HID Global’s Argentinian Partnership Solidifying Mobile Identity Use Cases

The government of Argentina has selected identity solutions provider HID Global to supply citizens with a mobile national ID, driving growth in the market of mobile identities. With a mandatory physical national ID credential already in circulation with the National Identity Document (DNI), the digital version will exist within the Mi Argentina app for mobile handsets.

With approximately 47 million DNIs already in circulation, the mobile identity will seek to increase the security of the physical identity by binding it to a digital form factor and permits increased functionality and multiple applications, something typically achieved with a mobile identity program.

Argentina has already passed the legislation necessary to afford full legitimacy to the mobile version of the credential, indicating that such a credential has been a while in planning. With a mobile driver license in Brazil, mobile identities are beginning to see growth in the Latin America region, with these two projects marked as flagships. Argentina is also working to overcome a number of inhibitors that have previously held back the mobile identities market, with the mobile national ID able to be accessed without connection to a network or Wi-Fi, something which has held back a mobile identity from becoming an independent credential.

The Mi Argentina app also houses a number of applications to solidify Citizen-to-Government (C2G) and Government-to-Citizen (G2C) communication by permitting citizens to access their driver’s licenses and book and manage health appointments. Should the mobile device be misplaced or stolen, the credential can be immediately revoked, nullifying the risk of identity theft and removing another inhibitor from the mobile identities market. HID Global has already partnered with the Argentinian government in the past to migrate the country’s passport to a newer generation, and this new program seeks to digitize not just the Argentinian government-citizen relationship, but potentially other countries in the region that may seek to take advantage of the benefits of a mobile identity.

Argentina has already taken a number of steps toward offering its citizens a digital identity. Earlier in the year, a blockchain-based ID solution was developed within Buenos Aires to be offered to the approximate 16% of citizens who do not own a form of identity. The solution will offer access to financial services such as managing digital finances and organizing payments and, if proven successful, could be rolled out on a wider scale in the next few years.

Just as the Argentinian government has been preparing for such a program for a number of years, so have solutions providers looking to offer a mobile companion for citizens’ credentials. In particular, HID Global extended the capabilities of its HID goID solution in order to provide a complete End-to-End (E2E) offering for identity deployment and management. By developing a module software suite for ID management, a way to provision a mobile identity (through local or cloud) and a Software Development Kit (SDK) for developing apps that adhere to national standards, the market for mobile identities is given a significant driver as projects can be managed with expertise in line with governments’ requirements.

Mobile identity offerings are becoming increasingly compatible with the requirements of governments, with the ability to deploy a mobile passport and driver’s license compliant with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rules and new International Standardization Organization (ISO) regulations. The objectives of multiple government departments can be more easily met with a development kit that caters to specific requirements and prevents issuance delays from having competing interests in government and citizens. As more and more market inhibitors are overcome for mobile identities, it is likely the market will see significant growth in the coming years, with Google and Apple probing the market for opportunities to incorporate their own identity management solutions. Such a move piles pressure on identity solutions providers to offer a competitive product of their own to take advantage of the expanded market of countries looking to augment their government services with mobile offerings.