Digital IDs – so valuable, so hard to accomplish: global finance summit

Government finance officials from around the world met this summer and, prominent among the many messages to them was: It’s overtime to get digital IDs in everyone’s hands.

Ahmed Reda Chami, president of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Morocco, made the point at the Global Government Finance Summit.

Chami said better data will help governments get a more detailed view into “population dynamics, economic trends (and) stakeholders’ voices,” according to reporting by trade publication Global Government Forum.

To get a feeling for how far they have to, Kevin Cunnington, once head of the UK’s government digital service, felt it important to point out that standards are needed so that data can move freely between departments.

Cunnington said that while governments by their nature have large amounts of data, including digital records, most of it is out of date. Both are issues larger businesses in the West, at least, have dealt with.

That said, the United Kingdom, U.S., Japan and Canada do not have digital IDs and have as much to learn as most other nations. Cunnington admitted how humbling the UK’s failed attempts to get a digital ID out the door have been.

Speakers suggested that digital IDs are part of an exponential increase in the volume of data available. Connecting the IDs to commercial databases through a secure data architecture will allow its use across government departments, and also open new private sector revenue.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  data sharing  |  digital economy  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  standards