The purpose of storing IDL data on machine-readable media on the IDL is to:

— increase productivity (of data and IDL use),

— facilitate electronic data exchange, and

— assist in authenticity and integrity validation.

ISO/IEC 18013-2:2020 thus specifies the following:

— mandatory and optional machine-readable data;

— the logical data structure;

— encoding rules for the machine-readable technologies currently supported.

To prevent unauthorised access to the data contained on a contactless IC (e.g. by eavesdropping), the privacy of the licence holder is protected via basic access protection requiring a human-readable and/or machine-readable key/password on the IDL to access the data on the PIC (via protected-channel communication). The implementation details of this function are defined in ISO/IEC 18013-3.