Big things are happening in the digital identity space, here we outline just a few recent articles we think everyone should hear about.

By Tim Spring

City of Miami Providing Web3 Education
Miami recently hosted “Miami for Everyone,” a three-day event on Web3 hosted by Miami Dade College. Unstoppable Domains, an NFT domain provider, partnered with the city of Miami to put on the event, with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez commenting that the goal was to  “make Miami the ‘capital of capital’ with an economy that focuses on innovation, technology, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The event was focused on NFTs, with attendees being “taught how NFT domains can act as their digital identity, unlocking exciting opportunities across Web3,” said Sandy Carter, SVP and head of business development at Unstoppable Domains.

While many  similar events offer workshops for people of different skill levels, Miami for Everyone took it a step further by including all ages and providing Spanish language versions.

‘Economic identity’: are digital ID schemes a ‘road to Hell?’ asks human rights report
Biometric Update draws our attention to a new report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, which comes in the wake of ID4Africa and raises concerns about some of the current trends in digital identity. Notably, rather than recognizing individuals’ rights via legal ID, digital ID campaigns “focus on fueling digital transactions and transforming individuals into traceable data.” Delegates to the conference, held this year in Marrakech, said that digital ID providers often “ignore the ability of identification systems to recognize not only that an individual is unique, but that they have a legal status with associated rights.”

DCMS publishes digital identities and trust beta framework

UK Authority, a publication that covers public sector use of digital data and technology in the United Kingdom, looks at some recent updates to the 2021 digital identities and trust framework by the UK government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS).

As described by the report from the UK DCMS, “The trust framework aims to make it easier and more secure for people to use services that enable them to prove who they are or information about themselves. It is a set of rules for organizations to follow if they want to provide secure and trustworthy digital identity and/or attribute solutions.”

Feedback from over 250 organizations has lead to some key changes from the alpha version released in 2021, include the addition of sub-roles for the three broad type roles that providers could play – identity, attribute and orchestration services to address concerns by service providers that they did not fit in the original three categories, as well as including a requirement that biometric technologies be held to an industry standard.

The UK authority added that policy development lead official for the program, George Muskat, was interviewed at the Think Digital Identity for Government conference, commenting that there are four areas they are focusing on for further policy development, the user agreement, ensuring that certifiers meet key principles, assessing risk from non-certified providers, and fraud management.

The original report is detailed and thoughtful and can be found here