DECiDe – Digital Identity, European Citizenship and the Future of Democracy

For some years now, many people have noticed an ever-widening gap between civil society and governmental organizations in the European Union. We believe that modern information and communication technologies (ICT) can bridge this gap and thus give EU citizens a greater say in politics. These instruments are intended to counteract the growing disenchantment with politics and pave the way to a more vibrant democracy.

Electronic voting procedures can strengthen the control of EU politics by EU citizens. The basis for this is a digital European identity, for example based on block chain technology. In combination with Random-Sample-Voting (RSV), this can be used to develop a cost-effective and scalable instrument for surveys and for participation in decision-making processes, which is representative on the one hand and at the same time keeps the effort for individual participants low. We believe that this will enable people in the EU to take on more responsibility and we want to promote the ideal of "sovereign" EU citizens in this way.

A digital European identity means that citizens have control over their own data, even if it is based on the identity cards of EU nation states. It strengthens the European identity, opens up access to the system of electronic voting at the EU level and thus facilitates the active participation of citizens in political processes.

Therefore, the goal of our project was to develop a prototype for electronic voting (eVoting) and electronic voting (ePolling) based on an existing technology for digital identity and RSV.

This prototype combined existing technologies like the digital identity solution of the Swiss Procivis AG and Random-Sample-Voting (RSV) from the working group around David Chaum to a secure, private, user-friendly and integrative system.

We were supported by a broad network of partners from the academic, business and civil society environment. These included Procivis AG and the working group around RSV, the Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy (DIID), the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), the Institut de Recherche Informatique Fondamentale (IRIF) in Paris and the NGO The Humanized Internet (THI). In addition to the research team of the HIIG, Dr. Anja Adler was our consultant for conception and communication in the project.

As one of the winners of the ideas competition Advocate Europe 2018 of Stiftung Mercator, the project received start-up funding and was additionally financed by HIIG's own funds. The development of the prototype was realized with funds from the idea competition demokratie.io.