Creating a value-driven Digital Identity Future

Abstract

We live in an increasingly complex world in which policy regulations and system development must balance technology, existing regulations and all the people participating in the system. Currently, digital identities facilitate multiple verification processes in multiple contexts. For example, to give the ability to prove their own identity to buy alcohol or verify within the work environment, for as a healthcare practitioner. Experts and the EU Commission see unmet needs and problems within the digital identity field, which led to the revision process of eIDAS 2.0 to include the missed objectives of the present regulation on electronic identification and trust services, creating the rules for electronic transactions in the internal market. For example, identity theft rises, privacy concerns towards big tech grow, and there is little to no interoperability between sectors and borders (European Commission, 2021).

This thesis explored the ongoing development process through a systemic approach and the lens of Value Sensitive Design (VSD) (Van Den Hoven et.al., 2015). A research-by-design approach uncovers the values and uniqueness of multiple stakeholders and provides new perspectives on the emergent system dynamics of digital identity. The EU Commission Vision on the EUDI Wallet was used as starting point to explore stakeholder values (Users¹, Relying Parties², Experts / Oversight Perspective³) and engage them in the future by still acting as the experts of their own experiences.
Value tensions and risks are mapped to showcase the future implications of wrongly managed decisions in the process from a system perspective. Based on the systemic approach, a vision for all coming verification processes is created as the development is just a starting process for what is coming next within the wallet development field.
The vision aims to help facilitate a way to include the values and mental models of different parties in the creation process of digital identity verification experiences.

“Creating respectful transaction mechanisms that include the values of all participants by integrating a trusted relationship in the layers behind the app”

The design provides a new value-finding method created in the interview process, and a structure for strategic dialogues (Talking Across The Divide, n.d.). The strategic dialogue set up with the name “Welcome to the Common Ground” can be seen as a transition design towards ‘Design for Behaviour Change’ (Irwin, 2018), as part of an intervention to solve wicket problems (Dorst, 2015). I saw that multiple stakeholders with opposing opinions have to come together to formulate goals towards future practices in which stakeholders’ values need to be balanced by having moral values as the foundation and creating an understanding of each other’s needs for different verification experiences. Therefore the final designs can empower INNOPAY to establish ethical technology design in consultancy practices.

Because: “If values can be imparted to technology and shape the space of actions of human beings, then we need to learn to incorporate and express shared values in the things we design and make.”
(Van Den Hoven et al., 2015).