The Austrian case: multi-card concept and the relationship between citizen ID and social security cards

Identity in the Information Society, Jul 2010

National electronic identity (e-ID) card schemes and electronic identity management systems (e-IDMS) in Europe are characterised by considerable diversity. This contribution analyses the creation of a national e-IDMS in Austria with the aim of improving our understanding of the reasons behind the genesis of particular designs of national e-IDMS. It seeks to explain how the system’s specific design evolved and which factors shaped its appearance. Being part of a comparative four country study, a common theoretical framework is employed to allow for a comparison of national e-IDMS in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Spain. It combines the approach of actor-centred institutionalism and the concept of path dependence in order to analyse the innovation process and to explain resulting key characteristics of the e-IDMS in Austria: a technology-neutral system with multiple tokens; an ID model based on the Central Register of Residents; a privacy concept using sector-specific personal identifiers. It is shown that innovation process and outcome are not only shaped by specific actor constellations dominated by strategic e-government bodies, but also by path dependence at three levels: technological, institutional and organisational.

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The Austrian case: multi-card concept and the relationship between citizen ID and social security cards

Georg Aichholzer Stefan Strau National electronic identity (e-ID) card schemes and electronic identity management systems (e-IDMS) in Europe are characterised by considerable diversity. This contribution analyses the creation of a national e-IDMS in Austria with the aim of improving our understanding of the reasons behind the genesis of particular designs of national e-IDMS. It seeks to explain how the system's specific design evolved and which factors shaped its appearance. Being part of a comparative four country study, a common theoretical framework is employed to allow for a comparison of national e-IDMS in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Spain. It combines the approach of actor-centred institutionalism and the concept of path dependence in order to analyse the innovation process and to explain resulting key characteristics of the e-IDMS in Austria: a technology-neutral system with multiple tokens; an ID model based on the Central Register of Residents; a privacy concept using sector-specific personal identifiers. It is shown that innovation process and outcome are not only shaped by specific actor constellations dominated by strategic e-government bodies, but also by path dependence at three levels: technological, institutional and organisational. - Along with the emerging global trend of introducing national systems for electronic identity management (e-IDMS), many European Union states have already rolled out electronic ID cards or are about to do so. National e-IDMS are expected to improve secure authentication and efficiency of service provision in e-government as proposed by EU-Commission initiatives. This is of particular importance as the implementation of online public services is entering more advanced, transactional stages. However, the development of e-ID card schemes at national level took place without supra-national European coordination and led to a quite diverse landscape of e-IDMS, e.g. regarding privacy features but also other components (ENISA 2009). There may be valid reasons for system diversity but it is a big challenge for achieving cross-border interoperability of e-ID schemes. Some scholars in the e-ID field have also addressed e-ID policy beyond the coordination deficit of national system development and postulate the need for a new regulatory framework in toto (Lusoli et al. 2008). This paper wants to contribute to a better understanding of the reasons behind the genesis of particular designs of national e-IDMS. It attempts to identify major factors of influence on technological and organisational key decisions and events in the process of system design, development and implementation. In other words, it explores the space between determination and choice of decisions leading to certain system features by tracing technological and organisational choices and constraints with due consideration of given contexts. To this end the paper analyses the development and introduction of a national e-IDMS in Austria which was among the first countries in Europe to implement such a system. The results of this country case study, being part of an international cooperative research project involving similar case studies in Belgium, Germany and Spain,1 also serve as a cross-country comparative analysis. The interest in explaining key characteristics of the system has been stimulated by indications of considerable country differences as regards both the motivations and strategies to develop an e-IDMS and the resulting system architecture. The key research questions of this paper are as follows: What are defining characteristics of the national e-IDMS in Austria in terms of its technological and organisational set-up and core features with regard to basic functions, ID model, privacy and data protection? How can the specific design and components of the Austrian e-IDMS, in particular its key characteristics, be explained as outcomes of an innovation process shaped by an interplay of actor constellations, institutional context and binding effects from past decisions (path dependence)? A common analytical framework is employed to analyse the innovation process and to explain resulting key characteristics of the e-IDMS at national levels which combines an institutionalist approach known as actor-centred institutionalism (cf. Schneider and Mayntz 1995; Scharpf 1997) and concepts of path dependence (cf. Werle 2007; Wetzel 2005; Beyer 2005).2 While the former focuses on decisions and 1 The collaborative project Systemic Change of the Identification of Citizens by GovernmentElectronic Identity Management in Selected European Countries is coordinated by the Institute of Information Management Bremen (ifib) at the University of Bremen and funded by a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation. 2 A brief explanation of these concepts is provided in the introductory chapter by Kubicek in this issue. actor constellations in their institutional contexts, the latter allows identifying mechanisms which c (...truncated)


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Georg Aichholzer, Stefan Strauß. The Austrian case: multi-card concept and the relationship between citizen ID and social security cards, Identity in the Information Society, 2010, pp. 65-85, Volume 3, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1007/s12394-010-0048-9