentials, and 1.05 million larger ID3-format documents commonly used for passports. Maximum volumes over the following seven years rise to 32.58 million ID1 and 7.15 million ID3 documents.

Compatibility with eIDAS 2.0 connects the physical-document infrastructure to Europe’s developing digital identity environment. The regulation establishes the framework for EU Digital Identity Wallets and for relying parties to accept interoperable electronic credentials across member states.

The tender also requires the citizen authentication component to work with that European framework. It therefore reaches beyond card and passport production into the systems used to establish a person’s identity for online transactions and qualified signatures.

European vendors are already building intermediary services to connect organizations with wallets, including the first registered eIDAS 2.0 intermediary. National programs are simultaneously testing user-facing functions, as seen in France Identité’s privacy-preserving credential work.

Greece has not selected a supplier. The current notice begins the competitive process and sets technical, volume and service expectations; contract award and final implementation details will follow after bids are evaluated.

The procurement is being conducted through the European Union’s Tenders Electronic Daily system. Its estimated value includes the extended operating period, so it should not be read as the price of hardware or initial software alone.

Identity-document production at the listed volumes will require secure enrollment, personalization and quality-assurance workflows to operate as one chain. The hub and certificate components add online authentication and signing capabilities to that physical production environment.

Source: Tenders Electronic Daily

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team