Webinar - eIDAS for students

About the event

The live webinar will present how electronic identification and authentication services (eIDAS compliant) could support student mobility and facilitate access to student services in Europe. Presentations of the ongoing projects of the European Commission will be followed by an interactive Q&A session with the audience and students of the University of Piraeus (Greece) who will provide feedback on their needs with regard to electronic identification when enrolling in a foreign institution during their Erasmus year.

Participants of this webinar will learn about:

• Students' needs with regard to eID and authentication when accessing services;
• The benefits of reusing eIDAS eID to support the onboarding of students when studying aboard;
• The meaning of being eIDAS compliant for the educational sector;
• The eID eIDAS status in the Member States.

Organised by the European Commission, this public event is of particular interest to higher education institutions, service providers of computing infrastructures and networks for the education sector, identity providers, attributes providers, eID service providers, eIDAS Member State representatives, and EU policy makers.

The objective of the session will be to explore potential collaboration between the education sector and the eID services and identity providers ecosystem to reuse eIDAS solutions for European students and higher education services. Connection between interested parties is the first step towards the successful uptake of electronic identification in Europe.

Context

Who better than students and researchers to exemplify the true meaning of the European freedom of movement? Every year hundreds of thousands of young people decide to take the big step of studying or conducting their research abroad.

Moving abroad can be quite attractive and seems easier than ever. Over the past years, educational institutions have been developing digital services and identification systems for their students and researchers to offer a seamless experience on campus and ease their relationship with the administration. However, students and academic staff can still spend countless hours providing paper documents to prove their identity and obtain the necessary credentials, before getting access to campus services when preparing to study abroad and/or arriving on a new campus.

The eIDAS regulation no. 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions, adopted in 2014, introduces the principle of mutual recognition of nationally-issued eID schemes across the European Member States. Following successful piloting under STORK 2.0, the European Commission is now looking into the feasibility of reusing eIDAS eID to provide to students and academic staff the necessary attributes for electronic identification during the enrolment process and other relevant services such as access to virtual libraries, access to on-line courses, transcript of records and access to computing infrastructures and networks.

Preliminary agenda

• 10:30 - 10:35    Roll call of participants, European Commission
• 10:35 - 10:50    Testimonies of students on their needs linked to electronic identification and access to online services, University of Piraeus, Greece
• 10:50 - 11:05    The advantages of eIDAS for students and the digitalisation of the educational sector; Rehana Schwinninger-Ladak, deputy Head of the Unit ‘Learning, Multi-linguism and Accessibility’, DG CNECT
• 11:05 - 11:20    eID solution architecture for University and Education Domains; Mario Cabellos Galán, Everis
• 11:20 - 11:35    eIDAS implementation and eIDs deployment in Europe, Alice Vasilescu, Policy Officer in charge of eID, DIGIT
• 11:35 - 12:00    Q&A session followed by a conclusion statement by the European Commission

Information

When? Tuesday 7 November 2017, 10:30 - 12:00 (CET)

How? Online webinar - connection details will be shared on Monday 6 November with registered participants

Free participation

Registration

Please register  for this webinar in order to receive connection details by Friday 3 November 2017.

About the presenters

Rehana Schwinninger-Ladak was appointed deputy Head of the Unit ‘Learning, Multi-linguism and Accessibility’ in October 2016. The Unit’s mission is to make the Digital Single Market more accessible, secure and inclusive. To this end, the Unit supports policy, research, innovation and deployment of learning technologies and key enabling digital language technologies and services allowing all European consumers and businesses to fully benefit from the Digital Single Market. The Unit is responsible for the Web Accessibility Directive, which makes public sector websites accessible by people with impairments. The Unit also promotes a better internet for children by protecting and empowering children online, and improving the quality of content available to them.

Alice Vasilescu is acting as Policy Officer at the Directorate-General for Informatics of the European Commission. She is coordinating the technical work carried out under CEF eID and supports the Member State community that is setting up the eIDAS eID Infrastructure. Alice is an experienced IT professional, specializing in Enterprise Architecture, IT security and system interoperability for large-scale European projects.

Mario Cabellos is senior Project Leader at Everis. He is coordinating a study commissioned by the European Commission on defining an Information Systems (data and application) Architecture solutions that would enable the reuse of the CEF eID Building Block in the educational domain, through existing e-service/system/online platforms (e.g. university), thus facilitating students' authentication across borders.