Transforming Public Services in Europe with eID
Ms Alicia Jiménez González, Project Coordinator, describes how the IMPULSE project is proposing the latest technologies, including blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to create electronic identification (eID) to access public services in Europe on a more secure, accessible and privacy preserving way.
The processes for accessing services in Public Sector institutions in Europe can benefit from utilising the latest technologies to verify citizens’ identities. The European project IMPULSE (Identity Management in PUbLic SErvices), is an initiative involving sixteen entities spread across nine European countries, which is developing and assessing a new innovative, universal eID format.
The coordination is conducted by a research centre, Gradiant, an organisation that specialises in technology transfer from research to industry, turning innovations into commercially feasible initiatives, focusing on functionalities and the needs of the end users.
The project has been working on the requirements, levels of acceptance and the impact of the eID method, whilst taking into account the regulatory, technical and operational needs associated with it.
“In IMPULSE, our main aim is to contribute to the digitalisation of the public administrations and for that, we propose this electronic identity, which we have developed following the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) approach,” said Ms Jiménez González, working on IMPULSE at Gradiant.
A unique approach to eID is proposed where the traditional third-party ownership and management of identification data, for example, biometric data archived with a government department, is replaced by citizen ownership, so people can own and control their own personal data. This approach can be made possible with blockchain technology. Blockchain technology presents an elegant solution with peer-validated data.
the data of their identity, which means the data can never be misused, abused, sold on, or compromised.
During the onboarding process for generating the eID, facial recognition and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies are used. If recognition does not match between the selfie taken for verification and the image of the person on the ID document, then the service
electronic identity, in order to allow citizens to have more secure and easier access to public services.”
Reducing workload, accelerating process
The Covid-19 pandemic revealed that public administration relies too heavily on paper identification and in-person checks to authenticate someone to receive a service, whether by emailing copies of identification or images of documents back and forth, or having to see someone at a location, to identify them.
Replacing these slow, outmoded verification methods with a faster, more accurate online process will accelerate processing and remove administrative blockages to services.
Ms Alicia Jiménez González adds: “This will also contribute to the reduction of the workload of civil servants and administrations.”
we included smart contracts in the project that allow people to manage their consent on how they use the different data of their identity. This also meets compliance with GDPR requirements, as this is personal data.”
For such a transformative solution to become accepted, the project must understand how effective it is in practice and how users will adapt to the technology.
To this end, the implementation of six pilot studies was carried out to analyse the use of the eID in the context of accessing different public services.
Six pilot case studies
IMPULSE is a proposal for a universal solution for accessing different public services. A single method of electronic identification must be compatible with all the case studies, no matter which public service requires verification.
In Spain for example, there are two different pilots to trial its effectiveness. One is for a Citizens card, so citizens can access a multitude of services in a city in a modern, efficient and secure way. Another case study was undertaken by a law enforcement agency in the Basque Country where submissions for low-level complaints of criminal incidents filed to the police were made more efficient through secure online identification.
“For that low-level kind of crime report, they would like to automate the process to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in citizen service delivery” said Mr Iñaki Gangoiti, leader of the Ertainza case study.
A knock-on effect sought by the new eID is to lessen the burden on limited public sector resources, especially to reduce the
Typically, for a citizen to access public services online, a gateway to check identification is via a username and password, PINs or electronic signatures. However, in these systems of identification, users’ data belongs to a third party, which is tasked to validate identity. By using blockchain technology as a future solution, the aim is that the person is the owner of
provider will need to further validate the ID. Once the eID is generated, taking a simple selfie gives a unique image for verification, and the analysis of the facial biometric is empowered with an AI algorithm that can detect liveness or if something is not authentic with the image.
“What we aim to do is to benefit the public services by using this kind of
AI for facial recognition and document scanning are technologies already largely accepted by the population although surveys by the project indicated that there can be inherently negative perceptions of blockchain, which have come about from an association and distrust of cryptocurrency. Despite this, significant advantages and benefits become apparent when using blockchain in the context of retaining privacy and control over personal identification, which can be communicated.
