Harvard introduces new resources and tools for digital identity

Harvard University has introduced a new set of research and tools aimed at exploring digital identity under a program titled ‘Digital Identity in Times of Crisis.’

The research was conducted by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society (BKC) in collaboration with Harvard’s design studio metaLAB, urban digital security research organization Edgelands Institute, and digital rights non-profit organization Access Now.

The project looked at digital identity through the lens of finance, digital threats, public policy, data and speculative fiction, producing work that explores how to adopt digital IDs responsibly. The research papers and tools were produced as part of BKC’s “research sprint,” a short-term program gathering experts and emerging scholars.

“The adoption of digital ID systems to mediate access to fundamental aspects of public and private life holds great promise as well as risks. Understanding and scrutinizing the impacts of specific policy and design choices, particularly on historically vulnerable or crisis-impacted communities, was a core objective of the Sprint,” BKC said in the introduction of the project published last week.

Among the research that was produced is a report on banking, titled ‘Lost in Digitalization: What Data Reveals and What it Hides – Stories of Digital Banking and Digital Identity From India,’ and a policy report, titled “Enhancing Inclusion in Digital Identity Policies and Systems: An Assessment Framework.”

Other works include a policy and industry primer, ‘Digital Identity and Discretion,’ and a collection of short fiction stories exploring digital identity called “Stories from (Un)Identified Worlds: A Speculative Anthology.”

The team also produced a data visualization study on social media profiling named ‘Reality vs. Social Media: An Exploration of Profiling’ and two online tools, including the Digital ID Threat Modeling tool and a Digital ID Risk Assessment tool intended for vulnerable populations.

Article Topics

Access Now  |  Berkman Klein Center  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  Harvard University  |  humanitarian