In Monaco, digital identity is now a reality
The Principality of Monaco launched its brand new electronic identity and residence cards at the end of June 2021, and hopes to equip two-thirds of its residents by 2022.
As part of the Extended Monaco program, the Monegasque authorities initiated the deployment of digital identity at the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco on Monday, June 26. New identity and residence cards thus come materially from this new aspect of Monegasque identity, allowing online access to public and private services. An activation moreover left to the free appreciation of the users.
A project launched in 2019
The Monegasque digital identity project was quick to set up. It must be said that the scale is very different from that of a country like France, this small state having only around 10,000 Monegasques with identity cards, and 30,000 residents with residence cards.
“We have been working on this project for almost two years, and what makes it so strong is that we have had a global approach on three axes: legislative, technical, and developing uses., explains Julien Dejanovic, Director of Digital Services for the Principality of Monaco. We started working on the legislative component in 2019, the foundation of which was laid by passing a law in December of the same year. It helped fuel the project, which began at the same time with our technological partner IN Groupe.
The principality hopes to equip two-thirds of its population with these new identity documents by 2022, and affirms to observe a certain enthusiasm on the part of its inhabitants, with popular meeting slots to be already transmitted the menu.
A digital identity, but for what uses?
“In terms of projection, this brand new service that we are going to develop in the Principality of Monaco – and we are going to invite public, parapublic and private actors to take advantage of these tools – will allow digital authentication, specifies the technical director. For us, the idea is to replace the connection option that Facebook and Google can offer on the principality’s services. Monegasques can already sign or co-sign a document electronically, request a civil status certificate on the government portal, or even authenticate on the portals of electricity and telephone companies. An application called Mconnect Mobile is also available to perform these steps from a smartphone equipped with NFC.
As we clearly understood during the French regional elections, marked by a high rate of abstention, digital identity risks one day being correlated with electronic voting, or Internet voting. On this subject, the principality says it listens to its population and does not refrain from thinking about this type of use. “To date, this is not relevant, but the platform as we have built it can be used for electronic voting.”, says Julien Dejanovic.
No biometric authentication
But what do these cards contain and how do I authenticate? The Monegasque approach immediately ruled out the use of biometric data. However, the card itself and its use are protected by a five-digit PIN code. Monegasques must however submit to a biometric identification during the first activation of the card, in order to ensure that there is no theft.
Julien Dejanovic specifies that the technical infrastructure is built and hosted on site in Monaco: “Nothing connects to third-party systems in France or in the clouds”. The principality has an agency dedicated to the security of information systems, the equivalent of Anssi in our country, which was responsible for setting up a security policy. Monaco also follows the eIDAS protocol which regulates this notion of digital identity, and its certificates come from a Monegasque infrastructure. The technical director also underlines that during the deployment of the project, several audits were carried out, including one of the PASSI type, in order to ensure its compliance.
“Monaco is launching its digital identity and thus enters the top 5 of the most advanced countries in this area, like Singapore and Estonia in particular”, concluded Frédéric Genta, interministerial delegate in charge of the digital transition, during the project launch party.