Building blocks of modern government: the digital identity opportunity
Digital IDs can unlock government service transformation – but delivery and adoption requires careful planning. Experts from Estonia, the Dominican Republic, Norway and Visa share their digital identity ethos, lessons for other countries, and how they are ensuring inclusion
Digital identities are one of the key building blocks of a digitally-enabled public service infrastructure and can immeasurably improve citizens’ interactions with government. So, how best to develop systems that allow for simple and secure identification and authentication online?
During a Global Government Forum webinar with knowledge partner Visa, public and private sector experts discussed how they had developed digital ID systems – and the benefits that followed.
Helen Raamat, an e-ID expert at Estonia’s Information System Authority, began by explaining the background to Estonia’s “identity ecosystem” which comprises the state’s digital ID and its X-road data exchange platform.
The country’s banks were first to offer digital ID to Estonian citizens for the purposes of online banking and filing income tax returns, but it was in 2002 that the government launched its mandatory national digital ID card after five years of preparations.
The card is issued to all citizens over the age of 15 and all public e-infrastructure is based on it. It can be used for electronic and physical identification purposes and as a document for travel within the Schengen Area, and it also contains a chip so that it can be used for the signing of digital documents.
There have been a number of developments in the 23 years since its launch, most notably the introduction of mobile ID in 2007 (it is SIM-based, allowing it to be used on ‘button phones’ for the purposes of digital inclusion); its e-Residency programme, which allows non-Estonians to register their companies in the country and to use its digital services remotely; and an app-based electronic ID.
The latter was launched by the private sector in 2017 and is “recognised by the government as a ‘signature creation device’ having met EU legislation and the highest level of security assurances”, Raamat said.
Her lessons for countries starting their digital ID journey are, firstly, to look at governance processes and reuse what is already in place if possible – for example, transforming paper-based information into electronic formats and keeping existing technology that is already trusted and secure.
You don’t want to “create a parallel world. Keep the regulations and procedures that work,” she said.
She also advocated the use of a common platform like X-road; having more than one ‘trust service provider’ so there isn’t a “single point of failure risk”; and providing multiple e-ID tokens – essentially secondary e-IDs based on the primary one, that can be used when people lose access to their primary IDs, for example.
Dominican Republic takes ‘baby steps’
The Dominican Republic’s digital ID journey is relatively young compared with Estonia.
Since the passing of a law supporting digital ID and digital signatures in 2002, the Dominican Institute of Telecommunications (Indotel) – a government office – has been working to create an enabling environment for the digital transformation of the country, including the development of digital ID trust services.
One of the key elements to this has been to develop a robust regulatory framework that enhances public trust in and adoption of government services whilst also encouraging innovation.
While there was some early headway according to César Moliné Rodríguez, Indotel’s director of cybersecurity, e-commerce and digital signatures, “progress stalled between 2006 and 2015” and then ramped up in 2019 when the government “took the revolutionary step” to devise a regulation standardising the country’s national framework with the EU’s eIDAS.
This allowed the Dominican Republic to expand the range of electronic trust services it could offer. “We said ‘Okay, we want to be able to have a framework that’s harmonised with international best practices and with the end goal of eventually being able to have the reciprocal possibility of having providers from the EU provide services here, and providers from the Dominican Republic be able to provide services there’,” Rodríguez explained.
Later, the country’s central bank conceived a regulation that allowed the use of digital documents and electronic signatures specifically for financial transactions.
This “became a tool to support digital payments across the country and internationally…. Very clearly targeting the [financial sector] being able to mobilise the economy towards a more digital framework,” he said.
Yet there is still a long way to go before the country achieves what it wants to. “Estonia has this wonderful model. In contrast ours is still being built. We have foundational components like a biometric ID card that’s run by our central electoral board. But unlike Estonia, where they have this fully integrated system, we’re still taking baby steps and getting there slowly.”
It is currently working to develop its own interoperability platform based on X-road.
“We are trying to streamline government digital services as much as possible” in the hope that that will “help build confidence among citizens and institutions in the regular use of digital ID”.
Though Rodríguez warned that while “we can do all this and it’s magnificent”, robust cybersecurity and data protection standards should be in place “or we’re going to be in hot water – never, never take that for granted”.
