Swiss e-ID Head Says Pilot ‘Already a Success’

The head of Switzerland’s digital ID project is trying to press forward as the government’s legislators seek a legal basis for a national e-ID system, and says that a small regional pilot is already making the case for digital ID.

Speaking at the recent “Digital Identity unConference Europe 2024” event, federal councillor Beat Jans said that a pilot in Appenzell Ausserrhoden, one of the country’s 26 administrative cantons, “can already be considered a success.”

“Soon 1,000 credentials will be issued,” he said. “There are hardly any support cases. This does not mean that everything is perfect: we still need to improve our communication. However, based on these real-life experiences, we will be able to improve the e-ID before it even exists.”

That having been said, the overarching task is complex, and he and his colleagues continue to encounter “new approaches” to digital ID that must be considered, he explained. Meanwhile, the European Union’s eIDAS 2.0 regulation hasn’t yet detailed the “fine print” concerning various technical details of what the bloc would expect of member countries’ digital ID systems.

““For these reasons, we are not yet ready to decide on the initial implementation of the e-ID and its trust infrastructure,” he said. “We take this decision seriously and need more time.”

There is also the fact Switzerland doesn’t yet have a legal basis for implementing a federal digital ID system. Voters had rejected a proposed “eID Act” in a 2021 referendum, and a new version is still being deliberated in the country’s parliament.

For his part, Jans emphasized that the new legislation is designed to define “the main functionalities of the e-ID and the architecture of the required trust infrastructure,” while keeping a neutral stance on the technologies to be used with respect to decentralized identifiers, verifiable credential formats, cryptography, and communication protocols.

Source: Global Government Forum

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July 15, 2024 – by Alex Perala