[Herzogenrath, 26.11.2020] The SHIELD project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and in which van den Berg Service AG is an associated partner, reached a conceptual and technical milestone today. On the one hand, the SHIELD manifesto, a fundamental key points paper on the further design of the envisaged open ecosystem for Secure Digital Identities, has been published for comment. On the other hand, a basic version of the free MOBILE-X platform for Android and iOS was made available, which not only enables trustworthy self-determined identity management based on digital IDs, but also establishes a secure bridge to the trusted GAIA-X data infrastructure.

Guiding principles for an open ecosystem for digital identities – the SHIELD manifesto.

Since June 2020, the SHIELD project has been funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) as part of the technology competition “Schaufenster Sichere Digitale Identitäten” (Secure Digital Identities Showcase) to develop an open, interoperable, trustworthy and user-friendly ecosystem for Secure Digital Identities so that they can be used in all practical use cases with everyday relevance in the future. In the meantime, the SHIELD project, which is supported by numerous internationally recognized experts from business, science, government and civil society and backed by more than 90 organizations, has presented numerous working papers and an implementation concept based on them, in which the further development steps for building the envisaged open ecosystem are described. The foundation of the work is the SHIELD reference architecture, in which strategic aspects were also addressed and guiding principles of the initiative were documented. Inspired by the Mozilla Manifesto, these “ten commandments of digital identity” have now been made available as the SHIELD Manifesto for public comment on the eIDAS forum:

#eIDAS4all
Open
Interoperable
User-centric
Trustworthy
Inclusive
Inviting
Transparent
Sustainable
Let’s #GOeIDAS – now!

Free Platform for Secure and Self-Determined Identity Management – MOBILE-X

In order to advance the implementation of the envisaged open, interoperable, trustworthy and user-friendly ecosystem for Secure Digital Identities in practice, the free MOBILE-X platform for Android and iOS was made available as open source on the basis of relevant preliminary work in the field of electronic identity (eID) and with the aim of Secure Self-Determined Identity Management (SSI) in order to make Secure Digital Identities, such as the ID card with online ID function, even easier to use in mobile applications.

This trusted platform builds on the architecture of the international standards ISO/IEC 24727, ISO/IEC 24760 and ISO/IEC 29101, and conceptually supplements this “eCard API framework” with aspects of self-sovereign identity management, taking into account the relevant regulatory framework and international standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on verifiable digital credentials and decentralized identifiers, to create a universal mobile client for the European GAIA-X data infrastructure.

The basic MOBILE-X platform, which is now available as open source, was implemented on the basis of the Open eCard platform certified by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) under the identifier BSI-K-TR-0333-2019 as an “eID kernel” in accordance with BSI TR-03124, which supports various European ID cards (“eCards”) and the identification services of different providers. For example, Deutsche Post AG uses this trusted platform in the POSTIDENT app for Android and iOS, which in turn benefits leading telecommunications providers and their customers. “We are pleased that secure digital identities through MOBILE-X can now be used in all modern smartphone apps for Android and iOS as well as in any clients for GAIA-X for self-determined identity management,” adds Dr. Detlef Hühnlein, SHIELD project manager. Another application example for the MOBILE-X platform is the FiftyFifty Taxi of the districts of Lichtenfels and Kulmbach, which follows the recommendation of the German District Association and implements this “Smart Mobility Service” based on a federated microservices architecture. As part of the SHIELD project, this innovative mobility platform was prepared for use in other regions, for other means of transport, value-added services and, last but not least, the GAIA-X data infrastructure.