Assessing Poor Adoption of The Eid In Germany

While personal e-services guarded by eID are widely accepted in some countries, eID remains foreign to public organizations and citizens in most of the countries. In this context, Germany is an interesting case to study. Technologically advanced and wealthy, close to the Nordic countries with a widely accepted eID for private and public e-services, Germany experiences rather poor adoption of its eID. Because most public services in Germany are provided through municipalities, we asked the municipalities why they rarely provide e-services with an option for citizens to identify themselves with the eID. The result is ten reasons of poor adoption of e-services and the eID, and a background story.