I’m really excited about an event coming up in a few weeks. The Digital Identity unConference Europe – DICE. Heidi, the primary IIW producer and I one of the three IIW founders are working with Procivis, Digital Trust and DIDAS to put the event on. It is happening June 7th-9 in Zurich.
There is a Pre-Conference 1/3 Day Wednesday June 7th. There will be talks in the afternoon with a capstone panel featuring government leaders implementing digital identity from an impressive array of countries.
There will be two days of Open Space Technology formatted Unconference. This is where we gather in a circle and co-create the agenda live all together just like we do at IIW. We have an amazing list of potential topics that you can see here.
The timing is potent for the event and this is the description on the website about some of the framing around why now and why in Europe.
Europe has seen many government-driven digital identity initiatives in the past few years and became a hotspot for decentralized digital identities. A key initiative was started in Germany by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in 2020 with the title “Showcase program Secure Digital Identities” which aims to develop German eIDAS solutions, which are equally user-friendly, trustworthy and cost-efficient and to make these solutions easily accessible for administration, businesses – especially SMEs – and the population. This program is funding 4 national digital identity projects with up to EUR 15 Mil each between 2021 and 2024.
In parallel, the European Commission launched in September 2020 a major revision of its electronic identification, authentication, and trust services “eIDAS” regulation which came into force in 2016. The aim of the revision is to introduce an EU-wide mobile-based “EU-ID” for all European citizens that can be used in all 27 EU countries. First proposals for technology architectures incl. wallets (eIDAS Architecture Reference Framework and the EU Reference Wallet proposal) were presented in early 2023 and four cross-country “EU Large Scale Pilot” projects were funded by the European Commission in April 2023 – among them, EU Digital Wallet Consortium focused on Travel, Digital Credentials Four Europe, EuropeaN digiTal Identity wALlet (POTENTIAL).
Another major project in Europe is European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) which has been fostering ecosystem development since 2018 with 19 conformant wallets. And an early adopter program with 200 organizations participating.
Switzerland has seen a rejection of its national E-ID legislation by a citizen referendum in March 2021 given concerns around privacy and the public-private partnership approach which foresaw private sector entities issuing E-ID to Swiss citizens in the name of the federal government. Switzerland’s Ministry of Justice then started to work immediately on a new approach to introduce a citizen E-ID for all Swiss residents based on the key principles of Self-Sovereign Identity with the respective law going into parliamentary discussions in Fall 2023 with the aim to introduce the national E-ID in 2025. The first pilot project on a national trust infrastructure “sandbox” operated by the federal Department of Technology started in April 2023.
There are many good websites and other resources about these efforts but ultimately it is people who are making it happen. This event with its opportunity to co-create the agenda live each day means the most relevant and pressing topics by those making these initiatives happen can be shared and discussed. The key to effective alignment and interoperability is having forums like this where no one entity is “setting the agenda” and where all interested parties can show up in a neutral space and shape the agenda together.
I hope you can join us! Its going to be fun 🙂