It was a cold and quiet morning in Berlin, Germany on the 28th October 2013. The leaves on the trees were turning brown; getting ready for the coming winter. Inside the Intercontinental Berlin Hotel, a team of SecureMetric people were preparing for an exciting day at the 5th Edition of the National eID & ePassport Conference.
The event, hosted by PrimeKey, Utimaco and Multicert saw some 200 delegates from around the world attending and sharing their ideas with each other. It supported by the German government under the Öffentliche IT Ministry. The agenda for Day 1 was filled with 6 keynote speakers who spoke about eID usage around the world namely from Europe, US and Africa. There were also 2 panel discussion where the former Executive US State Department of USA was the chair. One of the hottest topic was on why the USA did not have a single National ID. There were many questions raised during the USA single National ID topic was discussed. Among the key points raised during the Q&A session was the Constitution of the USA which prohibits the issuance of a single National ID for the citizens of USA.
During the event, SecureMetric positioned itself as the preferred partner for European companies who wish to get into the ASEAN market. There were many inquiries on the ASEAN market as it is the new booming market which is seen as the counter weight to the BRIC economies. SecureMetric made a special SecureMAG supplement for this event introducing ASEAN to the delegates in Berlin. One of the interesting fact was that in ASEAN, more than 1000 languages were spoken and this has prove to give complications when implementing eID in some countries. It is interesting to see how these countries overcome the multiple language problem with it comes to issuing eID.
On Day 2 of the event, one of SecureMetric’s invited guest, Dr. Suhazimah from MAMPU (a government agency in Malaysia) presented a 30 minute talk about the usage of Malaysia’s eID also knows as MyKAD. She then proceed to discuss about how Malaysia was the first country in the world to introduce the concept of ePassport. She ended her talk with her in-depth knowledge about PKI and its role in helping Malaysia become a developed nation.
The event ended with a after event networking cocktail where the delegates, sponsors and speakers were able to get to know each other better and share a laugh after a long day at the event. The conference chairman, Mr. Konstantin officially declare the event a success and closed it with a toast and announcing the 6th Edition will be held in Budapest, Hungary.