No one left behind
Svyat Svyatoslav, head of Visa Government Solutions for Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told the live webinar audience about Visa’s mission to promote the digital economy whilst ensuring inclusion.
He pointed out that digital ID and digital payments are the cornerstone of a digital economy and that while trust and security are of paramount importance, so too is access.
“Visa’s mission is to uplift everyone everywhere, so that no one is left behind,” Svyatoslav said.
He explained that Visa works with governments to facilitate digital ID ecosystems and digital transformation and also to “close the digital divide, especially in terms of financial inclusion.”
One of the main barriers in the African Continental Free Trade Area and increasing volumes of intra-African trade is lack of IDs, he said, as an example. “If you don’t have an ID, you are not able to access financial services, if you’re not able to access financial services and to have a proper bank account, you cannot build your credit score. If you cannot build your credit score, you will not be able to build your profile and receive cheaper loans to grow your business. So all these elements are very tightly interconnected.”
At domestic level, when people lack financial empowerment, it “creates a huge challenge for the economy… and impacts significantly on GDP”, Svyatoslav said.
In an ideal world, combining digital ID, digital payments and digital services into a government “super app” – with functions that can be used offline to foster inclusion – is the most “user-friendly” way to enable people to interact with government, he said. Governments can use such apps to “efficiently deliver their promises to citizens” but also to gain data and visibility, in turn helping them to come up with better public policy.
Svyatoslav mentioned the Diia super app from his native Ukraine which was launched in 2020 and currently enables 22 million users to access 40 different services.
Visa is a strategic partner to the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and as Svyatoslav explained, there were lots of discussions in the app’s design phase about how to ensure elderly people who might lack digital skills would not be excluded.
“You need to understand the country context and how every government programme addresses the needs of elderly, vulnerable, disabled people and others. It’s very nuanced work… We need to consider each and every citizen of the country and bring the right technology to the right context to [navigate] the problems the governments of today face.”
Norway’s e-ID strategy: the five goals
Raffaele Angius, senior adviser and product owner in the identity expert team of Norway’s Directorate of Immigration, told Norway’s digital ID story, focusing on the country’s national e-ID strategy, published in 2023.
The previous strategy had come out in 2008. At the time, financial sector identification and authentication solutions were already widely used, and there was also “a very high level of integration between the public sector and the private sector”.
For Angius, who had come to Norway as a student from his native Italy – which is known even now for its cumbersome bureaucracy – this meant everything felt “easy”, from setting up a bank account to activating a phone or electricity contract.
It was a solid foundation for what has happened since.
The government launched its ID Port in 2012, a common log-in system for multiple public services that went from hosting 200 services and facilitating 20,000 transactions in its first year to 8,000 services and 300 million transactions a year today.
“So now if you live in Norway and you have the e-ID, which you most probably have, you can access all sorts of public services and pretty much any private sector service, right down to your local massage parlour,” Angius explained.
The 2023 strategy – which comprises high-level principles to guide the future of the e-ID sector in Norway – has five mains goals.
The first is that all user groups get easy access to e-ID with the security level that is appropriate for them, and the second is secure, cost effective and holistic access to digital services.
This is the idea that “public agencies can talk to each other and design services that are not silo based but that can flow into each other”, Angius said, adding that someone who needs to apply for a job, identify themselves and set up a bank account might be able to do so in one single convenient step.
“We have some experience with this kind of approach that has given us very high gains when it comes to return on investment,” he said.
The third goal is to establish a framework for assured and effective solutions; the fourth is ensuring that government e-ID technology keeps pace with the market and is futureproof; and the fifth is to enable cost-effective interoperability across systems, sectors and different levels of public administration.
If these goals are reached, Norway will have further bolstered its e-ID offering and the ease with which citizens can access public services.
Visa’s Svyatoslav neatly summarised the day’s discussion: “Combining digital ID, digital payments and digital public services in one sophisticated ecosystem – which may also be very efficiently powered by generative and agentic AI – is the new era of digital government in the world.
“I think it will really change the way people live and interact.”
The ‘The identity opportunity: how digital IDs can help unlock government service transformation’ webinar was held in partnership with Visa on 20 March 2025. Watch the webinar in full here
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