The Revision of eIDAS
A lot of information about the revision of eIDAS focuses on the introduction of the Digital Wallet (or the toolbox to build a Digital Wallet).
Although much of the attention is going there, the Digital Wallet is not a Trust Service, but the proposal for the revision of eIDAS suggests the creation of several new Trust Services, which will help making the dream of a universal Digital Wallet come true.
So what are those proposed services?
- Electronic Attestations of Attributes: This service allows for the electronic verification of certain attributes, such as a person’s nationality, using qualified trust service providers. These providers will be able to verify the authenticity of these attributes directly against national registries. The attributes will be shared via a person’s digital wallet.
- Electronic Archiving of Electronic Documents: This service ensures the proper ingest, preservation, deletion, and transmission of electronic data or documents (e.g. digitally signed documents) in order to guarantee their integrity and legal features throughout the conservation period. Qualified electronic archiving services, which may only be provided by qualified trust service providers, will allow to verify the authenticity of data and documents. Documents or data that can be shared directly between organisations or via a digital wallet.
- Management of Remote Electronic Signature and Seal Creation Devices: This service allows for the management of remote electronic signature and seal creation devices. Electronic signature creation devices can be configured software or hardware used to create an electronic signature, and these can be used locally, or remotely through a service provider with the keys.
- Electronic ledger: An electronic ledger (or distributed ledger) would very likely refer to Blockchain technology or its less hardware intensive software counterpart: the Hashgraph.
The European Commission will be setting out minimum technical specifications for these service in the coming months, with the goal of leveraging the time of the legislative process. If all goes well, the new version of eIDAS should be adopted this year.
