WPF Executive Director to serve as Senior Rapporteur for ID4Africa workshops regarding policy and regulatory challenges for digital identity and privacy and data protection in ID systems

The World Privacy Forum is pleased to announce Executive Director Pam Dixon has been invited to serve as the Senior Special Rapporteur for two workshops at the 2023 ID4Africa Annual General Meeting which will take place in Nairobi, Kenya 23-25 May.

These workshops include the following:

Workshop 2: Policy and Regulatory Challenges for Digital Identity: The African Perspective

Chaired by: UNHCR & The African Identity Policy Cohort

This workshop reviews the experiences of African countries related to the reform of laws, policies and regulations that impact identity, civil registration, and digital transformation. Over the last decade, many texts of law were developed aiming to render identity systems more inclusive, non-discriminatory, protective of privacy and individual rights, and more adapted to the rapidly evolving digital context.

Workshop 4: Privacy and Data Protection in Identification Systems

Chaired by: Office of the Data Protection Commissioner of Kenya (ODPC)

African Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) play a key role in the development and regulation of digital transformation programs and identity systems. This is as expected given the data-rich nature of these initiatives and their potential to be invasive to privacy of those they seek to benefit. The objective of this workshop is to give a voice to the DPAs around Africa and to enable them to shape the development agenda by articulating their concerns and recommendations on acceptable risk mitigation and data protection practices, and key regulatory considerations to be factored into such initiatives.

“ID4Africa is the single most important gathering of identity experts and authorities in the world,” said Dixon. “It is a privilege to be requested as a senior rapporteur. I am also very pleased to be joined by Sumedha Deshmukh, a respected PhD student and researcher at Cambridge University. We will be very focused on conveying a precise and accurate representation of these critically important conversations.”

This year’s AGM will be the second time Dixon has served as Rapporteur for ID4Africa. In 2019, Dixon served as the Rapporteur for the first meeting of the Roundtable of African Data Protection Authorities regarding Identity Ecosystems in Africa. The 2019 rapporteur’s report is available in English and French.

2019 Roundtable of African Data Protection Authorities regarding Identity Systems and Privacy, ID4Africa, Johannesburg. South Africa

Posted April 27, 2023 in Africa, Biometrics, Data Ecosystems, Digitalization, Digitial Identity
Tags: ID4Africa

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence...
Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.

WPF Executive Director to serve as Senior Rapporteur for ID4Africa workshops regarding policy and regulatory challenges for digital identity and privacy and data protection in ID systems

Roundtable of African Data Protection Authorities: Status and response to privacy risks in identity systems- Proceedings of a Workshop

Table Ronde des Autorités Africaines de Protection des Données sur le thème de la via privée et des systèmes d’identité