Renewal by mobile phone is available via the Id.gov mobile application and is aimed, at this stage, at drivers aged up to 50.

The automated renewal of driving licences will be available from Monday (16 October 2023) via the Id.gov mobile application, and at this stage is aimed at drivers up to the age of 50, Secretary of State Mário Campolargo told Lusa.

The Automated Driving Licence Renewal service "is a pioneering solution, included in the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) and the Simplex programme, which is the result of a partnership between the AMA - Agency for Administrative Modernisation and the IMT - Institute for Mobility and Transport, with the aim of simplifying, automating and strengthening the proximity between citizens and public services with administrative modernisation," says the office of the Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Administrative Modernisation.

"Portuguese citizens already benefit from an information system that reminds them via SMS that they need to renew their Driving Licence, which used to mean that they could renew their licence via the IMT," recalled the government official.

"We´ve been doing this for some time, and more than 280,000 people have already renewed their driving licences through digital processes and the Internet. What we are inaugurating today is that from our digital wallet, where we have our digitised Driving Licence, we can also be prevented, have a notification that automatically allows us to renew the licence in a simpler way," explained Mário Campolargo.

The digital wallet is ID.gov, an application where any citizen can have their Citizen´s Card, Driving Licence, among other documents, both public and private. "It´s a repository where we have all the cards that are relevant to our lives digitally on our phone," summarised Mário Campolargo.

"The Driving Licence, being there, and knowing today through a notification on our mobile phone that we need to renew it, the system is super simple: we press that notification and the system will automatically take all the relevant data, fill in all the necessary information and generate a Driving Licence that will then digitally appear on our citizen´s card already digitised and then reach us at home by traditional means," he explained.

With this measure, the digital licence will now have "an interaction" with the citizen.

The ID.gov app and the Digital Mobile Key (CMD) "are two pillars" of the government´s relationship with the citizen and "should be adopted more and more", he emphasised, as the combination of these two allows the renewal of the card to be automated.

"The data that the Public Administration has on us allows us to self-fill in the forms needed for renewal and with a simple tap on that notification we can have our licence renewed," he pointed out.

Around 6,000 drivers covered in an initial phase
In its initial phase, this service will target around 6,000 drivers per month aged up to 50, without the need to present a medical certificate, with category B driving licences that are in the process of being revalidated.

By March, Mário Campolargo estimates that 13,000 drivers aged up to 50 with category B licences will have been notified of the Automated Driving Licence Renewal (RACC) and will have the ID.gov app and the CMD. Campolargo called for "more drivers to adopt this digital document wallet".

He said that the next step is to "continue" efforts to ensure that people over the age of 50 who need to renew their licence with a medical certificate have the latter requested in an automated way, continuing the commitment to digital at the service of the citizen.

In the case of citizens who don´t have the ID.gov application, last November the IMT developed a service to notify drivers of the need to revalidate their driving licence. To date, more than 280,000 drivers have been notified, 75 per cent of whom have already renewed their licence via IMT Online or at a branch.

Source: Idealista/News