From a public question to testable research.
This page is not a news archive. It presents selected research milestones in the development of QEI: how research questions, principles, institutional dialogue, the pilot framework and development directions evolved. Links to Institute 1 April publications serve as public sources for individual milestones.
The objective is not to validate QEI in advance. The objective is to create conditions in which it can be tested, measured, compared and, where appropriate, rejected.
Key QEI development
milestones.
These are not news items, but selected development points. Each link leads to a public source documenting that specific milestone.
For current publications, open NewsOnline fraud prevention through verifiable identity and transaction-specific authorisation
A new QEI research direction explores how cryptographically verifiable identity, separation of organisational roles and explicit approval of a particular transaction could help prevent, block or limit phishing, impersonation, banking fraud and other online scams. Proposed safeguards require integration and independent testing.
Separating administrative privileges from access to personal identity data
This research direction examines whether system administration can be separated from access to personal identity records, and how key separation, least privilege, independent approvals and incident recovery could limit the consequences of a compromised administrator account.
Offline-capable identity verification and infrastructure resilience
The research direction was extended to resilience: how can selected identity proofs remain locally verifiable when internet connectivity or a central service is temporarily unavailable, while revocation, trust updates and synchronisation remain part of the wider infrastructure?
Compromised identity carriers and proof of the legitimate holder
The discovery of biometric identity cards with precisely removed microchips adds a new research scenario: how should an identity architecture respond when a physical credential or its chip is compromised, while possession of that credential alone must not become proof of the person?
AI voice fraud and verifiable digital authorisation
The Fideuram case sharpened the research question beyond identity alone: how can role, authority, intent and approval of a specific high-risk digital action be verified independently of a convincing voice or message?
Child-protection and age-verification research direction
Age-category verification, verified adult roles and event-based safety concepts were brought together as a focused research area, with the goal of proving only what is necessary.
Research pilot proposal for the Republic of Slovenia
The work moved from conceptual discussion toward a limited pilot framework intended to test technical, legal, privacy and governance assumptions.
Formal institutional dialogue
An official response from DG CONNECT created a documented institutional communication trail and clarified the research-oriented status of the proposal.
Positioning within the European digital-identity context
The concept was positioned as a possible complementary privacy and assurance layer, not as a replacement for the European digital-identity ecosystem.
Privacy, selective disclosure and security principles
QEI was progressively framed around data minimisation, selective disclosure, privacy by design and stronger assurance without unnecessary exposure of the full identity.
Research framing and public-interest problem definition
The work began by defining the public-interest problem: how stronger identity assurance could coexist with child protection, privacy and responsible treatment of sensitive data.