In an interview, Panos Louridas talks about the genesis and development of the Greek wallet and its relevance to the Potential project.
Could you please go back over the background to the development of the Greek wallet and its various attributes?
Panos Louridas (P.L.) : The Greek wallet was launched in July 2022 by the Ministry of Digital Governance in Greece, in collaboration with our company, GRNET – National Infrastructures for Research and Technology, the National Research and Education Network of Greece, also tasked with the design, development, deployment, and maintenance of digital citizen services in Greece. This was one of the flagship projects in terms of digital services for Greece. The launch followed the creation of the Greek public administration’s single digital portal gov.gr in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which now includes more than 1,700 services to make life easier for citizens. Already, users had to use their mobile phones at certain stages to access services on this portal. From that point on, the development of the mobile wallet was a natural development in the context of the high penetration of mobile phones in Greece.
Today, more than 1.4 million digital identity cards have been downloaded onto the digital wallet. Employment cards (600,000 downloads) and ID academic cards (37,000 downloads) are also very popular as well as administrative documents relating to cars (driving licences, car insurance, etc.), which have been downloaded 500,000 times.
Anything that can be issued from an e-government service could be incorporated into the wallet.
What were the main challenges in launching the mobile wallet?
P.L. : We faced a number of technical challenges. For example, it was important for us to develop protocols to guarantee security for both the issuer and the validator. For example, in the case of the mobile driving license, as well as in other certificates stored in the wallet, we had to develop a protocol to ensure that the holder of the license was the person he or she claimed to be and not an impostor.
The other major challenge was to ensure the smooth flow of information: all the information for the Greek public sector is available from a single point of contact and all the various ministries need to connect to this point, the Central Interoperability Hub. Now, this process is very straightforward and is a key enabler that allows us to add new services every month.
How does the Greek wallet fit in with the Potential project?
P.L. : Our mobile wallet was developed before the Architecture and Reference Network (ARF), which was made available only a few months ago, with considerable delay. At the moment, we are starting with the implementation phase of this reference architecture and are looking closely, but without anxiety, at the development of our national mobile wallet within the framework of the European project that focuses on cross-border uses. Ultimately, the idea is to maintain only one of the wallets in Greece. This option could materialize through an update of our wallet in the future. However, Greek citizens may have to re-import a number of documents into the European wallet. In any case, the conversion should be as natural as possible.