Digital Credentials for Europe (DC4EU) Project receives approval from European Commission
The Digital Credentials For Europe (DC4EU) Project was approved for funding by the European Commission (EC), under the Call Digital-2022-Deploy-02. The estimated project cost is €19.2 million. The project will commence on April 1st 2023 for a period of 24 months and will be directed by iterative releases of the digital reference portfolio in large-scale piloting. The DC4EU consortium conformed by 80 organizations, from 22 countries (20 member states, plus Norway and Ukraine). The project consortium will be led by the Government of Spain, through the General Secretariat for Digital Administration (SGAD) of its Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation.
The EC launched the Digital Europe Program (DEP) in order to develop the digital capabilities of the EU public and private sector during the period 2021 – 2027. With the aim of deployment, the necessary technological infrastructure for the implementation of the DEP public policies in line with the current and developing legislative framework, the EC carries out sectorial calls to finance different activities that will help the Member States to achieve the objectives in terms of digitization.
The DC4EU project aims to promote the deployment and development of use cases of the new version of the digital identity framework, testing its interoperability in pre-production systems with a cross-border perspective. The piloting of the portfolio is particularly relevant in view of the future reform of the eIDAS Regulation.
With the proposed solution, citizens will have control of their personal data, with a high level of trust and cross-border recognition. The two use cases to be addressed in this project are in education and social security. Both use cases are of significant relevance as they will allow testing in a real environment, involving the issuance and validation of educational, labour and health credentials in a decentralized manner in a cross-border context. This will empower citizens by putting their data under their own control, increasing levels of trust and creating a self-determined identity solution with cross-border recognition.
