The EU has picked its partners in developing the bloc’s controversial Digital ID Wallet – and one of them is the same company that previously worked to develop the UK’s official Covid Pass and tracing app.
The companies now awarded EU’s contact are Sweden’s Scytáles – and Luxembourg-based Netcompany-Intrasoft – that’s the one with significant involvement in the UK’s scheme.
The current plan is for EU’s Digital ID Wallet legislation to pass by mid next year, and then launch in 2024.
The purpose of the digital wallet is said to be setting up “universal” digital identities of people, including their electronic signatures, and making all that accessible across countries and sectors.
Naturally, no such plan is complete without those involved devising and implementing it promising data safety and transparency, but at the same time pitching digital wallets to the population mostly as on the personal convenience “merit,” and allegedly overall lower business costs.
Scytáles announced that the EU member-countries will have a chance to take up the product once it is finished, and it will also be accessible to “other stakeholders” who meet EU’s digital identity requirements framework.
Covid is cited by Scytáles execs as a game-changer in the field, which – whether or not the pandemic is still a thing – apparently makes it “imperative to digitize public services and companies as much as possible,” for reasons of “digital safety.”
Moving at its usual snail-mail pace, the EU is navigating its huge bureaucracy and complicated rules and has as of this writing managed to agree on a common position regarding EU digital identity framework. In order to speed up developing the Digital ID Wallet system – creating another, something called “EU toolbox” has to be developed as well.
Earlier in the year, Denmark’s Netcompany (minus Luxembourg’s Intrasoft) said that after playing a key role in UK’s NHS Covid Pass, is was likely to expand operations in that country, but is also reportedly seeing a lot of interest from other European states where it comes to digitizing education, tax administration, payment of benefits, and, of course, healthcare.
Once again, “convenience” is of key importance in the eyes of these companies, and those who promote them.
In this context Denmark is singled out as an example of “a country (that) has a strong digital identity offering for every citizen which makes stitching up services easier.”
