VSDI welcomes Lilly Schmidt as a new personal member

We are delighted to welcome Lilly Schmidt as a new personal member of our association. Lilly Schmidt is an expert in the practical implementation of trustworthy identity solutions and administrative digitisation. She led the accompanying research for the ‘Showcase Secure Digital Identities’ project, where she dealt with trustworthy infrastructures and use cases for electronic identities, among other things. Since January 2025, she has been a senior consultant at Nortal AG, bringing an international perspective from Estonia. She is also involved as a spokesperson in the ‘Digital Identities in Administration’ working group and as a board member of NEGZ, as well as a board member of the AK Application of Digital Trust Services at Bitkom.

We took the opportunity to ask Lilly Schmidt a few questions.

VSDI: What was your most important insight from the accompanying research that is still not being taken sufficiently into account in the current EUDI wallet debate?

Lilly Schmidt: One thing is clear: we underestimated the magnitude of the task of fundamentally redesigning new processes, logic and the handling of personal data. There is still a gap between legal obligations and actual usage, and we need to close this gap step by step.

VSDI: Where do you currently see the biggest challenges in administrative modernisation?

Lilly Schmidt: Where do I start... On the one hand, we continue to diligently pass laws and administrative regulations, while the administration at the local level cannot and will not comply with the existing regulations due to capacity constraints and a lack of understanding. We should seriously consider which regulations are still appropriate in today's world and which ones could perhaps be phased out. Two words: effective state modernisation.

VSDI: What motivates you personally to work with digital identities?

Lilly Schmidt: There are two strands that keep me in this field to this day. On the one hand, my motivation, which stems from my time in Estonia, that Germany is also worthy of experiencing an efficient and well-functioning state – and on the other hand, that I am growing more and more into this community, which is really very familiar, and that together we want to enable a secure and self-determined future for society.

VSDI: What are you most looking forward to in your collaboration with the association and its members?

Lilly Schmidt: Getting to know the wonderful members better and developing ideas together, of course! But I'm also very excited about formats such as the political evenings.

Welcome, dear Lilly! We look forward to working with you.