Sweden’s digital ID infrastructure should be centralized: DN Debate

Digital ID infrastructure should have higher security levels and is a “core government task” that Sweden should focus on.

The claims come from the Swedish government’s special investigator Anna Kinberg Batra, who recently published an article in Dagens Nyheter.

According to the identity expert, Sweden is one of the world’s most digitized countries. Still, only a few banks and companies own and control “socially important” digital ID infrastructure.

“More and more of our everyday life is digital,” Batra writes, according to an automated translation. “But the need to identify oneself electronically extends far beyond banks and payments.”

She explains that now that Sweden is about to preside over the EU’s presidency, the fact that the country is one of the few member states that lack publicly available e-identification at the highest security level is becoming more evident.

Sweden has high standards for digital services in general, but many EU countries are ahead of it on digital security, Batra argues.

In fact, the special investigator says Sweden, Cyprus, Greece and Romania are currently the only EU countries that lack state digital identification.

“Sweden must not be naive in the face of digitization and the new demands placed on our security. We need e-identification at the highest security level to strengthen our digital security and resilience. And it is a core government task to issue one.”

Answering Batra’s message, Freja e-id CEO Johan Henrikson answers that the problem is not that Sweden has too few digital ID providers but that far too few institutions accept the existing options.

The solution, according to Henrikson, is for a law to be passed that organizations requiring digital ID verification must accept submissions from users with any of the government-approved options for doing so.

“If there is also a political will, the problem Anna Kinberg Batra highlights can be solved even before she presents her final report [in March 2022]. If a government digital ID becomes a reality, it will then be usable everywhere, from the start,” he writes.

Article Topics

digital economy  |  digital ID  |  digital ID infrastructure  |  government services  |  identity verification  |  standards  |  Sweden