Collaborating with ID2020

The ID2020 Alliance is a global partnership maximising the potential of digital ID to improve lives.

Identity is vital for political, economic and social opportunity. But systems of identification are archaic, insecure, lack adequate privacy protection, and for over a billion people, inaccessible. ID2020 enables multi-stakeholder collaboration on digital identity to solve these problems.

It is clear that Solid has great potential to support the aims of the ID2020 Alliance and it would interesting to discuss collaboration with or joining of the Alliance.

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This is a very interesting topic. Some questions:

The wikipedia page on id2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID2020 , has multiple issues

Is the U.N. considering other digital ID proposals?

Is the W3c considering digital ID proposals?

What if any digital ID proposals have national governments adopted or are considering? There must be many.

Thanks

The wikipedia page is wildly out of date. I will get someone to fix it.

The UN has opened the challenge for fulfilling the lack of legal identity to organisations capable of providing solutions that reflect the Sustainable Development Goals and protect the rights of individuals. We are already collaborating with UN orgs and other NGOs to solve these problems.

As well as addressing SDG 16:9, ID2020 is aiming to define the requirements for digital identity applicable to all in a global context.

The W3C is providing some of the basic building blocks of potential identity systems (e.g. Verifiable Claims) but is not aiming to define a single identity solution. There will certainly be other proposals for additional relevant working groups under W3C and our partners will certainly be involved but we see this as a complimentary function.

National governments tend to focus on national registers of identity and foundational identity systems such as birth registration, voter registration, and national identity registers. These foundational identity systems are only part of the equation and do not address the actual needs of many individuals. What we are proposing is a decentralised approach to identity that focuses on the needs of individuals and may draw upon trust from foundational sources as needed but with the privacy of the individual as a guiding requirement.

What makes the ID2020 Alliance interesting is that we are attempting to set a high bar for any identity system attempting to solve the privacy protecting decentralised identity problem. This is the goal of our technical requirements and certification mark.

We view Solid as means of solving some of these global identity problems and would therefore welcome collaboration between the Alliance and the Solid Community. We would welcome suggestions from the community as to how this would be best achieved.

Thanks,

Adam

If you are interested in this conversation, perhaps you would be interested in joining the External Interop and Outreach Panel.