The UC1 and UC4, dedicated to online government services and mobile driving licences, have made good progress towards national and cross-border testing.
Clarifying the scope of e-government services (UC1)
According to Ard Van der Heijden, who is responsible for UC1, the past year has been a year of clarifications: “when we started the project, we didn’t know which government procedures to pilot”, he points out, “in the space of a year, we have managed to identify four different scenarios that are to be piloted and one scenario that will be studied in order to provide feedback to the ARF”.
Scenarios for digital identification in public services
How can a citizen identify himself using his electronic wallet to a civil servant in a public administration in another European country? How can he carry out the same identification process remotely? These first two cases are complemented by a third, more complex scenario, which looks at how a natural person can represent a company remotely: “you have to provide proofs and proper mandates and then apply on behalf of a company for some kind of business services”, says Ard Van der Heijden.
A fourth scenario explores how a citizen can meet the identification and residence certificate requirements of a public authority by surfing on that organization’s website. The last scenario, which will not be piloted, looks at the feasibility of an electronic wallet that is owned by a company: “This is a highly complex situation because a company has several employees or locations”, explains the UC1 lead, which brings together 15 Member States.
Challenges and delays in implementation
Ard Van der Heijden also regrets that the postponement and delays of the release of the ARF and the MVP of the Reference implementation posed some obstacles : “Progress is good even though we would have liked to be further ahead” he explains, “I’m fairly confident that we will see some piloting but the question is mainly : will every country will pilot as much as they’d like to do or will the limited amount of time turn out to be too much of a challenge for some countries?” A testing phase at national level is scheduled before year-end followed by a cross-border testing phase in Q1 2025.
Advancements in mobile driving license implementation (UC4)
Elisabeth Grießl, who is in charge of the UC4 scenarios dedicated to the mobile driving license (mDL), also reports significant progress during this first year, with the identification of two specific scenarios, one concerning roadside checks and the other focusing on car rental and carsharing agency bookings: “In the first case, the police officer has a Reader App for mDL verification designed to check the information contained in the driver’s mobile driving license on the smartphone,” explains UC4’s lead project. “The second scenario focusses on sending mDL data to car rental, carsharing or fleet management webservice”.