Electronic identification for universities: Building cross-border services based on the eIDAS infrastructure

The European Union (EU) Regulation 910/2014 on electronic IDentification, Authentication, and trust Services (eIDAS) for electronic transactions in the internal market went into effect on 29 September 2018, meaning that EU Member States are required to recognize the electronic identities issued in the countries that have notified their eID schemes. Technically speaking, a unified interoperability platform—named eIDAS infrastructure—has been set up to connect the EU countries’ national eID schemes to allow a person to authenticate in their home EU country when getting access to services provided by an eIDAS-enabled Service Provider (SP) in another EU country. The eIDAS infrastructure allows the transfer of authentication requests and responses back and forth between its nodes, transporting basic attributes about a person, e.g., name, surname, date of birth, and a so-called eIDAS identifier. However, to build new eIDAS-enabled services in specific domains, additional attributes are needed. We describe our approach to retrieve and transport new attributes through the eIDAS infrastructure, and we detail their exploitation in a selected set of academic services. First, we describe the definition and the support for the additional attributes in the eIDAS nodes. We then present a solution for their retrieval from our university. Finally, we detail the design, implementation, and installation of two eIDAS-enabled academic services at our university: the eRegistration in the Erasmus student exchange program and the Login facility with national eIDs on the university portal

Providing Login and Wi-Fi Access Services With the eIDAS Network: A Practical Approach

The digital identity (or electronic identity) of a person is about being able to prove upon authentication who one is on the Internet, with a certain level of assurance, such as by means of some attributes obtained from a trustworthy Identity Provider. In Europe, the eIDAS Network allows the citizens to authenticate securely with their national credentials and to provide such personal attributes when getting access to Service Providers in a different European country. Although the eIDAS Network is more and more known, its integration with real operational services is still at an initial phase. This paper presents two eIDAS-enabled services, Login with eIDAS and Wi-Fi access with eIDAS , that we have designed, implemented, deployed, and validated at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. The validation study involved several undergraduate students, who have run the above services with their authentication credentials and platforms and with minimal indications on their usage. The results indicate that the services were beneficial. Several advantages exist both for the users and for the Service Providers, such as resistance to some security attacks and the possibility to adopt the service without prior user registration ( e.g. for short meetings, or in public places). However, some students expressed doubts about exploiting their national eID for Wi-Fi access, mainly in connection with usability and privacy issues. We discuss also these concerns, along with advantages and disadvantages of the proposed services

The Proceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (DGO2022) Intelligent Technologies, Governments and Citizens June 15-17, 2022

The 23rd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research theme is “Intelligent Technologies, Governments and Citizens”. Data and computational algorithms make systems smarter, but should result in smarter government and citizens. Intelligence and smartness affect all kinds of public values - such as fairness, inclusion, equity, transparency, privacy, security, trust, etc., and is not well-understood. These technologies provide immense opportunities and should be used in the light of public values. Society and technology co-evolve and we are looking for new ways to balance between them. Specifically, the conference aims to advance research and practice in this field. The keynotes, presentations, posters and workshops show that the conference theme is very well-chosen and more actual than ever. The challenges posed by new technology have underscored the need to grasp the potential. Digital government brings into focus the realization of public values to improve our society at all levels of government. The conference again shows the importance of the digital government society, which brings together scholars in this field. Dg.o 2022 is fully online and enables to connect to scholars and practitioners around the globe and facilitate global conversations and exchanges via the use of digital technologies. This conference is primarily a live conference for full engagement, keynotes, presentations of research papers, workshops, panels and posters and provides engaging exchange throughout the entire duration of the conference

The FICEP Infrastructure - How we deployed the Italian eIDAS Node in the cloud

The EU Regulation No. 910/2014 imposes to each EU Member State to notify its electronic identification scheme and to recognize the ones notified by other Member States by 29 September 2018. In this process, Italy will notify SPID, an authentication scheme that allows citizens and business entities to access online services provided by the public administration and private bodies with a unique set of credentials. Technological and operational aspects related to the infrastructure that will allow the SPID notification represent the core business of the FICEP project. This paper offers an overview of the architectural and technological aspects that made possible the deployment of the FICEP architecture in the cloud