Our interconnected digital world has started to make a mockery of traditional forms of identification. Being asked to produce ‘two forms of ID; at least one from each of the two following lists’ already seems hopelessly anachronistic in a world of automated password-managers, RFID-driven payments systems, and bio-metric authenticators on our mobile phones. The idea of having a single digital identity (Digital ID) that can replace the need to hold a plethora of cards and documents, from your passport and driving license to your library card and even your CV, is not only one whose time has come, it is one that is all but presumed to exist already. Although it doesn’t quite yet. This ‘initial perspective’ is intended to provide a provocation for thinking and deeper discussion about the impending implementation, and future, of Digital Identity and its role and value in society. In addition, we are also undertaking a set of 5 expert workshops across 4 continents in Q4 2018 (London, Singapore, Sydney, San Francisco and Brussels). If you are interested in joining, we would welcome your feedback and contribution to help build a richer view. Do let us know.

1. The Future of Digital Identity
An Initial View for Global Debate and Challenge
15 October 2018

2. Robust Authentication Equals Trust
Strong authentication processes will be the key factor in determining overall
levels of trust in the reliability and security of a given Digital ID system.

3. Something Owned, Something Known, Something You
Authentication typically features something you own, you know and you are.
Innovating unique attributes leads to new ways of thinking about who we are.

4. Convenience Rules
Continuing consumer appetite for convenience drives development of Digital
ID, especially as many processes requiring formal ID feel so old-fashioned today.

5. Enhanced Cyber Security
Strong and secure systems of digital identification will play a significant
role in enhancing cyber security for individuals, organisations and states.

6. Expanding Digital Service Provision
With growing numbers of digital delivered services, Digital ID will enable
an expansion of access to different, and new kinds, of service providers.

7. Cost Reduction
Digital ID enables service providers to reduce their transaction costs and
accelerate the pace of innovation, both for them and for wider society.

8. Blueprint for Success
Global financial transactions and payments infrastructures will provide
us with the ‘blueprint’ for building a truly interoperable Digital ID system.

9. The Case for Digital Inclusion
Digital ID systems will go some way towards addressing access and
exclusion issues of the 1 billion+ people lacking legal identity documents.

10. Personalised, Controlled Exchanges
Digital ID gives people greater control over access to their personal data,
and encourages transparency of service-providers in onward use.

11. Implementation Matters
Poor implementations will lead to massive data breaches, damaging faith
in Digital ID service providers, or even the Digital ID concept as a whole.

12. Zero Knowledge Proofs
Future Digital Identities will include attributes that are harder to mimic or steal.
Authentication will occur without data exchange, limiting the data at risk.

13. Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers
Highly centralised Digital ID systems, provide potential for identity ‘keepers’
to hold vast amounts of user data across myriad different contexts.

14. Centralised or Distributed Digital Identity Systems?
Distributed implementation removes concerns of trust in single entities.
Centralised systems bring uptake and interoperability. Nation states decide.

15. Me, Myself and I
Digital ID users maintain deliberately separated identities and attribute stores.
Providers offer context-based, Digital-ID-as-a-service solutions.

16. Regulation on the Fly
Digital ID will land and expand very quickly.
Regulators will be faced with the task of ‘building the aeroplane whilst flying it’.

17. Digital Identity - The First Wave
Early adopters will include those who need to become familiar with Digital ID
in order to access basic (digitally adapting) government services.

18. Digital Identity Literacy
A wholesale move toward Digital ID will require it’s own programme of
education to teach people how to maintain and keep safe their Digital ID.

19. New Biometric Fingerprints
New identity markers, including our ‘routines’, prove useful in detecting fraud,
especially where AI sees changes in behavioural patterns.

20. The Big Fake
Fake Digital IDs, unlike fake passports, have the potential to be used in many
contexts at the same time, scaling up the consequences involved.

21. Re-evaluation of Cyber-risk
Breaches to digital ID systems have the potential to cause catastrophic damage.
Organisations will radically re-evaluate their investment to mitigate it.

22. Stateless Netizens
Digital ID for some (e.g. displaced peoples) becomes more important than
citizenship, leading to societal groups based on new, shared attributes.

23. Competing Interest Areas
A battle for ‘ownership’ of the identity space grows, highlighting ideologies:
e.g. social good, economic opportunity, privacy, national security, social order.

24. Assertion of My Digital Rights
A DI Bill of Rights is already demanded by many. How this is built, by who,
what it includes, and critically, how it is enforced, will be hotly contested.

25. Data-less business models
Innovations allow users to give access to data without sharing it.
New models centre on positive, privacy-preserving, consumer propositions.

26. Many Internets
Lacking a single global solution, the internet splits into different realms: e.g.
Open-Internet, Dark Internet and Internet Islands (local Digital ID systems).

27. Super-surveillance
Digital ID’s highly accurate and relatively clean surveillance data,
will lead to mass surveillance in some states and market economies.

28. Null-attributes
Identity attributes, currently understood as unique (e.g. fingerprint)
become unusable or ‘null’ as they are exposed in continued breaches.

29. New Digital ID markets
Digital ID has the potential to play a critical role in social and economic life.
A new range of economic opportunities and markets will emerge around it.

30. Future Agenda, 84 Brook Street, London W1K 5EH +44 203 0088 141
www.futureagenda.org | www.futureagenda.net | @futureagenda