Recap from Global Digital Collaboration: A Turning Point for Trust in the Digital Realm
On July 1 and 2, 2025, more than 1,100 participants gathered at the CICG in Geneva for Global Digital Collaboration – a hybrid conference/unConference dedicated to shaping trustworthy digital public infrastructure. Co-curated by 46 organisers and featuring over 140 main-stage and breakout sessions, the event stood out for its inclusive and participatory format. DIDAS – Digital Identity & Data Sovereignty Association Switzerland – was proud to contribute across multiple tracks and formats. The next edition is scheduled for the week of July 24th, 2026, with our continued active involvement.
On the main stage, I had the honour to join Rolf Rauschenbach from the Swiss Confederation and Pascal Mainini from Digitale Gesellschaft to present the current state of Switzerland’s state-issued e-ID and trust infrastructure. The programme stands for what Switzerland does best: openness, precision, democratic co-creation, and privacy by design.
Following the rejection of the first e-ID model in 2021, the Swiss e-ID 2.0 represents a complete reset. It is fully state-issued, built on privacy-by-design and privacy-by-default, relies on no centralised databases, and is supported by six parliamentary motions across political lines. With CHF 180 million allocated over multiple years, this is not the buildout of a platform economy – it is a long-term investment in sovereign, open digital infrastructure.
For over four years, DIDAS has been actively engaged in the development of the e-ID and trust infrastructure. We continue to participate in official consultations, support a privacy-first, interoperability-driven approach, and promote adoption by both public and private actors. Earlier this year, we also co-hosted the third edition of the Digital Identity unConference Europe (DICE), which provides space for implementers to exchange lessons and shape aligned but decentralised identity ecosystems across Europe. DICE was also one of the key inspirations for GC25.
At Global Digital Collaboration (GC25), DIDAS played a central role in curating the track on privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). The day opened with two back-to-back sessions on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). In these morning sessions, Matteo Frigo (Google), René Mayrhofer (JKU Linz), Imad Aad (EPFL/C4DT), and Christian Bormann (SPRIND) introduced both foundational principles and live systems. Central to the discussion was unlinkability – the idea that no one should be able to correlate multiple digital interactions back to a single identity without consent.
The session showcased Google’s Longfellow-ZK, a system that allows existing mobile credentials to be used in zero-knowledge. It shifts the verification process to the holder, protects against surveillance, and enables selective disclosure of attributes. Critically, it is already available as open source: https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk. These technical discussions made clear that ZKPs are no longer a theoretical ideal – they are production-ready tools that could underpin future digital identity systems.
In the afternoon session, DIDAS’s Daniel Saeuberli co-ran a use-case focused workshop on data-minimised credential applications together with René Mayrhofer from JKU, joined by Abhi Shelat (Google), Denis „Jaromil“ Roio (Dyne.org/Forkbomb), and Ying Tong (Ethereum Foundation). We explored a wide spectrum of real-world needs across sectors — from age verification and transport ticketing to anonymous access to healthcare and digital participation — where privacy-preserving credentials are not just beneficial, but essential. These use cases span from fully anonymous proofs of eligibility or group memberships to hybrid scenarios such as proving Schengen-area citizenship without revealing identity. Yet despite the maturity of the technology, there is currently no systematic framework to capture these cases or map them to regulatory requirements. Together, we examined the technical, legal, and adoption barriers that prevent broader implementation, and identified the urgent need for a structured, community-driven classification of use case types. The goal is clear: to bridge implementation with regulatory acceptance and ensure that PET-based solutions, particularly those leveraging ZKPs, can become the practical and accepted foundation for data-minimised digital interactions.
To build on this, DIDAS and JKU are launching a dedicated working group to collect and classify data-minimised credential use cases, document their properties, and promote their regulatory recognition. One of the most pressing questions raised in dialogues after the saession, was whether privacy-preserving proofs like ZKPs will be recognised as “state of the art” by data protection authorities. If they are, such mechanisms could become the standard for compliant, data-minimised digital services – across sectors and jurisdictions.
The broader Swiss trust infrastructure – swiyu – is designed with this direction in mind. Based on open standards and developed as open source, swiyu enables verifiable, privacy-preserving credentials to be exchanged between individuals, organisations, and government services. It is compatible with use cases ranging from mobile driver’s licences to organisational credentials and future cross-border applications.
The upcoming public vote on September 28, 2025, will determine whether Switzerland formally adopts this programme. This is not a minor system update. It is a foundational step toward a digital society and a strategic building block for better digitalization built on trust, privacy, and accountability.
DIDAS will continue to support its rollout, with a focus on real-world value, individual control, and enabling the ecosystem. Let us mark this moment. And for those Swiss: Let us vote Yes on September 28.
