Abstract:

Secure Electronic Identification (eID) is one of the key enablers of data protection, privacy and prevention of online fraud. eID can guarantee the unambiguous identification of a person and make it possible to get a service delivered to the person who is really entitled to it. However, until now, the lack of a common legal basis prevented European Member States from recognizing and accepting eIDs issued by other Member States, thus preventing citizens and businesses from fully benefiting from the digital single market.

The Electronic Identification and Trust Services (eIDAS) Regulation solves the aforementioned issues by ensuring the cross-border mutual recognition of eIDs. The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) program published the technical specifications and reference implementations of the interoperability eIDAS nodes for the eID mechanisms in 2015. The ultimate goal of this initiative is to allow citizens of any European country to use their national eIDs to securely access services provided in other European countries.

In 2017, CEF program also aimed to promote the use of nationally issued eIDs for students' authentication across borders, as well as the integration of eIDAS in existing e-services in higher education sectors to facilitate the mobility of students in the European Union. However, the minimum dataset provided by the Member States only contains citizens’ personal attributes. Hence, academic services cannot exploit the advantages of integrating students’ eID as much as if it included attributes related to their academic profile as well.

In this paper, we propose an extension of the eIDAS specification in order to support academic attributes. Thanks to this extension, services can request students’ information from the eIDAS nodes: not only their personal profiles but also some attributes related to their academic profile such as the field of study, the institution where they are coursing their studies, and their language proficiency certificates.

In order for the eIDAS nodes to send academic attributes, these attributes have to be provided by certified institutions beyond the national identity providers. In this paper, we also propose an architecture that allows the connection of the national eIDAS nodes to academic attribute providers in order to enrich the student minimum dataset with their academic profile.

Based on the work presented in this paper, it can be concluded that thanks to the extension of the eID profile of students with academic attributes, e-services in higher education sectors could fully benefit from the integration of the eIDAS initiative, breaking barriers and favouring students’ mobility within the European Union.

Keywords:

Academic attributes, Electronic Identification, eIDAS, Erasmus, Identity.