UCID Live Conference Review: Herding Cats over Iron Bridges at IDESG
- Since bits are fungible, copies are as good as orginals, but we still have archaic language (as in when “electronic signatures” are referenced in law)
- High technology is the only industry apart from illegal drugs that calls its customers “users”
NSTIC – signed by the President in 2011 as part of the Administration’s Cyberspace Policy Review called for building a identity management vision and strategy to improve the security and convenience of sensitive online transactions and enhance privacy. Basically, NSTIC is the most recent evolution of the U.S. not having a National Identity Card.
Instead, the Government is trying to facilitate interoperability and trust through public-private sector collaboration involving an extremely diverse array of government (Federal, state, local and tribal) and private (commercial, non-profit and individual players involving a plethora of industries, causes and concerns). As one of the facilitators, Brown observes that “herding cats would be comparatively easy, at least they’re all the same species! Often you can’t even get such a range of stakeholders to agree on same principles.”
The concern is that “in the PDE we have plenty of people claiming to have the solution but few that understand the problem.” We could be building a new “iron bridge.” This, he observed is a reflection on the complexity of the space as well as the diversity of stakeholders. “We have a window of opportunity to find sweet spot, but we keep getting thrown curve balls like Snowden and Federal cutbacks.”
Brown said there’s “studies that show the difference between getting online trust right versus getting it wrong is worth $1 trillion over next 20 years.” (I believe him – heck, in health care alone…) “We have to make the existing identity ecosystem better, encourage good practices, leverage trust frameworks and encourage interoperability among them.”
Yet how different trust frameworks could work raises a bunch of political and economic questions: what’s the model? What externalities are we giving up? “Unfortunately [when the big players like Facebook and Google make the decisions] we (individuals) aren’t at the table in these discussions. We’re on the table, we’re part of the meal!”
“How,” Brown asked, “can we take a more active role in a value network where their participation has a value that they can trade in the network?” He proposed the answer to this question is to get involved in IDESG, and points to an idecosystem.org web site for more info about how to get involved.