EUid: Six teams to develop wallets for the electronic EU identity
As part of a competition, the Federal Agency for Leapfrog Innovations has selected several groups to implement the EU regulation for an eID in practice.
(Image: Shutterstock/Irina Anosova)
The federal government has so far struggled to establish an ecosystem of digital identities: for example, the large-scale "ID Wallet" project for electronic driving licenses or a comparable virtual wallet failed at an early stage. Now, a thirteen-month innovation competition organized by the German Federal Agency for Leap Innovations (Sprind) is set to take over. The institution announced the participants on Wednesday. A jury of experts, including Brian Behlendorf from the Open Source Security Foundation, Thomas Lohninger from the civil rights organization Epicenter.works and Uwe Kraus from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), has selected six teams for the first stage to program prototypes for European e-wallets based on the new legal act for a European digital identity (EUid).
With the corresponding amendment to the eIDAS Regulation, EU states will have to provide all citizens and companies with a wallet in future. In the digital wallet, users will be able to store their national eID, particularly on mobile devices, and link it to proof of other personal attributes such as driving licenses, diplomas, birth and marriage certificates, payment data and medical prescriptions. The wallets must be issued within an electronic identification system that corresponds to the "high" security level or qualified electronic signatures. The CDU/CSU parliamentary group recently brought up a "cloud-based" variant with a hardware security module (HSM) in addition to the "frequently referenced solution" based around a hardware component, such as a secure element or eSIM.
Participants in the first stage of the competition
The selected participants are the IT security company Authada, which was also involved in the Optimos 2.0 project for the ID card on cell phones, the company Governikus, which has already gained experience with the revision of the AusweisApp2, the software company Tice, which relies primarily on open source, Animo Solutions from Belgium, Ubique from Switzerland and the Dutch development company Sphereon. The planned systems have titles such as Wallet for All, Human-Centered EID Infrastructure and Easy EUDI Wallet App after the English term for the EUid, European Digital Identity (EUDI). The competition will run for 13 months. In the first two stages, each lasting three months, the teams will receive up to 600,000 euros. For the third phase, which is scheduled to end in May 2025, up to 350,000 euros each have been earmarked. The agency will only fund up to four teams in stage 2 and up to two teams at the highest level.
The support is intended to help implement the submitted architectural concepts and test them as prototypes. According to the plan, each team will develop at least one wallet app for Android or iOS, including the necessary background systems, and make them available for test runs. According to Sprind, the innovation contest is intended to address "in particular critical challenges in the design of an EUDI wallet" for users in Germany. During the funding phase, the prototypes are to be published in full as open source by the end of each stage at the latest.
Six other groups will be able to take part in the first stage of the development cup virtually out of competition. They will be selected by the judges in the next few days. Although they will not receive any money, they will benefit from the "feedback from the jury, the exchange among each other" and the Sprind network. The publication of the source code is not obligatory here, but the code must be made available for the agency and the jury to review. Sprind is carrying out the project on behalf of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The existing infrastructure of the hitherto little-used online function of the ID card is to be used in the solutions.
(dmk)
