Czechia enlists citizens to stress test digital ID ahead of elections

Czech authorities are asking citizens to help stress test the country’s eDoklady digital ID app before municipal elections, hoping to avoid a repeat of the election-day failures that disrupted voting last year. eDoklady is Czechia’s official mobile app for storing and presenting digital identity documents and authenticating users for public services.

It’s an important test after a previous high profile snafu. During the 2025 parliamentary elections, technical failures prevented many voters from using eDoklady, prompting the head of the Digital and Information Agency to offer his resignation.

The system received a large load of 1.5 million requests, far more than expected, according to Martin Mesršmíd, director of the Digital and Information Agency. “We increased capacity several times during the day, but the actual load was half to two-thirds higher than our estimates,” Mesršmíd commented then.

The app will soon be used again during elections and other high demand situations. Before then, authorities want to verify that both the app and its supporting infrastructure can handle large numbers of real users connecting at once.

A coordinated public trial will take place tomorrow at exactly 13:00, with users asked to open the app at that precise moment so the system can measure how it performs under a sudden surge of simultaneous logins. The test is meant to simulate real‑world election day demand.

Current legislation does not allow the creation of many thousands of realistic test identities in production systems. Czech authorities say voluntary participation is needed to replicate how the service behaves when large numbers of real users register, log in, verify their identity and update their digital documents.

People who already use eDoklady are asked not to open the app before the test begins, ensuring their first connection attempt happens at 13:00. They should check their internet connection, open the app at the designated time, sign in with a PIN or biometrics and wait for the automatic document update.

New users are encouraged to install and register in advance so they can simply open and sign in during the test. Registration requires downloading the app, authenticating with Citizen Identity credentials such as bank identity or an eGovernment Mobile Key, setting up a PIN or biometric login and adding an ID card.

The results will show whether eDoklady is ready for election-day workloads and help identify weaknesses across the digital identity infrastructure before the municipal vote.

Article Topics

Czechia  |  digital ID  |  digital ID infrastructure  |  eDoklady  |  elections