IGF 2019 WS #178 Human-centric Digital Identities
Organizer 1: Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation
Speaker 1: Mitchell Baker, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: C V Madhukar, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 3: MANJU GEORGE, Intergovernmental Organization, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
- What policies and governance frameworks can help manage the ethical and legal challenges raised by identity verification technologies such as facial recognition and use of AI?
- How can we manage trade-offs in identity verification: between criminal justice goals of the state and personal freedoms or between a user's convenient digital access and their privacy and security rights?
- What rights and permissions should various stakeholders have around citizen or consumer data?
- How do we approach complex questions such as informed consent,guardianship for minors, privacy of children?
- How do we drive the consistent adoption of core principles that advance Good Digital Identity?
- How can we harmonise standards across industries and countries, facilitate seamless experiences for users in a global digital economy?
Relevance to Theme: As more businesses and governments go digital, identity and related personal data sits at the heart of their interactions with customers and citizens, as well as their service delivery and inclusion strategies. Policies and governance frameworks of states and businesses on how identity verification is done, and how and how much data is collected, shared, used and processed has implications for all stakeholders, including customers and citizens. While it enables institutions to offer personalised experiences and services to individuals, poorly designed digital identity systems can pose threats to personal freedoms such as privacy. Indiscriminate data collection and use, along with inadequate safeguards can also facilitate undesirable social outcomes such as exclusion, discrimination and human rights abuses. This is illustrated in growing calls across regions for increased privacy and data protection guidelines, for regulations on internet platforms, and governance of new identity verification technologies such as facial recognition. It is hence important that there is shared understanding across all actors in society on good identity principles, along with harmonized and equitable policies and practices on how data is governed. These principles and their harmonised adoption has to be driven at multiple levels including enterprise, industry, local, national, regional and global levels.
Digital Identity is key to enabling greater connectivity across individuals, institutions and geographies. It is key to priorities such as e-commerce and digital trade, globally integrated healthcare and financial inclusion models as well as mobility of people and goods across borders. Bringing clarity on rights and permissions for different stakeholders on data sharing is important to unlock the promise of identity across this and similar priorities.
Relevance to Internet Governance: Digital identity and related data governance is a core internet governance issue, as it determines who accesses the internet, how, and receives what services and opportunities. It determines how individuals and institutions are represented on the internet. It determines the level of trust between individuals and institutions on their interactions online. It requires the development and adoption of shared principles, guidance and regulations across governments, private sector and civil society.
Panel - Auditorium - 90 Min
Description: Session Description:
(40 mins) Moderator introduces the session and panellists, and facilitates some insight sharing on the following dimensions:
• High potential opportunities and use cases of digital identity, with real life examples
• Key risks, trade-offs that digital identity poses, alongside real life examples
• Existing sector and industry siloes, and the need for multi-stakeholder dialogue and cooperation to design for human-centricity
• Design considerations for policy makers and system designers
(25 mins) Moderator invites participants/audience in the room, and online, to make additional contributions on:
• Examples of good policies, regulatory frameworks and multi-stakeholder implementations
• Design considerations for policy makers and system designers
(25 mins) Moderator encourages panellists to build on audience inputs, and discuss:
• Promising and agile approaches to governance design on emerging digital identity technologies such as facial recognition and AI, and related identity data
• Roles for governments, businesses, civil society and innovators in advancing shared, global principles and governance frameworks
Through this session, we would like to strike a balance between amplifying key messages on multi-stakeholder cooperation through the panel and crowdsourcing promising ideas and examples from broader participants in the room and online. In addition to the initial list of speakers identified, we’d also like to explore additional policy voices that could offer compelling call to actions. We would also like to explore additional platforms and channels to facilitate representation of broader voices: e.g. a #GoodID twitter dialogue to source policy concerns and promising practices from across regions, potentially in collaboration with existing partners such as the Omidyar Network and the #GoodID website.
Through this participation at IGF, we would also like to draw on insights and collaborators from the Platform for Good Digital Identity. (At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2018 in Davos, a diverse group of public and private stakeholders committed to shared cooperation on advancing good, user-centric digital identities. Since then, 80+ stakeholders has joined this conversation: experts, policy-makers, business executives, practitioners, rights advocates, humanitarian organizations and civil society, helped set up the Platform for Good Digital Identity and defined 5 key elements that constitute user-centric digital identities). This session will build on platform activities in 2019 including events in London, San Francisco, Capetown, New York, Geneva, India preceding the IGF in Berlin. If approved, we would like to co-curate this session with inputs from the ever-expanding community of collaborators on the Platform.
We would also like to explore how the World Economic Forum’s public engagement channel – the Agenda Blog, with 6 million unique visitors a month – can further amplify the #GoodID message in the lead up to, and during the Internet Governance Forum.
Expected Outcomes: - Broaden understanding of the need for shared principles on digital identity and data across governments, business, civil society efforts
- Explore emerging trends and policy questions around new identity technologies, and use of citizen and customer data
- Learn of promising policy frameworks, technology design and practices from across regions, industries and communities
- Identify policy considerations that need priority, multi-stakeholder dialogue and action
- Identify new experts and collaborators to engage in activities of the Platform for Good Digital Identity, beyond IGF 2019
Derek O'Halloran, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Mitchell Baker, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Cristian Ioan Duda, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
- The session will balance inputs from the panel on multi-stakeholder cooperation and crowdsourcing promising ideas and examples from broader participants in the room and online.
- Crowdsourced inputs from over 80 public and private organisations who’ve participated in the activities of the Platform for Good Digital Identity
- We would like to explore the World Economic Forum’s public engagement platform – the Agenda Blog, with 6 million unique visitors a month – to further amplify the #GoodID message in the lead up to, and during the Internet Governance Forum
- Ability to encourage a large room discussion will be a key criteria in choosing the moderator
- We'd like to explore the use of the IGF online participation tool, as well as explore collaboration with partners such as the Omidyar Network and the #GoodID website for additional online interaction.
We are aware that IGF facilitates interactions online, although not having organised a session before, are unaware of the scope and functionalities of this tool. We would like to engage an audience beyond those in the room to crowd in good policy examples and practices, and would like to explore if IGF's tool can facilitate this. We would also like to explore complementary tools from the Forum, and from its existing collaborators on the Platform for Good Digital Identity.
Proposed Additional Tools: Additional platforms we'd like to explore are:
- the World Economic Forum's Agenda Blog with 6 Million unique visitors a month - to further amplify key messages in the lead up to and during the Internet Governance Forum
- platforms managed by collaborators such as the #GoodID website by the Omidyar Network and Caribou Digital.
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