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But will they use it?

As a general rule, technologies that fail to make the grade or that take a long time to achieve market penetration can be said to suffer from one or more of four basic inadequacies: they are either immature, poorly marketed, unpopular, or unable for whatever reason to achieve critical mass.

Lots of people have spent lots of time perfecting the system behind the nPA. Yes, the client software may still have bugs, and no one knows what other technical glitches may crop up during the early implementation stages. In all though the technical concept seems advanced enough to succeed in the market. Whether it will fly with the public is an entirely different question, though. The federal government plans to spend a tidy sum on a campaign to popularize the latest edition to Joe Citizen's wallet. They will have their job cut out for them, especially since bad news travels faster than good and people are more willing to listen to critics carping about real or conceived security problems than to more reasoned voices describing the facts. Still, the authorities are well advised to invest in marketing in order to ensure a smooth launch.

But what about that last point, critical mass? The government has earmarked 23 million Euros for a program to provide about a million reader devices for the nPA that can be distributed by companies to their own customers, so it seems that a sufficient number of readers will be available from the start. This may very well assure the necessary mass which will allow the system to achieve liftoff.

Marketing the system itself may prove slightly trickier. Many of the most obviously beneficial functions will only be optional, and all of them need some explaining. That a typical bureaucrat working, say, in a local motor vehicle registration office will be able to convincingly explain the benefits of the new ID card to the elderly or to foreigners who don't speak the language all that well defies the imagination. And getting consumers to sign up for the optional digital signature function will call for plenty of persuasion, since hardly anyone knows what they're good for and whether the cost is justified for a couple of online purchases a year. However, the real possibility remains that the nPA will help digital signatures to finally take off, too.

Private enterprise will have to come up with a wide range of interesting applications for the digital ID card if this is to happen. Health insurance companies could use them to access patient data, for instance, and airlines could find ways to shorten check-in times for those who can prove their identity digitally. The truth is, though, that nPAs will remain only one of many possible methods of authentication for the foreseeable future, and perhaps forever. Businesses may find strong authentication increasingly attractive and thus make them their identity verifier of choice, but it will take a while before every single customer will be able to present an electronic ID card or its equivalent (such as foreign ID cards or driver's licenses or a German-issued "foreigner card"). But in the end, the large number of users and the wide proliferation of reader devices may turn the scales in favor of the nPA which can provide an simple method for using strong authentication, for instance in the context of self-registration systems where it is necessary to verify the information provided by the customer or citizen.

Acceptance will hinge, however, on the usability of the system, especially on the creation of standard authentication procedures versus different hand-crafted client solutions for every application. Thankfully, things appear to be moving in the right direction. It will be important for developers to follow internationally accepted standards in order to avoid creating a patchwork of national solutions for each country. International corporations, especially, will be reluctant to program their applications against country-specific APIs.

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