Importance of Mobile Recognised at the eIDAS Regulation Private Sector Engagement High Level Event – eID: emerging business cases

Tomas Jakimavicius, Senior Policy Manager, Government & Regulatory Affairs

A high level event to discuss the Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services Regulation (eIDAS) was held in Brussels on 31st March 2015. The event was organised by the European Commission (EC) and brought together over 100 EU, government and private sector representatives, including high level representatives from mobile, banking and sharing economy industries, the EU Member States and EC Commissioner Günther H. Oettinger.

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The event focused on the value of electronic identification (eID) for business models, and how eID could become a daily reality for business and citizens in Europe. The event is part of the EC’s effort to promote uptake of the eIDAS Regulation in the private sector in order to leverage eID as a key enabler of the Digital Single Market (DSM) by making cross-border electronic transactions more secure, convenient, and trustworthy.

In his opening speech Oettinger, the Commissioner for Digital Agenda & Society, emphasised that the eIDAS Regulation is already a major step towards a connected DSM, providing the key enablers to boost trust, security and convenience on-line for governments, businesses and consumers. He highlighted that for citizens to use digital identity and on-line transactions they need to have the same, or a greater, level of trust, security and convenience on-line than they have in traditional, off-line transactions. Oettinger concluded by highlighting that engagement with private sector stakeholders is also key to delivering on a connected DSM.

Throughout the event the EC and private sector stakeholders stressed the significance of the mobile technology and recognized the critical role of mobile as an enabler of identification processes that can cross all sectors and facilitate wide uptake. “In an ever connected world, where public and private services become more digitised, the need to securely verify users has never been as important. Mobile operators are ideally positioned to facilitate governments and private sector service providers in seeking to provide users with secure access to their digital services – with almost 3.7 billion unique mobile users, the mobile is the most ubiquitous telecommunications medium on the planet” said Marie Austenaa, VP and Head of Personal Data & Mobile Identity of GSMA and a key speaker at the event.

Marie Austenaa presented the Mobile Connect service, which the GSMA launched in February 2014, supported by leading mobile operators. Mobile Connect is an innovative new service that allows consumers to securely access a wide array of digital services using their mobile phone account for authentication. The Mobile Connect service will simplify consumers’ lives, offering a single, trusted, mobile phone number based authentication solution that fully respects their online privacy.

During the event, great attention was given to how mobile, banking and sharing economy sectors can leverage the potential of digitising services and how the eIDAS provisions can help overcome the challenges in cross border scenarios and might promote future growth.
Representatives of these industries presented business cases for eID and this was followed by a panel discussion in which the economic benefits, challenges and business opportunities arising from the Regulation were discussed.

The panel agreed that a predictable regulatory environment for electronic identity and trust services is key to promoting global interoperability and encouraging the roll-out of trustworthy digital identity solutions. While the eIDAS Regulation is expected to foster mobile identity take-up in Europe and internationally, to ensure that these benefits are fully realised, the eIDAS implementation phase will require national governments and regulators to develop a framework in which mobile identity services and its ecosystem providers can thrive. This framework must be technology neutral, flexible and follow well established international standards in order to balance the security and privacy regulatory requirements against the economic and social opportunities that mobile technology and data can provide.

In her concluding remarks, Marie Austenaa outlined that “The GSMA aims to initiate the promotion of Mobile Connect solution to national governments and regulatory bodies to help ensure that the unique strengths of mobile for identification and authentication are made available as widely as possible. Mobile identity new services, like the GSMA’s Mobile Connect, play a key role in unlocking the potential of Europe’s digital and personal data economy and foster trust, confidence and convenience while boosting economic growth and connectivity in the Digital Single Market”.

To find some of the public available information see below:
Information about the event
Agenda of the event
eIDAS Regulation
EC infographic about the impact of eIDAS on SMEs doing business across border