Topic starter
24/10/2026 8:51 pm
TL;DR: Years of delivery and triple-digit million budgets can follow when national identity programmes try to build everything themselves, according to Procivis. eIDAS 2.0 delivery works better when common foundations are reused and local effort stays on policy, integration, and operating control.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Procivis: “Building the future of national identity doesn’t have to feel like a solo construction project”.
Key questions
Q: When should governments prioritise a mixed delivery model over a fully custom wallet build?
A: They should prioritise mixed delivery when deadlines are fixed, specialist staff are limited, or the country needs a compliant baseline faster than it can create one internally.
Q: What are the signs that a digital identity rollout is accumulating governance debt?
A: Warning signs include repeated refactoring, inconsistent assumptions across teams, slow procurement cycles, and growing dependence on a few people who understand the entire stack.
A: It usually fails at the boundaries between policy, integration, and operating capacity, not in the first code release.
Practitioner guidance
- Define the ownership boundary early Separate the nationally unique policy, user journey, and trust decisions from the reusable technical foundation before procurement or build work starts.
- Estimate the full lifecycle cost Model not just delivery cost but onboarding, integration, support, compliance change, and maintenance across the full rollout period.
- Test vendor and open-source fit-for-purpose Validate that any external component fits source systems, signature services, wallet flows, and national operating constraints before committing to it.
Bottom line: The article’s central warning is that national identity delivery can become slower and more expensive when teams treat it as a pure DIY build.
Glossary terms: Digital Identity Wallet, Identity Federation, Operating Model, Reference Implementation
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This topic was modified 7 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
25/10/2026 11:13 am
National identity delivery is an operating-model decision, not a build-versus-buy slogan. eIDAS 2.0 programmes succeed when governments decide what must be owned locally and what can be composed from shared capability. The article’s core point is that time, skills, assurance, and integration are part of the security and governance burden, not side effects. Practitioners should treat national identity delivery as a controlled ecosystem design problem.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should public-sector teams decide what to keep in-house and what to reuse in eIDAS 2.0?
A: Keep in-house the policy choices, citizen experience decisions, and national trust relationships that define the programme. Reuse the common identity foundation, integration patterns, and backend capability where they do not create a local differentiation need. That balance reduces duplication without handing away control of the national model.
👉 Read our full editorial: eIDAS 2.0 rollout favours mixed delivery over full DIY builds
This post was modified 7 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group