Image: OÖN
Persons who have an Austrian driving license in credit card format can also have their driving license activated in digital form. This has been possible since autumn 2022, and since then 302,300 people have already made use of this mobile phone variant, as the Ministry of Finance announced yesterday.
The digital driving license is the first of two digital ID cards in Austria. At the end of March, Minister of Education Martin Polaschek presented the digital student ID together with State Secretary Florian Tursky (both ÖVP). The basis for using the digital driver’s license on a mobile phone is the credit card driver’s license, with the older driver’s authorizations on pink paper the photo is not stored digitally in the driver’s license register.
Otherwise, the ID card platform “eID” on the cell phone and an ID-Austria, the further development of the electronic cell phone signature, with the app “Digitales Amt” are sufficient. Users who have not registered their mobile phone signature with the authorities must first contact the authorities in order to be able to use the ID Austria in its full function.
“A large number of driver’s licenses in Austria are still old paper driver’s licenses. In the ‘Digital Austria Act’, we stated that we want to make the digital ID cards accessible to everyone,” says State Secretary Tursky. That is why it was agreed in the “Digital Austria Act” that in future all holders of a paper driving license would also be able to obtain a digital driving license by linking it to the identity register.
The digital driver’s license can be used in the same way as the credit card-sized one: for traffic checks, but also as identification or proof of age in some shops. “The digital driver’s license is a modern citizen service,” says Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (VP). The previous control measures by the police could “be carried out quickly and unbureaucratically with a special digital app”.
Source: Nachrichten
