Digital Identity: a key lever for digital transformation in Italy
How Digital Identity can boost the digitalisation of citizens, the business and the Public Administration
According to the World Bank over a billion people worldwide have no form of personal identity while over three billion people have paper-based ID cards that cannot be used online.
As a result, in a time when the global economy is progressing toward full digitalisation, many people are still left out from this innovation as they cannot authenticate themselves online in a certified and secure way.
In Italy, the Public Digital Identity System — SPID, and the Electronic Identity Card — CIE, were built to meet these needs. Moreover, after a few years, digital identity has become a fundamental building block of all digitalisation processes in our country as well as one of the main objectives of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan — Next Generation Europe — in Italy.
How can we make digital identity more inclusive for all citizens and how can we maximize the opportunity for digitalisation for both the public administration and businesses?
Digital Identity is a right for everyone
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic emergency, the number of Digital Identities SPID and CIE have grown very rapidly. They are now adopted by over 30% of the population in Italy, a percentage in line with the most technologically advanced countries in Europe.
However, this is not enough.
Our priority is to bring digital identity to everyone, including the less digitalised citizens or the poorest, the elderly and the minors, foreigners in Italy, and Italians residing abroad. Being aware that paper-based and in-person interactions cannot disappear, our responsibility at the Department for Digital Transformation is to make Digital Identity accessible to everyone, as everyone has the right to become a Digital Citizen.
One of the objectives of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan is to enable 70% of the Italian population with Digital Identity by 2026. There are four main drivers to achieve this ambitious goal: a simple and accessible user experience for each citizen, an advanced digital identity empowered by attributes, the adoption of Digital Identity by the less digitized citizens, and the awareness of digital identity.
An advanced digital identity empowered with certified attributes
2021 sets a very important milestone for Digital Identity in Italy: pushed by Law 120- 11 September 2020 (“Urgent measures for digital simplification and innovation”, Decreto Semplificazioni,) all local and central administrations are now adopting digital identity as the only mechanism to provide access to their digital services.
“Based on the Decree Law “Misure urgenti per la semplificazione e l’innovazione digitale” (16 luglio 2020, No 76) Public Administrations must integrate SPID and CIE into their informative systems as a unique identification tool to access public services”
It is the starting point of a new relationship between the citizen and the Public Administration: citizens will access all the online services of the public administration using only one ID recognition system; the public entities and administration will build innovative digital services thanks to the certain and secure level of identification for the user. Similarly in the private sector, the digital service providers will be able to speed up the onboarding of new customers via fully digital processes and user interactions.
To further encourage the growth of innovative services in the private market and public services, we are working to empower digital identity with qualified attributes, which are associated with each identity and certified by the entities owning that specific information. One example of an attribute can be the driving license that must be provided in order to register for mobility sharing services or the professional qualifications that are submitted during the job application process. Thanks to an enhanced identity, companies and start-ups will be able to receive the data necessary for the full digitisation of the processes and allow innovative services.
Data sovereignty belongs to the user
The sovereignty of the data is a central aspect in our vision. Very often the authentication methods that we use every day do not provide an adequate level of security or do not protect our privacy. The crucial phase is the authorization, which must guarantee privacy by-design: only the data strictly necessary for that specific transaction and in that specific moment must be made available and always with the explicit user consent, who has the right to full transparency and control on how his own data is used in each phase of the digital interaction.
In line with Europe, the evolutionary directions are increasingly confirming the user-centricity approach for the management of identity and qualified attributes. The Self Sovereign Identity models, mostly accessible via mobile, are interesting examples in this direction.
Towards a European digital identity
Digital identity is at the heart of the strategy towards a single digital market in Europe.
Since it was enacted, the eIDAS legislation has laid the foundations for this strategy by ensuring the interoperability of the notified national solutions and their acceptance by all the countries of the European Cooperation Network.
In response to the challenge of a Digital Europe, the European Commission has further accelerated this program and recently announced the European Digital Identity program, whose key principles reinforce and further evolve the directions already undertaken in Italy: a digital identity widely available to anyone who wants to use it, whether they are citizens, residents or businesses; that can be used for both public and private online services; that puts the citizen always in control of their data and where only the strictly necessary information will be shared.
Digital identity becomes one of the cornerstones of the single digital market in Europe and will lead us towards European citizenship.
Our journey towards a digital economy
In a hyper-connected economy, digital identity is and will increasingly be an essential component for digital transactions that fosters the development of a digital economy. The need to establish individual identities is not limited to individuals but extends to legal entities, hardware, services, and devices.
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a clear boost to digitalisation and the urgent need to rapidly provide all citizens and businesses in Italy and Europe with a reliable and universally accepted digital identity which can allow continuity of private online services and digital access to public ones.
At the Digital Transformation Department of the Minister for Technological Innovation and Digital Transition, our focus is on the present and the future of digital identity as an accelerator for the digitalisation of the country and a right for each of us. A challenge that we can win only through collaboration with the citizens, the public administration, and the private market.
