“We regret Belgium doesn’t strictly adhere to this European standard, but chose a local implementation. As you know, respect for standards is important, especially in the domains of identification and authentication.”
- Phillip Vandervoort, General Manager Microsoft Belgium and Luxembourg
Emphasis is mine. Read in the 16/01 issue of the Belgian “IT Professional” magazine, page 29, included in the ProFOSS goody bag. The article is a response on an earlier published interview with Geert Mareels, manager of the Coordination Unit of Flemish e-Government, claiming one of the reasons e-ID isn’t widely used yet is due to Microsoft not providing any e-ID related solutions.
Original quote: “We betreuren het dan ook dat België deze Europese standaard niet volledig onderschrijft, maar gekozen heeft voor een lokale implementatie. Zoals u weet is het respect voor standaarden belangrijk, in het bijzonder in de domeinen van identificatie en authenticatie.”.
In this context I should note that Mandriva Linux 2008 comes pre-packaged with support for the e-ID card reader.
One should also keep in mind that in order to get an eID development kit, you have to fork up so much money it isn’t even funny. And besides, no one has a card reader, so why bother?
Bram: I don’t know what this ‘development kit’ consists of, but: I got a card reader for free some time ago (an action by De Lijn and the Flemish government), even in retail they’re pretty cheap (25€ or something iirc), and the card access API is available online, for free… I’ve been hacking with it for a while, actually.