How to Achieve a Successful Digital Citizen Identity Program

Summary:

• Approaches to Digital Citizen Identity: Digital identity underpins modern citizen empowerment, with governments around the world advancing at different speeds and in different directions.
• Where Programs Fall Short: Despite nearly 100 countries having plans to create national digital identity systems, only a few have successfully implemented successful programs.
• Keys to Success: Citizen trust and engagement, interoperability, and identity-centric security are among the key factors to achieving a fully realized digital citizen identity program.

As the unique set of verifiable credentials used to identify and represent a person in the digital world, digital citizen identity is crucial to the relationship between citizens and government services – especially as governments seek faster, efficient, and effective public service deliveries that depend on digital identity verification. In this blog post, we’ll explore the core components of digital citizen identity being used around the globe, including:

• Digital credentials: Digital citizen identity credentials such as username, password, and biometrics are used for authentication and access management.
• Digital identity wallet: A digital app that allows for the secure storage, management, and sharing of citizen identity credentials for the purpose of accessing services.
• Verification system: One or more verification mechanisms are used to confirm that the person presenting the identity credential is the owner of that credential.

Essentially, trusted digital identity is the foundation of digital government, empowering citizens to prove and validate their identity online, authenticate themselves remotely, and access government services anytime, anywhere.

What’s happening with digital citizen identity around the globe?

With digital identity underpinning modern cybersecurity and citizen empowerment, governments are scrambling to deliver, with 98 countries having announced plans to create national digital identity systems since 2015.

The Web of Trust map recently released by Key State Capital identifies different government-affiliated digital identity projects around the globe – including 3,919 private entities, 1,065 public entities, 275 decentralized identity projects, 177 blockchains, and 40 consortia.

Differing and notable approaches to digital identity

Government-led digital identity programs

Like other groundbreaking technology regulations (GDPR and the AI Act), Europe is once again taking the legislative lead with the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet initiative. The EUDI gives Member States until 2026 to offer their citizens a digital identity wallet built to common specifications. And with pan-European digital identity wallets becoming a reality, the EU is now calling for international acceptance of these credentials.

But the EU isn’t stopping at the need for trusted digital citizen credentials, recognizing a similar requirement exists for trusted digital organization credentials. The proposed EU Business Wallet is intended to drastically reduce regulatory and administrative barriers for organizations doing business across the common market area.

Public-private digital identity initiatives

While the EU is pursuing a decidedly government-led approach to citizen identity, U.S. state and federal agencies are charting different and less certain digital citizen identity paths. Plus, President Trump’s recent cybersecurity executive order (EO), Sustaining Select Efforts to Strengthen the Nation’s Cybersecurity, revokes many of the digital identity mandates of the previous administration.

Currently, the U.S. is relying on Big Tech for trusted citizen credentials, with state-sanctioned mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) held in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet gaining the most significant traction to date. This trend will likely be further fueled by the Department of Homeland Security’s new requirement for passengers to present a REAL ID or passport to board U.S. domestic flights or access federal facilities as of May 7, 2025. Under the REAL ID requirements, federal agencies may accept mDLs for federal “official purposes” if the state issuing the mDL has received a waiver under 6 CFR 37.7 or the federal agency has adopted an alternative acceptance policy, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

And Big Tech is happy to help. Google recently increased its digital identity wallet use case and geographic coverage to enable age assurance and identity verification in more places. Meanwhile, Apple announced at this year’s WWDC25 that iOS 26 will support TSA-approved digital passports, along with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Digital Credentials API to request mDocs from Safari and WebKit.

Standards bodies

The value and ultimate success of a digital identity wallet is directly correlated with its use case coverage and acceptance across a broad number of organizations. After all, no one wants to have as many “digital identities” as passwords. And this is where standards play a critical role.

Much of the EUDI program is based on the EU’s updated eIDAS 2.0 regulation that provides a standardized framework for digital identity management. In May, the W3C published Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0 as a W3C standard that aims to further promote the use of interoperable, trustworthy, and privacy-aware open web standards for digital trust projects.

Arguably, one of the most challenging citizen identity use cases is international travel that works securely across borders while also protecting citizen privacy. For reference, the modern-day passport was conceived post-World War I, but it wasn't until 1980 that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN agency, published Document 9303, setting the international standard for machine-readable passports.

Today, ICAO has introduced the Digital Travel Credential (DTC), which is being positioned as one of the most significant transformations in aviation in years. The DTC enables a traveler to securely store their passport data on their mobile device, offering the potential to replace traditional boarding passes and check-in protocols with a digital “journey pass.” Pilot programs are already underway, with an anticipated global rollout within the next two to three years and full adoption forecasted for 2028.

Why digital citizen identity projects fail

Despite nearly 100 countries having announced plans to create national digital identity systems, only a handful of governments, like Estonia, have successfully realized comprehensive digital citizen identity programs to date. Many more have stalled or failed altogether.

Here are some of the primary reasons why:

• Security breaches drive global lack of trust: The world’s largest biometric database, India’s Aadhaar digital identity system, was repeatedly breached in 2018, potentially compromising the records of all billion-plus registered citizens, which were then subsequently offered for sale online. Similar, albeit smaller, digital identity breaches have also been reported by Switzerland, Turkey, and other countries, diminishing citizen trust in such programs and the ability of governments to keep data safe.
• Privacy concerns: Citizens may be leery of government overreach, surveillance, and control particularly at the national level, making them hesitant to participate in any digital identity program. This is likely the single largest reason for a lack of federal digital identity program guidance and traction in the U.S., with convenience driving the adoption of state-based mDLs.
• Lack of citizen awareness, engagement, and education: Citizens may not be aware of the benefits of having a digital identity to be able to more securely and seamlessly access both public and private services. Also, they may be unaware that a secure digital identity coupled with responsible online behavior would help make them less vulnerable to identity fraud, theft, and other scams.
• Lack of interoperability: With so many digital identity frameworks emerging around the world, global interoperability remains a desired yet somewhat elusive goal. Plus, no one wants to recreate the password proliferation problem we have with identity credentials. Perhaps some of the interoperability solutions lie in hard lessons from the payments industry.

Building for digital citizen identity success

Beyond instilling citizen trust and engagement through education, applying identity-centric security is critical to being able to realize a successful digital citizen identity program. This includes:

• AI-powered biometric identity verification provides enhanced security and accuracy with advanced pattern recognition and liveness detection to help better identify deepfakes and prevent fraud.
• Identity and access management improves your government’s security posture with centralized visibility and control, while also streamlining and automating user management from new account creation and onboarding to ongoing access management and final deprovisioning.
• Identity orchestration provides a method for managing citizen identities and access across different government systems and applications, ensuring a unified and streamlined citizen experience, while also improving security with centralized policy enforcement.
• Digital signing helps establish trusted citizen identities and ensure the authenticity of digital documents and communications as citizens access government services.
• Cryptographic data security applies a platform approach to attain government-wide visibility and risk mitigation of citizen identities with PKI, certificate lifecycle management, key management, secrets management, and HSMs.

As governments seek to navigate the fast-evolving digital identity landscape with trusted citizen credentials that enable secure and seamless access to government services, Entrust is here to help.