A lot has happened since our first update at the end of May. From conferences to meetings, and reactions to blog posts, we’ve been pleased with the responses to our ideas.
New presentations at Identiverse
George and I attended the Identiverse 2023 conference in Las Vegas, and I gave a couple of speeches, on the history and future of digital wallets, and the provocative idea of “Zero Trust”.
Initial reactions to the Data Verification Platform
We gave the Data Verification Platform Model (DVP) its first social outing at Identiverse, focusing on the scaling challenge: How will endpoints, often called “relying parties”, be able to accept verifiable credentials from holders and issuers they’ve never had anything to do with before?
We’ve also spoken with the Open Wallet Foundation, senior government analysts, lawyers, and civil society representatives — with lots more discussions to come.
We seem to be the first to be exploring the sorts of networks needed to make digital wallets legible and interoperable.
If you’re interested in being part of the discussion, the full DVP white paper is available on request. Just reply to this email. Or for a taste, download the Executive Summary (PDF).
New blog posts
We’ve been fleshing out aspects of the DVP concept in a few more blog posts, as well as exploring some ideas relating to artificial intelligence.
- The goal is identification, not an identity, or, The Grammar of Identification. Governments talk about creating a “digital identity” as if it’s a one-off task. But really what they’re creating is a process for “identification”, a process that’s repeated again and again, in many different contexts.
- Handout: The history and future of digital wallets, adapted from Steve’s presentation at Identiverse 2023 in June.
- What should a national digital ID look like?, a look at the challenges for the Australian government’s plan to have a national digital ID running within a year.
The immovable opacity of AI meets the irresistible force of privacy. Analytics and big-data processes have been brought to heel by privacy laws. Artificial intelligence may be next. I might have found a systemic breach of data protection principles in AI- generated faces.
“Making Data Better” podcast
The first three episodes of Making Data Better have been published. Listen at makingdatabetter.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
In the media
- I was quoted at length in the Australian Financial Review by government editor Tom Burton, who wrote: Government smart wallet won’t work without overhaul: digital expert.
Coming up
- George and I will be attending the FIDO Alliance’s Authenticate 2023 conference in Carlsbad, California, 16–18 October 2023.
- Governments across Australia have embarked on a major identity reform, releasing a National Strategy for Identity Resilience (PDF). We’re expecting to see new draft Digital Identity legislation before the end of the year. That process is now being driven by the Attorney-General’s Department.
Please help us spread the word
As we said last time, we believe passionately that our Data Verification Platform represents a real opportunity to create a global network business model to share verifiable data, solving many problems along the way.
Please forward this post to anyone you think might be interested and encourage them to subscribe to our email updates.
And if it’s something you do, please spread the word through your own social networks.
Thanks for your interest,
Stephen Wilson
Founder and Principal
Lockstep Consulting