After a surprisingly clear defeat of the e-ID proposal in the national referendum early March 2021, the federal administration presented plans for a new attempt a month ago with a discussion paper on the target vision for an e-ID (DE, FR).
SWITCH is taking a stand and handed in a position statement end of September 2021 on this discussion paper in German: Stellungnahme SWITCH Zielbild E-ID final_sig.
In this position statement, SWITCH points out, that Switzerland should not set up a stand-alone E-ID solution. It should rather make the E-ID part of a larger E-ID ecosystem populated with services from third parties under government governance. Other important principles include being user-friendly, being based on the principles of privacy by design and being open in multiple dimensions.
Given those principles, SWITCH recommends the government to pursue the option “SSI” as laid out in the discussion paper (see also here for SWITCH’s potential approach to SSI, briefly explained here).
We state that SWITCH has extensive experience in the area of identity management, but also in the field of governance at the interface between governmentally and privately operated services under government regulation and control.
SWITCH is prepared to contribute its extensive experience for the benefit of society and therefore recommends being involved in the next steps towards a successful, future-oriented E-ID.