Governments shouldn’t provide digital ID wallets to citizens, according to a new paper from the Open Identity Exchange (OIX).
In the Governments and Wallets paper, released later today, OIX recommends that governments do not provide their own ID wallets to citizens. According to the non-profit organisation, there are vast costs associated with issuing and managing a wallet, and the development requirements as wallets evolve will be extremely technical and complex. As such, “governments are not best placed to maintain these effectively.”
The OIX recommends that the role of governments should be to create strong trust frameworks that enable the approval and trust of private sector provided wallets. This includes the tech giants, such as Google an Apple, that may want to hold and present government credentials in their wallets. Government credentials can then be issued only into these approved private sector wallets.
It said this will help address any perceived loss of control or oversight by governments, and there are significant advantages to this approach for all the parties involved.
“Any concerns governments may have about issuing government credentials into digital wallets that they have not provided, can be mitigated by them creating strong trust frameworks. It also means the expense and technical resources required to build, operate and continually develop a wallet is not a burden on governments,” said Nick Mothershaw, chief identity strategist at OIX.
“For consumers, it means having one wallet rather than two, that holds a mix of government and non-government credentials – much like they do today with a physical wallet. If governments are the providers of digital wallets, it could also fuel privacy concerns among their citizens (real or imagined) that governments are monitoring how and where they use those wallets.
“Private sector wallets that are subject to a government trust framework are the best approach for all parties – governments, their citizens and the organisations that will come to rely on digital ID.”
