Jordan’s digital public infrastructure requires more security, trust, people-centricity

Despite the panoply of efforts deployed by Jordan in the last few years to implement a digital public infrastructure (DPI) ecosystem, access to digital services in the country remains very low.

A report published last week, which takes a detailed look at the country’s DPI journey, suggests that for things to improve, measures must be taken across several domains to make the system more secure, trustworthy, interoperable and people-focused.

Jordan has been implementing its DPI in line with the country’s 2021-2025 National Digital Transformation Strategy and Implementation Plan.

Authored by Christopher Tullis, a senior digital development specialist at the World Bank, in collaboration with Jordan’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, the report makes a thorough diagnosis of the country’s DPI ecosystem, the various components that enable it, and how they are used.

Some of the aspects studied include digital identity, electronic signatures, public key infrastructure, data centers and data protection frameworks, just to mention these few.

As an example, it is mentioned in the report that just about 1.4 million Jordanians are signed up to the Sanad, an integrated digital ID and government platform that integrates IrisGuard’s biometrics for secure access to public services.

The report identifies several challenges standing in the way of accelerated adoption of DPI-enabled services in the country, and underlines the necessity for a trusted, people-centric DPI ecosystem that ensures that all residents, including non-Jordanians and refugees, can fully benefit from digital public services with ease.

Proposing a way forward, the report recommends that one of the first things to do is for the country to expand its legal identity structure to enable onboarding for non-Jordanians and to integrate the national ID system with the UNHCR’s own system to facilitate ID issuance to refugees.

With regard to digital ID and trust services, the report mentions the need for wide consultations so as to identify and address the factors that slow down adoption of the Sanad digital ID, including single sign-on (SSO) features, and to speed up efforts already being made to expand the digital ID for foreign residents and refugees. It also calls on authorities to continuously educate the people about the far-reaching benefits that come with using the Sanad.

Efforts must also be made to understand the factors preventing greater use of electronic signatures, increase the number of accredited certificate authorities wishing to issue digitally verifiable documents and credentials, the report proposes.

With regard to personal data, the report suggests a future revision of the Personal Data Protection Law to incorporate good practices on data minimization and privacy impact assessments, consultations in order to remove barriers to cloud adoption, introduction of a more proactive consent management mechanism to enhance people’s control over their personal data, improving  direct data sharing and decentralized data sharing systems, and improving overall data protection safeguards through the adoption of privacy-enhancing techniques like data anonymization and tokenization.

With the implementation of these proposed measures, the author believes Jordan could see a turn-around in the adoption and use of DPI-enabled services in the country, thus propelling its digital transformation plan.

Jordan’s DPI project is reported to have support from the World Bank.

Article Topics

data protection  |  digital government  |  digital identity  |  digital public infrastructure  |  government services  |  Jordan  |  legal identity  |  national ID  |  Sanad  |  UNHCR