According to the Finnish Ministry of Finance, strong identification with current methods is a large annual expense for the state. Simultaneously, the number of authentication events is on the rise as services are digitalised. Finland has a large need to respond to the challenges of digital authentication, especially from the viewpoint of usability and costs.

A digital authentication pilot initiative, the Sandbox of Trust, offers a quick solution to this problem. The initiative creates a legally valid community in Finland that is open to all actors and that will create a mobile authentication app, Sisu ID. With this solution, citizens and foreigners can effortlessly login to digital services that demand normal and strong authentication.

According to Nixum, previous authentication initiatives in Finland have failed due to the lack of collaboration between sectors and industries. The community that is formed now welcomes all service providers.

“In the community model, pricing will be based on a fixed membership fee instead of a transaction-based fee. This covers the platform’s maintenance and development costs. This way, identification is no longer a business-limiting factor to anyone. On the contrary, it will enable business,” explains Pirkka Frosti from Digital Living International.

An authentication application widely utilised by the public and private sectors would mean a new and easy way of logging in to digital services and would even enable the replacement of passwords.

The solution also brings a concrete relief to the wallet, as the application can replace all plastic loyalty cards and permits. When a user can prove their identity with a mobile application, authorisations related to their digital identity can be verified in real-time from the service providers’ background systems.

“The Sandbox of Trust initiative creates the Sisu ID solution quickly with the help of pilot projects. Actors from both the private and public sectors are already involved in testing their requirements for the new authentication application,” says Joonatan Henriksson from Nixu. “We will still bring along a few actors who want to grow their own digital competitiveness quickly with a more user-friendly authentication.”

The source code of the solution is published as open source so other countries can also implement the digital identity and authentication solution cost-effectively as a corner stone of their own digital society.