Bhutan to strengthen self-sovereign ID implementation with 50-in-5 membership

Bhutan has joined the 50-in-5 campaign as the 39th member in a move that underlines its ambitions of boosting its privacy-preserving digital identity as well as other related digital public infrastructure (DPI).

The country is currently implementing its decentralized National Identity system (Bhutan NDI), and the campaign says the move will support the royal government’s “ongoing efforts to build trusted digital foundations.”

Bhutan’s self-sovereign digital identity (SSI) model is often cited as a reference, especially at a time when the push for trusted digital ID is getting stronger among nations building DPI. The ID program, which became the first to join the Global Acceptance Network, is designed to empower individuals with secure and user‑centric credentials that enable seamless access to services across government and business.

The Secretary of Bhutan’s GovTech Agency, Jigme Tenzing, commented that the country’s membership of the 50-in-5 “reflects our commitment to building a trusted, inclusive, and future-ready digital ecosystem that places people at the center of innovation.”

Tenzing added that the move fully ties with the government’s DPI vision which places a premium on building “secure digital foundations that empower citizens, strengthen service delivery, and unlock new opportunities for economic growth and digital inclusion.”

Bhutan is the sixth nation to join the campaign since April, after Algeria, Benin, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Colombia.

Its membership shows growing interest in peer-assisted DPI development, which is exactly the objective of the 50-in-5 initiative which was unveiled at the end of November 2023.

The move demonstrates how small countries like itself can leverage agility, innovation, and strategic partnerships to drive digital transformation, especially through privacy and inclusivity-focused infrastructure that can help balance citizen trust with technological progress.

50-in-5’s steady membership growth is a testament to the burning desire by nations around the world to leverage co-creation, peer learning and partnerships in building digital infrastructure that makes life easy for people by facilitating access to a wide range of services in government and the private sector.

Per the objective of the initiative, the idea is to help 50 nations of the Global South completely build and operationalize at least one component of DPI in a manner that is inclusive, secure and interoperable across borders and platforms.

Bhutan is also increasingly branching its digital ID system into sector-specific use cases, the recent being land ownership management.

Article Topics

50-in-5  |  Bhutan  |  Bhutan NDI  |  digital identity  |  digital public infrastructure  |  self-sovereign identity  |  UNDP