Willingness grows for digital ID, sharing personal data — with conditions

Customer identity solutions provider Okta has published a report on attitudes towards digital services and digital identity in Europe. Results vary across the nine countries canvassed, but the general trend is that individuals are showing greater understanding of digital issues and demand better experiences, security and, when it comes to giving up personal data, value. Okta believes digital identity and how it is implemented is central to delivering the trust needed for broader digital development.

The ‘Identity: the Digital Trust Accelerator’ whitepaper (available to download in full in return for your own personal data) surveyed 12,010 people from the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Italy and Switzerland in October 2021. Highlights are also available separately.

The whitepaper finds that people are turning to digital services because they now deliver good user experiences beyond sampling being time and cost-effective. “If people are to reap the full benefit of these increasingly available digital services, they’ll need to share more of their digital identity and personal data. This demands trust,” states the summary.

Governments will have to cultivate trust if they want to roll out digital initiatives such as digital identity verification and public health tools like COVID health passes. “While the advent of such solutions has sparked public debate, a majority of respondents to our survey (55 percent) supported the idea of government-led vaccine passport initiatives, and 63 percent said they’d be willing to have some personal details incorporated into a digital ID,” states the report. Only 9 percent would feel comfortable with the inclusion of financial details.

Respondents who are willing to accept digital IDs feel that way primarily due to ease of use (55 percent) and convenience. Thirty-nine percent of respondents would like the fact all their information is in one place, and 35 percent believe that physical IDs are easier to lose or misplace than digital IDs.

Trust in government services differs not just by country, but age. Generally, younger people are less trusting: “this is particularly true in the UK, France and Germany, with 42 percent of 18-to 29-year-olds in the UK expressing distrust in the digital services provided by their government, as opposed to 26 percent of 60- to 75-year-olds.”

A third of those lacking trust in government digital services said this distrust might even lead them to consider changing who they vote for. Rates are higher among younger voters.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  consumer adoption  |  data protection  |  data sharing  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  Europe  |  government services  |  identity verification  |  Okta  |  privacy