Estonia solves the problems of identity security on the Internet. The three-year FutureID project funded by the European Union focuses on solving the identity security issues on the Internet. 18 partners from 11 countries participate in the project besides Estonia.

Secure electronic identity cards (eID) are issued in many EU countries, however, their everyday use is much less frequent than was expected.

Head of the IT Development Department of Certification Center Urmo Keskel sees FutureID project as a great opportunity to share successful experience of implementation of Estonian ID-cards and Mobile IDs with the rest of Europe. Participation in the project also allows to gain more experience and to test technologies that, if proven successful, could be applied in Estonia.

“Participation of Certification Center in this project will positively influence the development of the Estonian ID-card and its basic software, as well as the development of eID in Europe in general”, says Keskel.

The goals of FutureID include implementation of eID and addressing the following issues:

• Open source eID software
  FutureID supports development of innovative and standardized open source eID software, which is to ensure use of eID on all major platforms.
• Support for service providers
  New server components are created for service providers to reduce costs of support for eID and respectiveprotocols.
• Common infrastructure in Europe
  A broad and common European infrastructure is developed within the framework of FutureID, where the existing services are integrated and that is to help, for instance, to solve the issues of responsibility.
• Improved privacy
  Conducting research on new technologies for eID infrastructure.
• Non-technical problems
  Study of legal, social, economic and other non-technical issues (including software usability) is performed.

In Estonia FutureID project is implemented by Certification Center, whose role is primarily related to certification and testing of universal FutureID client solutions. Certification Center also participates in analysis and testing of server-side components.

AS Sertifitseerimiskeskus (Certification Center) founded in 2001 received the state accreditation and provides certification and timestamp services, as well as develops and manages respective software solutions.

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