Citizens' Attitudes towards Electronic Identification in a Public E-Service Context - An Essential Perspective in the eID Development Process

This article addresses the development of electronic identification (eID) for public e-services and reports from an empirical study of young Swedish university students’ attitudes towards eID. A public e-service at the Swedish Board for Study Support which demanded secure electronic identification was focused. Our findings from three focus groups show that usability and security are two main themes that the respondents found to be important in order to trust eID and e-services. This example of how citizens’ attitudes towards eID can be explored in focus groups is related to an on-going national development process of a new eID solution on a strategic and artifact level. In this process no citizens are participating or involved so far. Potential risks with neglecting citizen attitudes in such processes, in a longer perspective, are decreased usage of public e-services and lack of trust in e-government. This article shows that citizens’ attitudes can serve as important additional input to the development of eID solutions that supports successful e-government.