Towards cross-border digital identification

For just over two years, with the support of the Inter-American Digital Government Network (RedGealc) [i] and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) [ii] work began on the integration of cross-border digital IDs in the region. For this, work began on what was called the “Rioplatense Citizen”, where Argentina developed a broker called Autenticar aligned to the ID Uruguay standards, and the first pilot test between ID Uruguay and Autenticar was achieved [iii].

This proof of concept allowed to validate a key idea: by simply integrating the two brokers it is already possible to enable the use of digital IDs from one ecosystem in the other. That is, a Uruguayan citizen with a digital ID from the ID Uruguay ecosystem could use it to digitally identify themselves in an integrated Argentine digital service to Autenticar and vice versa. Once again: as in real life, when a Uruguayan goes to a public body in Argentina with his Uruguayan identity card or passport, only this time it could be done 100% digitally with the same levels of security and trust.

A short time later, work began with Brazil, but in this case Brazil already had its broker GOV.br in use for several years and both brokers (ID Uruguay and GOV.br ) had the same protocols and security criteria; both were based on European regulations. The project that was called “Mercosur Digital Citizen” achieved its first milestone in September 2024 when the ID Uruguay – GOV.br [iv]. In November 2024, ID Uruguay won the digital government excellence award (excelGOB) awarded by the Gealc Network, the IDB and the OAS in the category “cross-border digital services” [v], when 40 digital services were reached in Uruguay available for Brazilian IDs [vi] and, while progress is being made in expanding the number of use cases in Uruguay, Brazil is making progress in finalizing the integration of the GOV.br so that a Uruguayan can use his Uruguayan digital identification in Brazil.

The scheme presented in the previous article, about the ID Uruguay ecosystem, when Brazil completes the integration in GOV.br it could be visualized as follows:

The “Mercosur Digital Citizen” not only achieved the first case in the region and a positive impact at the cross-border level on Uruguayan and Brazilian people and companies but also allowed to demonstrate two more points. On the one hand, to validate the conclusion of the experience with Argentina: it is enough to integrate two compatible brokers to fully integrate both ecosystems and use the IDs of one country in the digital services of the other. On the other hand, the name “Mercosur Digital Citizen” is already falling short, since ID Uruguay is moving forward with integrations to digital identification providers from Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay (these countries do not have brokers) as proofs of concept.

The following image shows the main screen of the ID Uruguay broker with the four Uruguayan providers and access to GOV.br:

Cross-border digital identification, from the first cases towards regional standardization

It is necessary to continue advancing in the region in integrating more countries and services to achieve in the digital world what already happens in the physical one, but with all the benefits that digital use implies. For this it is important that each country has its own broker, at least at the public level, and that the brokers comply with the same standards, use the same protocols and have the same criteria. In other words, the set of brokers will definitely be the integration layer in the region for two big reasons:

1. Facilitates and facilitates integration: it is not possible for one country to integrate each of the identification providers from the other countries. It is necessary to integrate a single point, that is, broker against broker. Each broker is responsible for solving the integration with their enabled ID providers and digital services in their country.
2. Standardize: in addition to using the same protocols, brokers will form a regional integration layer that will exchange the same data and have the same criteria to define the security levels of a digital identification. In broad terms, this point implies:
3. Using the same protocols, e.g., Open ID Connect, based on OAuth 2.0.
4. Use the same data set for each identification. Brazil and Uruguay use three fields to identify a person: country code according to ICAO – document code – document number. If a country does not use this format, the broker can also solve the transformation between the national ecosystem and the regional integration layer. In the experience with Argentina, the Authenticate broker conducted this transformation since in Argentina a number is used to identify each person, and this transformation was necessary to achieve compatibility with ID Uruguay. In addition, define a minimum set of data per person to be exchanged, such as, for example: names, surnames, email and cell number.
5. It is important to define common criteria to enable identification providers and also to define which requirements should be applied to each security level. In this sense, Uruguay and Brazil are aligned.

For these reasons, it is extremely important that each country has a broker to achieve progress with integration at the regional level, in addition to expanding the number of use cases, achieving impact cases on people and companies.

At the last Ministerial meeting of the Gealc Network [vii], held in November 2024 in Brasilia, the Network announced that it had secured the support of the IDB, the World Bank and the Organization of American States (OAS) by providing funding to develop a model broker to be made available to the countries as a regional public good.  The Network’s cross-border digital signature and identification working group will start working on this initiative in the coming weeks.

The broker model can be implemented in each country, facilitating the generation of a national ecosystem of digital IDs, but, above all, enabling regional integration in a simple and standardized way. Undoubtedly, this initiative will accelerate and simplify regional integration as well as enable the development of ecosystems in each country.

Cross-border digital identification, scalability and governance

In the medium term, as brokers are adopted by each country and  integrations between brokers begin to be solved, it will be necessary to add one more level of regional integration to facilitate scalability. Only with the broker layer, each broker will have to integrate with all the brokers from all the other countries and this would be a problem to scale to the whole region.

It will be necessary to create a ”Hub of Digital ID Brokers”, that is, a central node with pointers to the digital ID brokers in each country. In this way, each broker in each country must integrate with the hub and automatically inherits the entire ecosystem of digital brokers integrated to the hub, massively enabling the use of cross-border identification.

When that time comes, the Uruguay ID broker screen might look like this:

This concept of Broker Hub already exists in Europe, but unlike in our region there is no organization similar to the European Union. One of the challenges we will have to face is to develop a governance model where Latin American organizations with the necessary roles, competencies and capabilities take charge of the Broker Hub and articulate the evolution of the entire ecosystem in the region.

[i] Gealc Network Portal: https://www.redgealc.org/

[ii] The IDB portal: https://www.iadb.org/es

[iii] ID Integration pilot Uruguay – Authenticate: https://www.gub.uy/unidad-certificacion-electronica/comunicacion/noticias/argentina-uruguay-avanzan-integracion-sus-respectivas-identificaciones

[iv] Put into production cross-border digital identification ID Uruguay – GOV.br: https://www.gub.uy/unidad-certificacion-electronica/comunicacion/noticias/primer-caso-uso-identificacion-digital-transfronteriza-entre-brasil-uruguay

[v] ExcelGOB 2024: https://www.redgealc.org/contenido-general/noticias/se-entregaron-los-premios-excelgob2024/

[vi] Services available for Brazilian IDs, Energy and Water Services Regulatory Unit (URSEA): https://www.gub.uy/unidad-reguladora-servicios-energia-agua/tramites-y-servicios/tramites; and Ministry of Public Health: https://www.gub.uy/tramites/solicitud-constancias-transporte-yerba-mate

[vii] Ministerial Network Gealc 2024: https://www.redgealc.org/contenido-general/noticias/ministerial-2024-de-red-gealc-agenda-participantes-ponencias-documentos-aprobados-imagenes/

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