From June 2008 Ministry of Public Administration participates as one of 28 partners from 14 countries in the EU project STORK (short for Secure Identity Across Borders Linked). The duration of the project is 36 months of which 24 months is aimed at the development of the interoperable solution and 12 months is planned for testing of the solution on the real life pilots.

STORK is a large scale pilot in the ICT-PSP (ICT Policy Support Programme), under the CIP (Competitiveness and Innovation Programme), and co-funded by EU. It aims at implementing an EU wide interoperable system for recognition of eID and authentication that will enable businesses, citizens and government employees to use their national electronic identities in any Member State. It will also pilot transborder eGovernment identity services and learn from practice on how to roll out such services, and to experience what benefits and challenges an EU wide interoperability system for recognition of eID will bring.

The STORK interoperable solution for electronic identity (eID) is based on a distributed architecture that will pave the way towards full integration of EU e-services while taking into account specifications and infrastructures currently existing in EU Member States. The solution provided is intended to be robust, transparent, safe to use and scalable, and should be implemented in such a way that it is sustainable beyond the life of the pilot.

The project will:

• Develop common rules and specifications to assist mutual recognition of eIDs across national borders;
• Test, in real life environments, secure and easy-to-use eID solutions for citizens and businesses
• Interact with other EU initiatives to maximize the usefulness of eID services.
• It will do so by preparing for and implementing several Pilots with services that will have significant potential impact and are adequately secure, by making use of open standards where possible and respecting with data protection regulations. The pilots will test the common specification on eID for several applications that have a substantial impact on eGovernment across Europe.