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Salon: Drivers of the Digital Transition: data, identity and cybersecurity

The participants,  after giving a quick overview of their current work (see below) were asked what was it they were missing most in order to push their vision and projects forward fast. Daniël Du Seuil says we need a big showcase. If you have that sparkle the rest will follow. The ideas and concepts are there, but we need a stellar use case. Petros Kavassalis agrees that use cases are very important, and we also need more networks of action. We need to build interdisciplinary structures to co-create projects that foreground consensus that the issue is actually a social issue –  more than a technological – one. We also need more involvement from the private sector to participate. In these networks and of course, the concerns of citizens should be safeguarded. According to Thibault Verbiest what they as a Foundation are lacking most is a proof of concept moving from the white paper and that entails a blockchain protocol that does not exist today. He has a three-year roadmap that outlines a vision that seems to be aligned with the recent initiatives in Europe towards Digital Sovereignty. Anubha Sinha lacks robust evidence of actual user experience of digital identity systems,  especially to investigate the potential level of function creep, the amount to which the goals were not appropriate and according to what was stated to the user. This will help them in building models that can assist both governments and citizens in making informed choices. Irene Hernandez who has recently started ESSIF-Lab – Verifier Universal Interface –  interop WG anticipating interoperability issues on this important component, feels most needed is a regulatory sandbox – a safe regulatory environment. In explaining their solutions their potential customers are asking: Is it legal?n Is there a regulatory framework? How does this match with other regulation? She thinks that until this uncertainty is solved this could hamper innovation in Europe. Daniel agrees fully and states that within the EBSI infrastructure there will be an EBSI sandbox and active support in bringing the current suboptimal situation to optimal in a stable vision, a real moonshot.

Identity in the broadest sense of the word is being foregrounded on all levels; technically, culturally and in policymaking. This marks the shift in paradigms caused by the growing hybridity (mixing and merging the analogue real, the digital capabilities of AI, machine learning, foresight and the new virtual possibilities to new ways of visualization) that is accelerated by COVID19. An interesting and politically important mix of data, identity, (cyber)security needs to be addressed from a just far enough foreseeable future in order to be relevant to concrete issues on the ground and to an emerging future that can be grasped but not fully outlined yet. It is clear that there is no point in solving yesterdays problems, and in order to create a coherent and widely shared vision of tomorrow, we are running another series of seminars/webinars.

By assembling the building blocks we want to achieve the ‘overtone’ which is creating an NGI attitude, a way of looking at the digital transition in Europe that coherently makes the key topics – Trustworthy Information Flows, Decentralized Power on the Internet, Personal Data Control, An Inclusive Internet, Competitive European Ecosystems and Ethical Internet Technology, Safer Online Environments and Sustainable and Climate-friendly Internet –  actionable for local (city), regional, national and EU policy makers, guiding for technology enablers and ‘comforting’ to a larger audience, meaning we explain the fast developments in such a way as they remain close to everyday life, especially given the economic situation in many countries due to lockdowns and the role of technology in trends in work and employment.

Watch it here:

https://app.livestorm.co/made-group/disposable-identities-and-digital-twins-by-ngi

Speakers:

Participants feedback is in the chat.
Moderators: Rob van Kranenburg (NGI Forward) and Mantalena Kaili (Elontech)

Links
  • EBSI
    EBSI-website: https://ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/CEFDIGITAL/EBSI
    EBSI user community: https://ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/EBSICOMMUNITY/EBSI+User+Community+-+public+welcome
  • Verifier Universal Interface (Unofficial Draft 04 December 2020)
    Latest editor’s draft: https://gataca-io.github.io/verifier-apis/
  • Universal Verifier Interface
    Contributor Sign Up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dBDSh3n_8ryfekkW5nzu9bEXMLjXvT3QgZoP0bBnzWQ/edit#gid=0
  • ESSIF-Lab – Verifier Universal Interface –  interop WG
    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pCt8aRSQWq3IFrN3_VjG4OAcq_RqgrkEOThDX09VZW8/edit#heading=h.8ecl8jrhuxx7
  • Disposable Yet Official Identities (DYOI) for Privacy-Preserving System Design – The case of COVID-19 digital document verification and credential-based access control in ad hoc outdoor and indoor settings (and beyond)
    Petros Kavassalis; Nikos Triantafyllou; Panagiotis Georgakopoulos; Antonis Stasis; Rob van Kranenburg
    In this paper we report on the design of a service system to endow next-generation COVID-19 mobile applications with the capacity: a) to instantly manage and verify a wide range of possible COVID-19 digital documents (circulation attestations, work or travel permits based on approved COVID-19 tests, vaccination certificates, etc.) and, b) to provide credential-based access control, especially in cases where the Verifier is not a web entity but a human agent with a smartphone, or an IoT device — mainly in ad hoc outdoor and indoor settings. The system has been designed as a response to the specific needs of a health emergency situation, but it may have a broader application in different cased and areas of control (such as airport and train stations checking points and board controls), where the verification process must exclude the possibility of a physical interaction between the controller and the subject of control, by maintaining a “safe distance” between them and while preserving a certain privacy for the subject of control. Our approach levers the potential of Disposable Identities, Self-Sovereign Identities technologies and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to enable digital document verification and credential-based access control in ad hoc outdoor and indoor settings (and beyond). Towards this, we specifically introduce the concept of “Derivative” (i.e., transcoded/contextual) Verifiable Credentials. A Derivative VC is a derived bond contract guaranteeing the validity and ownership over the underlying contracts (VCs) whose: a) usability is restricted in a very specific context (that of the “local” and time-limited interaction between a Subject and a Service Provider) and, b) linking table points only to a specific “Pairwise DID”.
    https://zenodo.org/record/4016977#.X94ati2iF0t
  • EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy
    The EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy monitors and analyses the online platform economy. It supports the Commission in policy-making for online platforms.
    https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/eu-observatory-online-platform-economy
  • Data Governance Act
    Setting up a new European way of data governance will facilitate data sharing across sectors and Member States. It will create wealth for society, and provide control to citizens and trust to companies.
    https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/data-governance-act
NGI OPEN CALLS

Through an agile and flexible process, following the Horizon 2020 cascade funding mechanism, ongoing NGI Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) provide support to projects from outstanding academic researchers, hi-tech startups and SMEs.
https://ngi.eu/opencalls/

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