In this paper we descrihe the overall process of deployment of the Italian Electronic Identity Card: the way it is issued, services it i s used for. organizations involved in the process, and the Information Technology 0 infrastructure enabling the effective management of the whole process while ensuring the mandatory sccurity functions. Organizational complexity lies in the distribution of responsibilities for the management of Personal Data Registries (on which identity of people is based) which is an institutional duty of the more than 8000 Italian municipalities, and the need of keeping a centralized control on all processes dealing with identity of people as prescribed by laws and for national security and police purposes. Technical complexity stems from the need of eG ficiently supporting this distribution of responsibilities while ensuring, at the same lime. interoperability of IT-based systems independent of technical choices of the organizations involved. and fullilment of privacy constraints. The IT architecture defined for this purpose features a clear separation hetween security services, provided at an infrastructure level, and application services, exposed on the Internet as Weh Services. This approach has allowed to easily design and implement secure interoperability. since -notwithstanding the huge variety of I T solutions deployed all over the Italian Municipalities to manage Personal Data Registries -existing application scrvices have not required major changes to bc able to interoperate.