Today is a great day. I love when new technology emerges to help us on our daily tasks, then massifies, and you can see people getting real value from it. Specially when governments are the ones to implement it in order to gain more service-efficiency. I got my brand new Citizen Card, and all the services deriving from it, and I'm going to describe what's this all about.

Today is a great day, indeed... My wallet saw five cards being reduced to one, and it thanked me for it :o)

From Identification and Health, to Social Security and Contributor cards... They were all merged into this new Portuguese Citizen Card that's being implemented by the Portuguese government. I cannot say the percentage of people that are effectively aware of this, but when I went with my friend Pedro to apply for it last week, I could tell that at least arund here they are.

So what does this brings besides relieving my wallet and give it a few more years to live? Well... Basically Digital Certification and services integration. You now get to have yout own digital signature and authentication when sending e-mails, signing contracts, accesing sensitive information on websites, etc. You can even change personal information sitting at home in your home computer instead of spending an entire morning on the Citizenship Services.

You can manage your certificates, personal codes, and other info in a Windows application (also available for Linux users) that works pretty well. Check it out: