Context

Red GEALC drives the modernization and interoperability of digital governments across Latin America and the Caribbean. As regional mobility grows and public services become increasingly digital, the need emerged to enable cross-border digital identification — allowing citizens to authenticate with public services in another country using their home country’s digital identity.

The project was launched through a regional call led by Red GEALC, with technical and security requirements informed by the experiences of regional reference countries such as Uruguay and Brazil, and with an explicit focus on interoperability by design. It operates within the IdLAC framework (Digital Identity for Latin America and the Caribbean), with support from multilateral organizations including the IDB and the World Bank.

From the outset, Pyxis approached the project by first understanding its institutional, political, and human context — recognizing that technology had to adapt to each country’s realities and to the people responsible for implementing and operating it.

In July 2025, Pyxis was selected as the technology partner to design and develop the Regional Digital Identity Broker, a critical component in advancing toward a replicable and sustainable regional model.

Challenges and Requirements

The project presented technical, institutional, and operational challenges inherent to a high-complexity regional initiative. Key requirements included meeting rigorous security and trust standards, ensuring that credentials always remained under the control of national identity providers, and guaranteeing traceability and auditability of identification processes.

These were compounded by tight deadlines, the participation of multiple countries at different levels of digital maturity, and the need to build a reusable, scalable solution capable of onboarding new countries and use cases over time. The approach had to avoid technology lock-in, align with international standards, and be viable from both a technical and an institutional standpoint.

At the technical level, the core challenge was designing an architecture capable of orchestrating heterogeneous identity flows — respecting different registration schemes, identification methods, and trust levels — without requiring changes to existing national systems.

The Solution

Pyxis designed and developed the Regional Model ID Broker: a platform that acts as a central intermediary between national identity providers (IdPs) and public service providers — both local and from other countries in the region — that require user identification.

The broker functions as an orchestration and trust layer, decoupling service providers from the complexity of each national identity system. This layer maps authentication levels, manages identity attributes in a controlled manner, and standardizes identification flows while preserving the autonomy of participating countries.

The solution enables cross-border interoperability, allowing a citizen to authenticate with a digital service in another country using their home country’s digital identity — without duplicating records or exposing credentials outside national systems. It is built on open standards (OpenID Connect), ensuring compatibility, long-term sustainability, and freedom from technology dependencies.

Cybersecurity was a transversal pillar from the design phase, incorporating security-by-default practices such as sensitive data encryption, segregation of duties, access control, and event auditing — all aligned with OWASP best practices. In all cases, credentials remain under the control of national identity providers.

Development followed an agile, MVP-oriented methodology, prioritizing critical features and early validation with participating countries. The project was carried out by a multidisciplinary team of more than 15 Pyxis professionals — spanning architecture, development, cybersecurity, user experience, QA, and project management — working in close collaboration with regional counterparts and fostering a genuine collaborative dynamic.

During Phase 1, the team successfully integrated five countries into a functional demo environment in record time, validating both the technical feasibility and the governance model.

Results

Phase 1 concluded with a successful regional demonstration in October 2025, presented before representatives from Red GEALC, regional governments, and multilateral organizations. Within a very tight timeframe, the team evolved an integration initially designed for a single country into a fully interoperable regional scenario — confirming the architecture’s robustness and its ability to adapt across different institutional contexts.

This milestone validated the cross-border digital identity model and generated significant regional interest. The work was publicly recognized and laid the groundwork for progressive adoption by new countries, with a technology foundation ready to move toward production environments in 2026. The process also built trust across teams — establishing not only a technical foundation, but a human one for future regional cooperation.

«Coordinating so many stakeholders under tight deadlines was a major challenge — but it was also what allowed us to turn a regional demo into a solid, reusable solution ready to scale,» says Mariana Silvera, Project Manager at Pyxis.

«Working with Red GEALC required a lot of listening and fast adaptation, putting our technical expertise at the service of a shared regional vision still taking shape,» adds Martín Nari, Pyxis commercial lead on the project.

Currently, Red GEALC and Pyxis are advancing Phase 2 of the project, focused on final adjustments for production environments, deployment of the broker in the first countries across the region, and technical support for new governments interested in adopting the model.

This project marks a milestone for Pyxis as a technology partner in high-impact regional initiatives — combining modern architecture, security, interoperability, and execution capability in complex institutional contexts.