How can we make Digital Identity a Sticky topic?

How Can We Make Digital Identity A Sticky Topic?

Tuesday 8A

Convener: Marta Geater Piekarska

Notes-taker(s): Neil, Jeffrey, Sankarshan

Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Marta - director for ecosystems for hyperledger; how can DLTs improve non-traditional use cases? Supply chain and social impact are of interest. Why aren’t there more people interested in SSI? The tech world loves it. Everywhere else??

Is SSI ready to offer a solution? Is the technology ready? Is it ready to be delivered on a global scale? The technology works and is continually improving. It is an iterative, constantly developing process. The problem is that the governments and civil society are not yet ready.

Sovrin ZKP - JSON-LD dichotomy may have been bridged yesterday at IIW. US govt has been working on supporting actually interoperable standards for years. But the dichotomy chills adoption - since lack of interoperability is still on the horizon when a dichotomy is not solved.

Identity is not the problem. It is the data behind the identity and flows of data between parties creating and relying upon the data that are where the adoption must take place.

Mentioned the TRUU story - how does a pandemic create the opportunity to circumvent the regulatory structures for approving a medical professional’s CV vs immediate health care need to drop proofs of medical CV. ((Truu is built on Evernym and their stack doesn’t interoperate with anyone...cause they built ahead of the market))

Austria - overall situation is like everywhere - govt has heard about SSI, pandemic drives contact/tracking/privacy set of questions; using hackathons to come up with possible solutions and to raise awareness of society of SSI solutions; nothing that is real or anywhere near ready to scale

Sri Lanka - Govt interests in SSI seem to be limited.

Europe - EU cross- border ID would be ideal use case for interoperable ID (SSI), but so far that is not happening; the issue may be that there is no trust in how the data would be handled if it to be combined as individuals cross borders.

Known traveler digital ID - project implemented by Accenture and MSFT - govts of Canada / netherlands - hyperledger INDY - create digital ID which tracks your digital footprint from the moment you start searching for your flight to the very end of your journey. Could eliminate the need to travel with a passport? Instead of submitting the credentials in the paper form is substituted with electronic/digital so there is no loss in privacy

Identity and SSI is not about having control over your passport. With SSI there is no need to aggregate the data - the cryptographical proof is sufficient. Airlines could use the DIDs to take specific actions.

The world we have now - requires real information. The need to convince conservative institutions about these new technologies which meet the current regulatory requirements is the hurdle that is required to be crossed.

A number of organizations are reluctant to hold or aggregate the data. Organizations which are trying to move away from that responsibility may be interested in SSI. Any audit of necessary information to the regulatory body can be done easily with the data flows. SSI enables not having data but access to the data.

What about businesses/individuals adopting SSI for use cases which are helpful for them? The entry point through the government is the easiest way to expedite mass adoption.

[from chat log]

Who/what institution have the power to drive adoption and what are their needs/pain points - does SSI solve them? This is a hard challenge - it literally is a 3 sided maret that all needs new adoption

[from chat log]

DIDs with limited lifetime advertising a limited subset of information might be a way to handle the use case of travel. Special one-off use cases can be served through this method. Even contact tracing (cf. work undertaken by Google and Apple)

Skills is one use case where the adoption of identity/SSI could have a scope. There is a smaller need for a large ecosystem to be created for it to take off. People should be able to issue skills credentials without accreditation and find them acceptable.

Ottawa - on boarding volunteers requires manual intervention that might be helped with verifying the credentials in a digital manner.

[Killer Use Case Discussions]

Use cases which address the topic of revenue or of reducing costs might be more important towards improving quick adoption of SSI. Probably bottom-line impact is the most obvious impact (operational efficiency). When discussing with prospects - do not discount the complete economic disaster that is from COVID-19 etc. Organizations would want to look at their costs to plan and outlast the shutdown. Potential significant cost savings → new opportunities might be the driving change

How can you get value without vendor onboarding or KYC - SSI can be used to create the credentials which can be shared/exchanged. This unlocks the value and potential in the adoption of SSI. Governance framework. Who is going to take the first step (first mover?) How can this be used in a low tech solution (usage pattern of smartphones across Africa).

Virtual resume (a couple of demos have happened) - “are you who you say having the qualifications”.

Maybe the big problem is that we are trying to tackle human identity - taking a complicated problem and applying a new technology. Is it possible that digital identity for pets/animals could be the first step to adoption? Doing iterations to test and then move to human identity.

Can one of the companies at IIW do DID/VC based login? BC Gov did that a year ago.

Digital Life Hub for everybody on the planet (secure storage, management, contacts, calendars, wallets, skills, personal credentials etc)

Digital wallet containing digital immunity to help improve the travel industry operations

Highlights from the Zoom Chat thread:

I think the question is - WHO (what institutions) have the power to drive adoption an what are their needs / pain points - does SSI solve them.
This is a hard challenge it is literally a three sided market that all needs new adoption.

"onboarding" and "smoothness" can be faster and easier implemented using centralized solutions. You can see that through different ditial identities created by govs
intreste of people in identity management not but privacy yes and the anwarnace is increasing connect facebook deos nice job with onboarding :)

another note - think we are very focussed on building with cutting edge technology but applying old world mentalities. think we should maybe look at alternatives and completely new approaches ;)