Digital ID infrastructure should have higher security levels and is a “core state task” that Sweden should focus on.

The claims come from the Swedish government’s special investigator Anna Kinberg Batra, who recently published an article in Today’s news.

According to the identity expert, Sweden is one of the world’s most digitized countries. Yet only a few banks and companies own and control “socially important” digital ID infrastructure.

“More and more of our everyday life is digital,” Batra writes, according to an automated translation. “But the need to identify oneself electronically extends far beyond banking and payments.”

She explains it now Sweden is about to preside over the EU presidency, it becomes more apparent that the country is one of the few member states that lacks publicly available e-identification at the highest security level.

Sweden has high demands on digital services in general, but many EU countries are ahead in digital security, says Batra.

In fact, the special investigator says that Sweden, Cyprus, Greece and Romania are currently the only EU countries without government digital identification.

“Sweden must not be naive in the face of digitization and the new demands placed on our security. We need e-identification at the highest security level to strengthen our digital security and resilience. And it is a central state task to issue one.”

Responding to Batra’s message, Freya e-id CEO Johan Henrikson answers that the problem is not that Sweden has too few digital ID providers, but that far too few institutions accept the alternatives that exist.

The solution, according to Henrikson, is to pass a law requiring organizations that require digital ID verification to accept contributions from users using one of the government-approved options to do so.

“If there is also a political will, the problem Anna Kinberg Batra highlights can be solved even before she presents her final report [in March 2022]. If a government digital ID becomes a reality, it will then be usable everywhere, from the start,” he writes.

Article topics

digital economy | digital ID | government services | identity verification | standards | Sweden