Digital Europe Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I, scene i

EUROPEAN COMISSION

Task force legislation Team ( eIDAS)

“ eID: emerging business cases”. 31 March  2015.

Last March 31 we, along with the banking sector, were invited to a break out session to discuss, lay the foundations, to understand different positions and set the required and desired best practices in the challenging task of providing a cross-border infrastructure aimed at integrating existing eID and enabling cross-border services.

When we speak about eID mutual recognition we are speaking about esignatures, ecommerce, registered delivery, time stamps and authentication. Andreas Servida, European Commission, Head of eIDAS Task force says. “To talk about eID is to talk about mutual recognition, giving private sector full autonomy reciprocity and responsibility provisions”.

In a nutshell, for a mutual recognition of eID among countries, the EU seeks to establish a common federation at a court /jurisdictional and technological level.

And who may make all this come true? Without hesitating, the bank sector.

Günther H. Oettinger, EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society mentioned some of the benefits of having an eID: opening bank accounts online, cost savings in the ID user identification process, and altogether ensuring the same degree of security.

The oft-expressed idea, “we must do away the current system in which users and passwords are spreading like wildfire. Users and clients will benefit from it” was present along the whole event.

Leadership and British experience

As there is an in-or-out discussion in the UK to decide whether to stay within or leave the EU, and because British citizens lack identity documents, the UK government has launched the national identity scheme which will allow people to use their eID as official identification documents for accessing currently public services, and private in short.

Moreover, Open Identity Exchange Organization together with Lloyd’s bank, HSBC and mobile companies are working together. According to David Rennie, mobile operators are key players in the digital identification processes.

European banking sector in a unified Digital Europe, Friend or foe?

 For Lois Appleby Director Deutsche Bank Italia it provides a worthwhile and positive challenge. Besides, identifying the need too quickly and safely removing the paper is evident. She takes the opportunity to mention that each market has its own characteristics and each bank has created its own signatures, and they have their own database. She claims for a unified database.

She demands two improvements to the mobile industry Sim cards completely secure along with a security protocol for stolen mobiles, so that they become inoperative.

Marc Lien, Director of Innovation and Digital Development at Lloyds Banking Group, advocates for innovative and simple mobile solutions for identification.

Certainly Mr Marc Lien makes some very compelling points namely that there are important issues underlying user’s identification just as important as credit behaviour, reputation, data loss, fraud, impostor identification and client’s acknowledgement.

Lloyd’s reports that currently there is the possibility of opening an online account in just 6-8 minutes. Provided that identity is verified, he added.

The debate over whether to incorporate the reputation of the user/client identification, user reputation is a recurrent issue in the debate, particularly since not only the banking sector but also the Sharing Market have been summoned up. The reputation encompasses behavioural data and user values on social networks, the so called the “new social currency”.

In general, both the banking sector and especially the sharing market agree on adding reputation to the concept of identification.

Not just that, but on 23 April we are attending the new EU’s call on registered delivery services, e-signatures, time stamps and certifications.

Thanks and bye for now 🙂

Leave a Comment