On January 15, 2009, in a hushed room at MIT's Media Lab-a place widely regarded as a crucible of innovative research-more than a dozen thought leaders gathered for a virtual workshop on the challenges of digital identity.
Over the course of four hours, experts at the Cambridge lab virtually convened with more than 25 other colleagues from across the U.S. to test a prospective platform for online civic engagement, discuss the rise of e-citizenry and address the potential of IT systems to lower national healthcare costs.
I3P researcher Bruce Bakis of the MITRE Corporation and Dazza Greenwood of the eCitizen Foundation and consultant to MITRE, moderated the workshop, calling on participants to lay the groundwork for building trust into online discourse and for creating identity standards predicated on privacy protection.
Although the conversation ranged from smart cars to open architectures, challenges posed by digital identity-especially those related to privacy-dominated the discussion. "If we fail to protect and preserve privacy in the digital realm, we will fail to have an open and transparent democracy appropriate to the 21st century," says Greenwood.
Yet ensuring privacy requires authentication systems that are trustworthy and efficient, no easy task in an Internet world where attribution can be nonexistent. One approach described at the workshop calls for the creation of a digital packet of information equivalent to a personal wallet with ID cards, including driver's license, health insurance card, employee badge, etc. With such a system, individuals would only have to disclose the credentials appropriate to a specific interaction and would have control over the timing and amount of information released.
In addition to serving as a catalyst for civic engagement, digital identity will play a key role in healthcare, allowing patients to have access to-and control over-their own information. With the Obama administration clearly interested in lowering healthcare costs, e-health is likely to emerge as a critical issue in the coming months.
"Our intent," adds Bakis, "is to provide the new administration with a prioritized list of issues, problems and questions related to digital identity." Bakis also hopes to produce a one-page white paper outlining standards and trust models for digital identity management.
Many challenges remain, including the development of technologies operable not only on a massive scale, such as needed by governments and large corporations, but also interoperable, that is, applicable to different digital architectures. "Clearly, digital identity is a key enabler of trustworthy e-government and e-health systems," says Bakis. "Thanks to research in this area, the door is now open to a more secure future."
