Digital and trust infrastructure investments unlock value of identity

As the role of digital identity in society evolves and biometrics increasingly form the foundation of trust in remote interactions, a whole new category of “infrastructure” is emerging. But what counts in this category as “infrastructure?” The answer has important implications for all investors, enterprises, governments and people who use it.

New technologies, abstract concepts and aspirations sometimes come together to form a dense barrier to clear language, which in turn makes it harder to be clear about real-world plans.

NIST refers to “the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise” as a common definition for infrastructure. This week’s headlines on Biometric Update are filled with attempts to build identity infrastructure, physical and organizational, to enable a wide range of digital operations.

But identity is not a structure, in this sense; it is something closer to a characteristic, or rather a type of thing with a certain characteristic.

In a business or economic sense, identity is a “resource.” Oil generates energy. Trusted identity generates trust.

The language of resource extraction and utilization is mature, and fully integrated with our existing terminology for infrastructure, both physical and institutional. Energy travels in pipelines, tankers, batteries or wires. Digital identity travels through networks, from LANs to the internet.

Trust infrastructure

Organizational infrastructure was a major theme at the Global Digital Collaboration Conference in Geneva this week, The Times of Israel reports. The infrastructure around digital identity wallets is advancing, the report notes, in a way that could support trust even between parties governed by jurisdictions that don’t trust each other.

A collaboration between ISO, IEC, DIN and the OpenWallet Foundation announced at GDCC is making international standards for mobile driver’s licenses and digital ID wallets available for free. Sponsors including FaceTec, Fime, iDAKTO, Idemia and Scytales want to help encourage adoption of ISO/IEC 18013 that defines mDLs and 23220 that extends the mdoc format to other credentials.

MOSIP is spinning out its open-source digital wallet Inji as an independent initiative, in part to provide credential issuance, storage and verification infrastructure to support a broader range of identity interactions, such as those by businesses. MOSIP CTO Ramesh Narayanan takes the CEO role.

G+D is integrating a prototype PQC technology into its Java Card OS for ID cards as part of an EU research project. As they become a requisite security measure for identity to generate trust, post-quantum protections could also be considered identity infrastructure.

National digital identity infrastructure

Login.gov will provide the SSO structure for all public services from the U.S. federal government as of the beginning of September, 2028. The White House plan sets out a timeline for the transition, and leaves space for private sector biometrics providers like ID.me and Clear.

Australia is closing in on nationwide mDL availability with a launch planned in the Northern Territory by the end of the year. The country has also advanced a privacy framework for digital ID – part of the legal infrastructure necessary to protect digital identity as an increasingly portable resource.

The market structure the UK is setting up for digital ID may not actually be legal, if DVS providers are not allowed to have digital credentials as valuable as the government-funded GOV.UK Wallet.

Schools are infrastructure that can be used to get identity working too. Cameroon hopes a birth certificate issuance campaign through schools will help close its foundational identity gaps.

Infrastructure investment and exports

Countries that can help others with identity infrastructure, from trust frameworks to domestic network capacity, gain soft power in the same way as those that can help with other kinds of infrastructure.

Cuba is getting help from China and the UNDP for its digital government platform, Soberanía, in contrast with CARICOM drawing digital infrastructure inspiration from Estonia’s open architecture. India is backing Sri Lanka’s ambitious digital infrastructure upgrade, including its planned national digital ID. AFC and Saudi Arabia are investing $300 million in WIOCC Group to expand digital connectivity in Africa and Cybastion has committed $75 million to fund the construction of digital infrastructure in Cameroon.

One of the prizes, if the investments are effective, is dramatic economic growth.

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Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital identity  |  identity infrastructure  |  trust infrastructure  |  week in review