IDunion (formerly known as SSI4DE)  is one of the four projects funded by the BMWi’s showcase project “Sichere Digitale Identitäten”, which is building an open ecosystem for decentralised, self-sovereign identities for natural persons, companies and things. At the heart of the ecosystem is a distributed identity network (DLT), managed soon by a European Cooperative. Data on the network is stored decentrally at the participating public and private partners. The partners develop their own software applications and components that build on the network and enable the allocation, storage and exchange of verified identity information. By using open source frameworks and standardised components, vendor lock-in is avoided, transparency is created and interoperability is promoted. Users can store all identity information in a wallet on their smartphone. This data will be used to carry out a wide variety of use cases in the private and public sectors. Use cases in the consortium will be implemented in seven use case areas: e-government, education, financial sector, e-commerce/mobility, identity access management, e-health and industry/IOT.

As research partner of the Consortium, we are addressing research questions including security and interoperability. We are also developing solutions for use cases around education, mobility and identity access management, which are brought into the production environment for daily use by ZECM.