WEF’s Digital Identity Initiative did not fail to ignite a meaningful debate around digital identities secured on the blockchain at the forum’s annual workshop. Blockchain has become a focal point embedded in bringing security to government data and applications.
During a day of high-level panel discussions, which were themed around “improving livelihoods with digital ID”, the speakers highlighted the wider economic benefits of blockchain as well as user-managed data centricity.
The adoption of secure blockchains is on an upward trajectory with digital wallets which have captured consumers’ minds for convenience in having a central technology to store all common user-managed digital credentials. With blockchain, the role of identity providers is almost eliminated while users can have control of digital identities on public ledgers.
Growing usage and knowledge of blockchain in Spain, the panel discussion heard from one of its high-level speakers, Vasilisa Marinchuk to assess interest among governments to moving types of data on blockchain. Governments have several main areas of interest when it comes to considering blockchain, she says, as an entity that most citizens are attached to during their lives to process and protect their identity data from birth to death.
Hence, governments should ensure mass amounts of their collected citizen data is safeguarded and security is streamlined.
Marinchuk stressed that attention needs to given to the usability and streamlined efficiency of blockchain which is not always cost effective because of the burgeoning amount of human resources involved.
