Vratislav Holub At the unveiling of the iOS 15 operating system, Apple boasted a rather interesting novelty related to driver's licenses. As he himself mentioned in his presentation, it will be possible to store a driver's license directly in the native Wallet application, thanks to which it will be possible to have it stored in a fully digital form. In practice, you wouldn't have to carry it with you, but you would be fine with the phone itself. The idea is undoubtedly great and significantly advances the possibilities in terms of digitization.
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Adam Kos Unfortunately, a good plan does not guarantee success. As is usual with Apple, such news is mostly reflected only on American users, while other apple users are more or less forgotten. But in this case, it's even worse. The United States of America is made up of a total of 50 states. Currently, only three of them support driving licenses in iPhones. Although this is not entirely Apple's fault, it does illustrate quite well how slow digitization is.
Colorado: The third state with driver's license support in iPhones
Support for a digital driver's license stored on the iPhone has started in Arizona, USA. Some apple-pickers were already able to pause over this. Most expected that California would be among the first states, or rather the homeland of the apple company, where Apple has a relatively solid influence. However, this influence is not unlimited. Arizona was then joined by Maryland and now Colorado. However, we have known about the function for over a year, and in all this time it has been implemented in only three states, which is a rather sad result.
As we mentioned above, it is not so much Apple that is to blame, as the legislation of each and every state. But even so, things are not entirely rosy with Colorado. Although the digital driver's license in the iPhone will be recognized at the Transportation Security Administration station at the Denver airport, and may serve as proof of identity, age and address within the given state, it still cannot completely replace a physical license. This will continue to be required when meeting with law enforcement authorities. So the question arises. This novelty actually fulfills its essence. In the end, neither, because it does not fulfill its basic purpose, or rather it cannot completely replace a traditional physical driver's license.
We're excited to announce your Colorado ID is now on your iPhone and Apple Watch.
Now you can add your Colorado driver license or state ID to Apple Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch. You can present it easily at select @TSA checkpoints at @DENAirport. https://t.co/ldKbXIC9bY pic.twitter.com/9V8IhVPuML
— CO Dept. of Revenue (@CO_Revenue) November 9, 2022
Digitization in the Czech Republic
If the digitization process is so slow even in the United States of America, it brings the idea of how it will be with digitization in the Czech Republic. From the looks of it, we may be on a better path here. Specifically, at the end of October 2022, Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization Ivan Bartoš (Pirates) commented on this situation, according to which we will soon see an interesting change. Specifically, a special eDokladovka application is to come. This should be used for storing identity documents, or for keeping a citizen's and driver's license in digital form. In addition, the application itself could come as early as 2023.
iPhone 14 Plus
The eDokladovka application will apparently work very similarly to the well-known Tečka, which the Czechs used during the global pandemic of the Covid-19 disease for smart tracing of contacts with the infected. However, it is unclear for the time being if support will also come for the native Wallet. It is quite possible that, at least from the beginning, the mentioned application will be necessary.
