On the one hand, with the SHIELD Manifesto, a fundamental key points paper on the ongoing design of the envisaged open, interoperable, trustworthy, and user-friendly ecosystem for Secure Digital Identities was published for comment. On the other hand, based on relevant preliminary work in line with international standards, a basic version of the MOBILE-X platform for Android and iOS was made available, which not only enables trustworthy self-determined identity management based on digital IDs but also establishes a secure bridge to the trusted GAIA-X data infrastructure.

The SHIELD project has been funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) since June 2020, as part of the technology competition “Schaufenster Sichere Digitale Identitäten” (Secure Digital Identities Showcase) to develop an open, interoperable, trustworthy, and user-friendly ecosystem for Secure Digital Identities to be used in all practical use cases with everyday relevance in the future. In the meantime, the SHIELD project, which is supported by numerous internationally recognized experts from business, science, government, and civil society and backed by more than 80 organizations, has presented many working papers and an implementation concept based on them. The concept describes the further development steps for building the envisaged open ecosystem. The foundation of the work is the SHIELD reference architecture, which addressed strategic aspects and documented the guiding principles of the initiative. Inspired by the Mozilla Manifesto, these “ten commandments of digital identity” have now been made available as the SHIELD Manifesto for public comment in the eIDAS Forum:

• Principle 1: #eIDAS4all
• Principle 2: Open
• Principle 3: Interoperable
• Principle 4: User-centric
• Principle 5: Trustworthy
• Principle 6: Inclusive
• Principle 7: Inviting
• Principle 8: Transparent
• Principle 9: Sustainable
• Principle 10: Let's #GOeIDAS - now!

Free Platform for Secure and Self-Determined Identity Management - MOBILE-X

In order to practically advance the implementation of the envisaged open, interoperable, trustworthy, and user-friendly ecosystem for Secure Digital Identities, the free MOBILE-X platform for Android and iOS was made available as open-source based on relevant preliminary work in the field of electronic identity (eID) and with the aim of Secure Self-Determined Identity Management (SSI), to make Secure Digital Identities, such as the ID card with online ID function, even easier to use in mobile applications.

This trusted platform builds on the architecture of the international standard ISO/IEC 24727 and conceptually complements this “eCard API framework” with aspects of self-determined and user-centric identity management (“Self-Sovereign Identity”). It takes the relevant regulatory framework and international standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on verifiable digital credentials (“Verifiable Credentials”) and decentralized identifiers (“Decentralized Identifiers”) into account, to create a universal mobile client for the European GAIA-X data infrastructure.

The basic MOBILE-X platform, which is now available as open-source, was implemented based on the Open eCard platform certified by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) under the identifier BSI-K-TR-0333-2019 as an “eID kernel” under BSI TR-03124, which supports various European ID cards (“eCards”) and the identification services of different providers. For example, Deutsche Post AG uses this trusted platform in the POSTIDENT app for Android and iOS, which in turn benefits telecommunications providers such as Vodafone, congstar, ja!mobil, and Penny Mobil, and their customers. “After the very positive experience with the use of the eID function in the POSTIDENT app, we are now looking forward to integrating the trusted MOBILE-X kernel into other applications of our business partners,” adds Johannes Willig, Product Management Identity Management at Deutsche Post AG. Another application example for the MOBILE-X platform is the FiftyFifty Taxi of the Lichtenfels and Kulmbach districts, which follows the recommendation of the German District Association and implements this “Smart Mobility Service” based on a federated microservices architecture. As part of the SHIELD project, this innovative mobility platform was prepared for use in other regions, for other means of transport, value-added services, and, last but not least, the GAIA-X data infrastructure. Finally, the MOBILE-X platform can be used in conjunction with the SkIDentity service and https://eID.gratis for completely free eID-based identification by the end of 2020.

About the SHIELD project

The SHIELD project aims to develop an open, interoperable, trustworthy, and user-friendly ecosystem for Secure Digital Identities so that they can be used in all practical use cases with everyday relevance in the future. SHIELD is supported by an interdisciplinary team of experts led by the non-profit go.eIDAS e. V. and a growing network of more than 90 excellent partners and is open for further supporters and users of Secure Digital Identities.