The systems we use to prove who we are still lag behind the rest of our digital lives. Across Israel and the Middle East, people routinely move between government portals, banks, universities, hospitals and employers, each time reconstituting the same basic facts about themselves through fresh scans, fresh forms and fresh waits. The process is already digital, and is rarely catastrophic, yet it is persistently inefficient, consuming time that accumulates into real friction for citizens and institutions alike. As someone who has pursued digital public infrastructure for years, I find this mismatch increasingly hard to ignore.

Regionally close by, Europe is completing a project that approaches the problem from a different angle. The European Digital Identity Wallet is designed as a personal application that stores verified credentials on the user’s own device. National identity data, driving licenses, educational certificates, professional qualifications and similar documents can reside there under the individual’s control. When a service requires confirmation of a particular attribute, the holder decides what to release and in what detail. Age verification need not expose a full date of birth; proof of a qualification need not include an entire academic record. The information remains encrypted locally, without a central repository logging every exchange. Member states are required........

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