Did you ever think how is it to live without identity? One in six people worldwide lacks this fundamental human right. Things we take for granted such as healthcare, voting, education are highly dependent on official and legal documentation about who you are. ID2020 is a public-private partnership founded by Microsoft, Accenture, Gavi and The Rockefeller Foundation; this alliance aims to develop “an open source, self-sovereign, blockchain-based identity system that allows people, products, apps and services to interoperate across blockchains, cloud providers and organisations.”
How?
The idea of decentralise identification (independent from any centralised registry, identity provider, certificate authority) and self-sovereign identification (concept that people and businesses can store their own identity data on their own devices without relying on a central repository of identity data) are not new; but ID2020’s mission is to take these concepts to several underdeveloped countries where roughly 1.1 billion people are still waiting for an official identity. Turns out that for such a solution to be universally accepted and recognised, safety and privacy have to be among the main priorities. For this reason blockchain plays a major role in the game; it enables any people to simply create a public/private key pair which is used for “authentication – where the public key verifies that a holder of the paired private key sent the message, and encryption, where only the paired private key holder can decrypt the message encrypted with the public key.” However, “the authenticity and veracity of any information will still be on the part of the individuals who input their personal data on the blockchain and the organizations that have the ability and authority to vet and assert the authenticity of the data that’s stored on the blockchain.”
Why?
As previously referred, the absence of a personal identification can carry several constraints to basic human rights. In contrast, having a strong and reliable ID network working in these countries will lead to an improved demographics control and a better account of their expenditures; sovereign nations will save millions just by better targeting their funds, facilitating the delivery of emergency relief and by deleting thousands of “ghost” beneficiaries. At the same time, an operating ID system running properly enables people to move easily across borders.
Lastly, other than ID2020’s usage of decentralised ID, this same concept has been said to be the next (r)evolutionarily digital construct. In a world where global connectivity doesn’t seem to be slowing down and where consumers are demanding for a more seamless digital experience, we may well ask ourselves if a universal, borderless, digital identity is right around the corner for all of us.
