Transforming Public Services in Europe with eID
electronic identity, in order to allow citizens to have more secure and easier access to public services.”
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. 70
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
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. 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
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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.” 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,
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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 Consortium members at the IMPULSE plenary meeting in Madrid (February 2023).
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