Privacy-friendly identity management in eGovernment

There are apparently very few incentives for government managers to imple-ment Privacy-Enhanced Identity Management Systems on a large scale in an eGovernment architecture. In this paper we explain why this is understandable to some extent and introduce a less far-going alternative – provisionally – called Privacy-Friendly Identity Management. We conclude with a brief analysis of one important driver to choose for “Privacy-Friendly Identity Management Systems”: risk manage-ment. 1 Identity Management in eGovernment There are probably as many definitions of the term eGovernment as there are people working in that field. The definition used in Belgian federal eGovernment runs as follows: “eGovernment is the continuous optimization of service deli-very and governance by transforming internal and external relationships through technology, internet and new media”.1. This optimization relies on a number of important principles, inter alia, treating information as a strategic resource for all government activities and the integration of backoffices. 2 From a technical perspective the integration of back-offices is typically looked for through a (cross-border) “Service Oriented Architecture”(SOA). In practice, identity management components are often integrated as basic service components of such a SOA in eGovernment. These services are then compiled with other services to so-called value-added services.3 Depending on the goals of the eGovernment project, it is usually good to start with a risk assessment of the organization’s activity