Leo Goodstadt, Regina Connolly and Frank Bannister
a variety of factors from administrative convenience to security concerns. Nonetheless, many counties have not yet adopted such a card. In Europe, notwithstanding European Union( EU) aspirations, the deployment of EICs remains far from universal( Andrade 2012). Furthermore, there has been considerable variety in countries’ experiences with the introduction and adoption of EICs.
Any study of EICs across the world throws up some interesting contrasts. One of the earliest electronic ID cards was introduced in South Africa in 1999( Breckenridge 2005) where a biometric card developed in the 1990s for the purposes of managing pension payments gradually expanded into a form of public services card. While the card has worked quite well for its original purpose, extending its functionality has proved to be far from straightforward. By contrast, at the time of writing, Korea, which is currently ranked number one in the world for e‐Government( UNPAN 2012), has not yet implemented an EIC partly due to public resistance( The Korea Herald, 23 rd June 2011)
In Europe, a pioneer in terms of smart cards for citizen identity is Belgium, which made having an e‐ID card mandatory for all citizens in 2004( Fairchild and de Vuyst 2009; 2012). The Belgian card was initially only useable for tax filing, but its range of functions has expanded to encompass various social services and even registered mail. Belgians seems to have willingly accepted the card, but as Fairchild and de Vuyst point out, privacy has never been a strong feature of the system’ s design and it is possible that Belgian citizens may become less enthusiastic as the ability of the system to link different types of data increases.
The Austrian card had a more robust form of privacy protection build in from the start( Aichholzer and Strauß 2010). An important difference between Belgium and Austria is that carrying a personal ID is not mandatory in Austria, so the only identity function of the card ‐ which is called the Citizen Card( CC) ‐ is to access government services. Furthermore, the CC is a virtual card that can be embedded in a carrier such as a personal ID card. The Austrian government provides a personal EIC, but only about ten percent of Austrians carry it. Other devices, such as ATM cards or mobile phones, can embed the CC card. However, while almost all Austrian citizens now have a card or device containing their CC, usage of the CC is low though efforts continue to increase it.
The Swedish approach is interesting, not to say curious( Grönlund 2010). The Swedish government provides an e‐ID card, but as in Austria it is not mandatory to use it. While there is a government EIC, the government has adopted a market approach which means that there are EICs in Sweden issued by other organizations( notably the banks), all of which makes for quite a confusing picture with different IDs being used for different services. Of the various forms of e‐ID available, the bank version is the most popular, but uptake and usage is again far from universal. As in other countries, the evolution of the EIC in Sweden is path dependent and reflects Swedish government structures and history.
Spain issued its e‐ID card in 2006( Heichlinger and Gallego 2010). Spain has had a requirement for citizens to carry ID for over 60 years. The Spanish adopted a distributed model ‐ issuing of cards via machines in police stations. Although the number of cards issued has been quite high( estimates are problematic, but the number is likely to be greater than 13 million), usage has been light. As elsewhere, the primary application of the Spanish EIC is for tax filing, but even the use of the card even for this purpose has been modest to date with less than one percent of on‐line tax filings in 2008 used the card. The pattern whereby many people acquire an EIC( or are obliged to acquire one), but then barely use it is evident in this European country as elsewhere.
The state of the German EIC is examined by Poller et al.,( 2012). The German card has three levels: a mandatory ID component and two optional components for general applications and for digital signatures. The system was first rolled out in 2010. Uptake of the card is optional. The authors do not provide figures on the number of people who have adopted the card, but they point to what they call a‘ chicken and egg’ problem with the justification for services depending on critical mass of take‐up and take‐up depending on the availability of services.
Approximately half of European countries now have EICs( Arora, 2008). Other EU countries with such cards include Estonia, the Netherlands, Italy and Romania though the requirement to carry an EIC is not yet mandatory in many of these. Of those yet to adopt EICs, the UK presents a notable case. The then Labour government sought to bring in a biometric national identity card in 2006. A report by the London School of Economics( LSE 2005; Whitley and Hosein 2008) showed that the card was likely, at £ 19 billion, to cost three
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