A Trustworthy Cross-Border Interoperable Identity System for Developing Countries: The Beginning

Table of Links

Abstract & Introduction

Background

Review of Literature

Methodology

Discussion of Findings

Conclusion and Future Work & References

Abstract

Foundational identity systems (FIDS) have been used to optimise service delivery and inclusive economic growth in developing countries. As developing nations increasingly seek to use FIDS for the identification and authentication of identity (ID) holders, trustworthy interoperability will help to develop a cross-border dimension of e-Government. Despite this potential, there has not been any significant research on the interoperability of FIDS in the African identity ecosystem.

There are several challenges to this; on one hand, complex internal political dynamics have resulted in weak institutions, implying that FIDS could be exploited for political gains. On the other hand, the trust in the government by the citizens or identity holders is habitually low, in which case, data security and privacy protection concerns become paramount. In the same sense, some FIDS are technology-locked, thus interoperability is primarily ambiguous.

There are also issues of cross-system compatibility, legislation, vendor-locked system design principles and unclear regulatory provisions for data sharing. Fundamentally, interoperability is an essential prerequisite for e-Government services and underpins optimal service delivery in education, social security, and financial services including gender and equality as already demonstrated by the European Union.

Furthermore, cohesive data exchange through an interoperable identity system will create an ecosystem of efficient data governance and the integration of cross-border FIDS. Consequently, this research will seek to identify the challenges, opportunities, and requirements for cross-border interoperability in an African context. Our findings show that interoperability in the African identity ecosystem is vital to strengthen the seamless authentication and verification of identity holders for inclusive economic growth and widen the dimensions of e-Government across the continent.

Keywords: cross-border interoperability, digital identity, trustworthiness, e-Government

1. Introduction

One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations is to provide legal identity for all citizens, which also includes birth registration by 2030 (World Bank Group, 2018). Primarily, identification allows individuals to exercise their rights to be identified and legally recognised while the government and private sector depend on it for effective service delivery.

In this sense, a national identity system is crucial to the identification and authentication of natural or legal persons and provides a means for citizens to access critical services including participation in formal political, social, and economic life (Gelb and Metz, 2018).

Achieving sustainable development is a key consideration of most national governments and forms the basis for inclusive and responsible identification schemes at the foundational level.

Fundamentally, national identification schemes are the pivot for social security, immigration, financial and economic inclusion, healthcare, voting, gender equality, transportation, and education (Colbern and Ramakrishnan, 2018). Consequently, identity management plays a key role in promoting e-government by bringing services closer to the people.

Modern identification systems are robust tools for the delivery of transparent administration, reduction in fraud and leakages for social benefits, providing adequate security for the citizens, extracting accurate biographic data for effective economic planning, and responding to natural disasters (Atick, 2016). These seeming benefits are yet to solve the identification crisis in most developing nations as about 850 million people across the globe are yet to have access to a valid identity credential, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (The World Bank, 2023a).

According to the World Bank Identification for Development (ID4D) dataset (The World Bank, 2023a), most people without official identification are residents of low-income countries. These sets of persons also include marginalised and vulnerable groups consisting of children, whose births were not documented in the civil registry of the affected country, women in rural areas with no access to digital services, and adults below the age of 25 years.

Particularly, digital identification systems can improve how the public and commercial sectors provide services and lay the groundwork for new markets, services, and systems, such as egovernment, cashless transactions, and the digital economy.

Identification systems must, however, have high levels of coverage and inclusion within the population, be resilient to fraud and error, operate within a governance framework that protects personal data, fosters trust and accountability, and facilitates end-user control to fulfil their potential for facilitating sustainable development and increasing public sector efficiency (African Union, 2020; Bandura and Ramanujam, 2021).

There is a growing demand for digital identity to be mutually recognised and portable between countries in the modern digital age through an interoperability framework and in the context of regional and global integration and migration, which can be facilitated through trust and standards.

Interoperability, in this context, refers to the ability of disparate foundational identity systems to exchange data through seamless communication of identification and authentication information. These exchanges must be trustworthy or inherently secure, available, and reliable.

Although there are complex internal political dynamics in most developing countries that result in weak institutions, and the lack of trust in government by the citizens including the notion of security and privacy protection concerns, legislation, cross-system compatibility, vendor-locked system design principles and unclear regulatory provisions for data sharing, our findings show that interoperability is vital to widen the dimensions of e-Government.

In this paper, the challenges, opportunities, and requirements for trustworthy cross-border interoperability are discussed. The rest of the paper is organised as follows; in Section 2, the background to the study is given while in Section 3, a review of literature is discussed. Section 4 presents the methodology of the research. In Section 5, the discussion of findings is presented, and the conclusion and future work is given in Section 6.