The Government will this week roll out a pilot scheme for a digital wallet developed at a cost of more that €3 million, with little clarity about what it will ultimately be used for. Some 10,000 people will be involved in the trial of the smart phone application which is based on the personal public service or PPS number currently used to interact with State services and agencies.
The Irish digital wallet has been developed in response to an EU requirement that Member States must make them available to citizens and residents by the end of the year. The wallets are intended to smooth cross-border identity verification in a range of areas, but have raised various data security concerns.
Numerous domestic uses have been proposed for the wallets. These include holding digital versions of documents such as driving licences and passports. However, the EU requirement that the corresponding physical document must still be produced and accepted relegates the digital wallet to “nice to have” rather than “must have” status, which may well hamper widespread adoption. That said, Irish people’s higher-than-average enthusiasm for technologies such as online banking bodes well for the uptake and usage of the digital wallet.
The use of the wallets to verify the age of children accessing social media accounts had been suggested by the Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan and Tánaiste Simon Harris as part of wider efforts to restrict access to the platforms. The technology is well- suited to the task as it allows age verification without sharing other information such as name or date of birth.
RM Block
But once again the requirement that the wallet cannot be compulsory and that other documentation must be acceptable suggests that it could at best only be part of a solution should the Government go down the road of introducing an age ban for social media. The Department of Public Expenditure – which is responsible for developing the wallet– has engaged with other departments about possible uses, but for now it remains something of a solution in search of a problem.
