Belgium is among the first countries to deploy an electronic identity card (eID). The topic of the last eWish conference was precisely to explain what the eID was about and what kind of applications could be expected in a near future. CETIC took part to this event for a practical demonstration of the use of the eID in municipalities.
Belgium is the first country in the world to effectively deploy an electronic identity card (eID) at full scale. Presently more than 2.5 million Belgian citizens already have one and by 2009 every Belgian citizen will have his own. As a critical mass is now being reached, a number of enabling applications are showing up: the eID is of course a major piece for the development of the e-government but it will also contribute to make the "wild" WWW safer through secured chats (for teenagers, seniors,...), access to public facilities (eg. recycling park, public library,...), standard ways to exchange legally binding signed document between contractors, etc.
Explaining hot topic of the Internet to the mass is exactly the eWish mission and the last conference organized on April 27 in Mons was precisely about the eID.
A number of very complementary presentations gave a full overview of what the eID is, how to use it and what could be expected from it:
An interactive questions/answers exchange lead to determine practical applications, such as how to configure readers, how to use the eID in an international context,... The closing cocktail enabled the conversations to go on.
As expert in IT security and software quality, CETIC involvement in eID is to help in the design and development of innovative applications, especially for e-government at a municipal level. This expertise is currently being deployed with a number of towns within an Interoperability project at the level of the Walloon Region and with CommunesPlone.