Convenient or intrusive? How Poland has embraced digital ID cards
Convenient or intrusive? How Poland has embraced digital ID cards
Share:
From driving licence to local air quality, app offers myriad of features and has been rolled out to little opposition. Concerns Gov.uk app could lead to ‘mandatory ID scheme’. Much is being said about Poland’s economy potentially overtaking Britain by 2030, but in some areas Poles are already ahead.
![[Jakub Krupa]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2025/01/22/Jakub_Krupa.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
They can produce a digital identity card or driving licence and use an array of public services using a mobile app, mObywatel. When accessing it for the first time, users have to verify their identity by logging into electronic banking, using a digitally enabled physical ID card, or through a special “trusted profile” online.
![[In this photo illustration Polish driving licenses are seen]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7f535d83d44d7ffd81d33ad11a569d6edc1651d9/0_0_4257_2554/master/4257.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The app, which has 8 million users, has a myriad features such as allowing Poles to produce a digital version of their ID, check how many penalty points they have on their driving licence, look up their vehicle’s history, check air quality locally and find their polling station.
Rafał Sionkowski, a senior government official working on the app, said keeping the core team of developers within public institutions allowed them to move faster as they knew databases were digitised and could be made available to citizens quickly. He said the key breakthrough would come as more EU countries develop similar apps ahead of the bloc’s new eIDAS 2.0 regulation on electronic identification, authentication and trust services.
The regulation, which is expected to be fully implemented by 2026 or 2027, provided the legal frame work to allow electronic identification systems to work across EU borders, “so you could show and verify your digital driving licence in Germany, or digital ID in Spain”, Sionkowski said.
