EBSI projects
Public Administrations Interoperability
Helping citizens access public services at regional and national levels by establishing interoperability for public administration-issued citizen credentials.
The vision
Led by a consortium of 5 Spanish Public entities representing +11M citizens throughout Spain.
Together, the project is shaping the future of national public administration in Europe by helping citizens effortlessly gain access to local resources and facilities between regional and local public administrations in Spain.
Public Law entities
Reasearch Centre
IT providers
Digitalising public services
Participating countries:
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Regional governments:
Public administrations:
Public research centres:
IT providers:
Infrastructure:
The challenge
Accessing regional municipality services is overly bureaucratic.
Interoperability issues between regional and local governments hinder cross-national and cross-regional opportunities for citizens. When a Spanish or EU citizen moves to a region in Spain to live, work or study, there is no unbureaucratic process in place to exchange, process, and authenticate citizen data to offer access to local public services.
The opportunity
Web3 has the potential to revolutionise interoperability between governments, for citizens.
Web3 technology allows better information exchange between administrations. It gives the opportunity for public administrations to request, trust, and integrate citizen attestations of attributes issued by a third administration in their own public service offices. This gives citizens better access to local and regional public services for daily life, with local and regional credentials expected to be used more frequently than national ones.
A Web3 presentation and verification infrastructure for citizen identification credentials brings together three main technologies:
- Digital Wallets: used by citizens and public administrations to receive, store, and send credentials on the move.
- Verifiable Credentials: for formatting, presenting, and exchanging credential data in a machine-friendly way.
- Blockchain: for delivering a highly secure, resilient, and decentralised way of verifying credential information.
The project
Building the foundations of a new digital public administration infrastructure using EBSI.
The project leverages the power of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) to build the foundations of the digital infrastructure needed for interoperability among local, regional, and national public administrations.
The vision is to create a presentation and verification platform that establishes a Mutual Trust agreement among Regional and Local governments to exchange and recognise different types of verifiable attestations of attributes to improve administrative services to citizens, based on the EU SSI Trust Model supported by EBSI.
EBSI allows governments (and other institutions endorsed by them) to issue multiple verifiable attestations of citizens’ attributes under their respective administrative political competence, in which citizens are the authentic owners of the verifiable credential defining the attestation. Citizens need to continue using public services when moving across regions. SSI and Verifiable Credentials include citizens as an active element of interoperability between public administration systems. The objective of this project is to develop and understand:
- How regional governments and other institutions endorsed by them can issue multiple Verifiable Attestations (VAs) of citizens’ attributes under their current political competence.
- How a citizen can receive, hold, and share VAs securely using their EBSI-conformant wallet.
- How regional governments can simplify access to citizen services by requesting and verifying a citizen attribute (as part of a verifiable credential) even if issued by another government.
The scenario
Discover the scenarios.
1. Issuance and storage of citizen credentials.
Carmen is a Spanish citizen with a Diploma in Education and works as a teacher. Because of agreements among regional governments and city councils, Carmen can now gain access to different citizen services while traveling and moving across different regions and municipalities:
- She 1 requests her Teacher Card credential at the Citizen Service Office (CSO) of the Regional Government where she is registered, as an official attestation for further authorization purposes for public services. The CSO 2 issues Carmen the Teacher Card verifiable credential and she 3 stores it in her digital wallet.
- Carmen asks the Citizen Service Office which other credentials she can get from the Regional Government. As it is available, she 4 request an official Foreign Language Lv credential for her English proficiency from the Official Language School and a Disability Card, both 5 issued by the regional CSO, to be 6 stored in her wallet.
- She asks about a Proof of Residence, but the Regional Government does not have the competence to issue it. So, she will 7 request it at the City Council CSO of the city where she lives. Once identified, the City Council CSO will 8 issue a Proof of Residence verifiable credential that she will 9 store in her wallet.
- She can even 10 request her Official Professional College to 11 issue her a verifiable credential as a Licensed Professional in education, that she will also 12 store in her wallet.
2. Presentation of citizen credentials to access cross-regional services.
Because of agreements among regional governments and city councils, Carmen can now gain access to different citizen services while traveling and moving across different regions and councils in Spain.
- She can 13 present her Teacher Card credential at Public Museums and public transport networks across Spain which can be 14 verified against the EBSI ledger and be 15 granted free or discounted entrance.
- She can also 16 present her Proof of Residence and disability credentials to the City Council. Once the City Council 17 verifies them against the EBSI ledger, the credentials can be used to 18 access townhall services throughout Spanish cities, such as borrowing a book from a city library or parking in Disability Reserved Areas.
- Carmen then decides to apply for a teaching role at the i2cat Research Centre. The role offer outlines three requirements: a Licensed Professional credential, a Foreign Language Lv attestation of a certain level of English fluency, and local residency. As part of this process, she 19 presents the three verifiable credentials that attest these requirements. The i2cat Research Centre 20 verifies the credentials against the EBSI ledger, verifying her profile for further application processing.
The project plan
Current implementation stage and plan.
Next steps
Mobilisation of the ecosystem is key to driving adoption.
Achieving this unified citizen experience demands a strategic and operational paradigm shift, mobilising a vast ecosystem involving legal entities, ministries, municipalities, and regional governments, as well as locating vendors and IT providers to participate in the ecosystem, providing solutions and investing in public sector interoperability.
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