Swiss government committee okays draft law on e-ID

A Swiss government commission has adopted the draft federal law on digital identity, as  Switzerland’s upcoming digital identification system, slated to appear in 2026.

The Legal Affairs Committee of the Council of States examined the draft law on electronic identity at the end of June and adopted it by nine votes to one. It also issued several recommendations, including that the comparison, or verification, of the person’s face against a photograph can be carried out automatically when a digital ID is created in person.

Another recommendation says that the source code of the trust infrastructure software can not be published if this endangers data security or risks infringing the rights of third parties. e-ID data should be kept exclusively in a government digital wallet but private wallet makers will be able to store and present the electronic ID in the future so long as they comply with council regulations.

Switzerland is currently in the process of creating a legal basis for the e-ID. The regulation has been approved by the National Council and is now being debated in the Council of States.

A previous initiative to establish a digital identity was shot down by Swiss residents through a referendum in 2021. According to the original plans, the government would have allowed private companies to manage Swiss citizen data, opening questions on data security. The new scheme promises a system closer to self-sovereign ID (SSI) that will give users control over data and be issued only by the government.

The Swiss government, however, may need more time to flesh out the country’s digital identification system, according to the head of the Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) Beat Jans.

During the Digital Identity unConference Europe in June, Jans said that the government is still debating on how to proceed with the technical implementation of the digital ID and that the main reason behind the Swiss hesitance to decide on the trust framework is financial.

Meanwhile, a technical roadmap for the Swiss e-ID and trust infrastructure was published on GitHub.

Article Topics

biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  e-ID  |  face biometrics  |  legislation  |  Switzerland