A model enabling Pan-European electronic identification is being developed
UC3M/DICYT Scientists from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have led a European R+D+I project named “eID@Cloud”, in which a model of platforms in the cloud has been developed with the objective of providing the European citizen with access to public and private national services from any state in Europe using only electronic identification from their respective countries.
The eID@Cloud project, in which scientists and technicians from five European countries are taking part, aims to integrate all the infrastructure of digital services for European electronic identification (DSI) on electronic platforms in the cloud, following the eID regulation (electronic identification). “eID is an initiative that has been kick-started by the European Union so that any citizen from Europe can access electronic services from any other member state. For example, someone from Spain would be able to access services in Norway with their DNI (Spanish Identification Number) without any problems”, explains the head of the eID@Cloud project, Jesús Carretero, professor in the IT department and head of the research group ARCOS at UC3M.
This model, which was presented during the last International Conference on Cybersecurity and Resilience of Cyber Physical Systems (ICCRCPS 2018) held in June in Vienna, Austria, has succeeded in interconnecting five platforms (one for every country taking part: Denmark, Spain, Iceland, Holland and Norway) to eIDAS nodes (from the European electronic identification recognition system) allowing the generic delivery and electronic commerce services of public and private institutions to be used. This will provide people and companies from the European Union with access to the services offered and will guarantee cross-border mobility, according to researchers: “Currently, the creation of the eIDAS nodes is formed by ministries from different countries and only offers services to public entities. What we are doing is also connecting Cloud systems from private service providers”, points out Jesús Carretero.
The development of the model has been carried out thanks to Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), an EU funding instrument to promote the development of cross-European networks which are high-performance, sustainable and efficiently interconnected in the areas of transport, energy and digital services. “The advantage of this project is that it will be able to expand and include electronic identification in any document exchange. This way, for example, you can send an electronically signed document to Sweden, and Swedish administration will recognise it without any problem with your Spanish digital signature”, concludes Jesús Carretero.
In the eID@Cloud project (agreement number INEA/CEF/ICT/A2016/1271635), coordinated by ARCOS group at UC3M, researchers from Denmark (Officient A/S), Spain (Intercambio Electrónico de Datos y Comunicaciones SL; Leading Management Technology SL; Universidad Politécnica de Valencia), Iceland (Sendill is Unimaze ehf), Norway (Aksesspunkt Norge AS), Denmark (Officient AS) and the The Netherlands (eConnect International B.V.) are taking part.