Review and Analysis of Current and Future European e-ID Schemes

by Siddhartha Arora

Abstract:

The purpose of this report is to accomplish the following objectives:

1. Review and analysis of existing and future e-ID standards and technologies

2. Review and analysis of national e-ID card schemes (in Europe), including 
their objectives and the policy drivers (motivation).

3. A review of the applications that e-ID cards enable, both for public policy 
purposes and commercial usage (planned & actual).

4. Lessons learned from existing e-ID card schemes (successes and failures) 
and determine whether new international schemes/standards will address past 
short-comings or not.

As a result of attempting to accomplish these objectives, it became apparent 
that across Europe we are still in a fairly early stage of development. More 
importantly, there is no coordinated effort across Europe to implement e-ID 
cards. Leading e-ID card schemes to be designed and implemented at a national 
level has lead to a heterogeneous collection of scheme types. Not only is 
there an inconsistency in the primary objectives of e-ID cards, the use of 
different standards and technologies has lead to a lack of interoperability 
between schemes.