“In IMPULSE, with the use of blockchain, you are the owner of your data. Furthermore,
In IMPULSE, with the use of blockchain, you are the owner of your data. Furthermore, we included smart contracts in the project that allow people to manage their consent on how they use the different data of their identity.Consortium members at the IMPULSE plenary meeting in Madrid (February 2023).
IMPULSE Identity Management in PUbLic SErvices Project Objectives
The aim of IMPULSE is to provide an identity management model powered by blockchain, shifting the model of personal data ownership from government to the owners (SSI: Self-Sovereign Identity, either individuals or corporate) in order to users of public administrations services. Feel secure and confident when sharing personal data and trust the Digital Single Market (DSM). This model implies moving from government departments holding separate versions of a person’s data, to a user-managed identity (aligned GDPR). For that IMPULSE combines the bottom-up approach of co-creation with the need for a universal vision of digital identity ethics in providing public services. The focus of the IMPULSE research is on evaluating the benefits, but also risks, costs and limitations, considering socio-economic, legal, ethical and operational impacts, together with framework conditions to introduce this new eID models in the public sector.
Project Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004459.
Project Partners
https://www.impulse-h2020.eu/consortium/
Contact Details
Project Coordinator, Alicia Jiménez González
Responsable de Programas Europeos
Head of European Programmes
T: (+34) 986 120 430 Ext. 229
E: ajimenez@gradiant.org
W: https://www.impulse-h2020.eu : https://twitter.com/Impulse_EU : https://www.linkedin.com/company/ impulse-project-h2020/ : https://www.youtube.com/@impulse_EU
need for human interaction so employees of public services, can prioritise and direct the majority of their stretched resources toward the most serious incidents.
The use case in Denmark focuses on the access to lockers deployed in the city, to improve access for vulnerable citizens to public self-services.
“To open and access the lockers they require a secure system to ensure you are the person allowed to collect, for example, a passport stored in them,” said Mr Jakob Asmussen, leader of the Danish case study.
Another case study in Bulgaria for public administration is around requesting online certificates, for example, to verify a current address or to create a local registry for which the eID can be used.
integration of the eID and at the same time demonstrate how it will help the public sector and providers.
“We detail the application of the IMPULSE eID solution to the specific case studies, whilst analysing the risks and the gaps. IMPULSE is aligned with the European Identity initiative, so we are working to establish the basis, to be prepared for their future implementation, also being compliant with GDPR and policy regulations,” said Ms Bertille Auvray, leader of the roadmap preparations at case study and European levels.
In parallel with those roadmaps, there will be a socio-economic impact analysis.
Alicia Jiménez González is a telecommunication Engineer with a master in International R&D&i project management. She has worked for the last 12 years as European Project Manager, currently leading the EU department at Gradiant. She has experience in digital transformation projects in different sectors, like public domain, industry, health and primary sector.
“Whilst in Italy,” explained Mr Marco Vianello, leader of the Italian case study “we worked with public administration managing companies’ information. This involved the personal identification of a representative of a company, so that an individual can request services or take actions representing the company they work for.”
Finally, in Reykjavik there is the case study aimed to support digital innovation and networking in online public services, designed alongside a portal on the Better Reykjavik civic participation platform, to discuss online accessibility issues experienced by people with certain disabilities.
Whilst outcomes are being assessed, one piece of valuable feedback has shown that although the initial setup for the eID can take longer, once it is established, processing public services is noticeably faster every time after the setup.
The roadmap for Europe
As part of the project, IMPULSE will develop national and EU roadmaps, to plan the
The socio-economic survey will likely demonstrate anticipated benefits on economic costs, for example, on the number of hours a civil servant must take to process the citizen request in person and many hours can be saved, to allow for prioritisation of other duties.
“We are seeing the benefit is not just for the citizen but also for the civil servant because it reduces the paperwork they have to do and the cost from the public administrations,” remarked Mr Nicholas Martin.
In the latest development, in June 2023, the IMPULSE APP was launched for ID verification, which reduces the manual entry steps needed in the checking process. It has the ability to detect forgery in scanned documents used for the onboarding process (i.e. national ID cards and passports).
The use of eID has great potential to drive enormous efficiency through the European economies. This project can bring much-needed technologies to digitise public sector services, making it easier and faster for citizens and civil servants to fulfil their needs.
