Catalonia to issue citizens with ‘self sovereign’ digital IDs

Catalan president torra at head of meeting
SECURE eID: Catalonia’s President Quim Torra announces the government’s electronic identity plans

Catalonia, the semi-autonomous region of Spain which includes the city of Barcelona, is to develop an electronic identity platform that “turns the citizen into owner, manager and exclusive custodian of his identity and data”.

The IdentiCAT platform will be based on the concept of Self Sovereign Identity (SSI) and use distributed ledger technology to allow citizens to use a computer or mobile device to create and manage their digital identities “with full legal validity and privacy”.

“In any digital relationship, the citizen can demonstrate any required attribute of his identity while maintaining privacy over the rest of the data contained in his ID,” the Government of Catalonia explains.

This will allow a citizen to provide proof of age, for example, “without needing to provide their date or place of birth”.

IdentiCAT will also be compatible with the European eIDAS standard, enabling citizens to use their eID to securely identify themselves to public and private sector services across Europe, the government says.

Funding for the project was approved this week and a tender is to be issued “soon”.

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