EU-US to continue aligning digital identity standards

The United States and the European Union are continuing to work on making technical standards for digital identity compatible. Following a Trade and Technology Council (TTC) ministerial meeting in Leuven, Belgium last week, the two sides released a joint statement, detailing the progress that has been made and outlining future steps.

“The next phase of this project will focus on identifying potential use cases for transatlantic interoperability and cooperation with a view toward enabling the cross-border use of digital identities and wallets,” the statement says.

According to the ministers, the cooperation mechanism, which seeks to align the U.S. and EU on technology and trade policy, has led to tangible results over the past two years. Among them is the Digital Identity Mapping Exercise Report covering standards for electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions.

Originally released as a draft document in December, the report concludes that the two sides share significant commonalities in definitions and approaches to assurance. The greatest difference between the two sides is in trust services, which are not explicitly addressed in NIST SP 800-63 Digital Identity Guidelines, the report notes.

The NIST standard is currently under revision.

The two sides promised to continue information exchange on international standardization through the Strategic Standardisation Information (SSI) mechanism.

Article Topics

digital identity  |  digital wallets  |  EU  |  NIST  |  standards  |  United States