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. ID4Africa is regarded as the single most important gathering of identity experts and authorities in the world. The focus of Dixon’s rapporteur work will include policy and regulatory challenges for digital identity: the African perspective (Workshop 2), and privacy and data protection in identity systems (Workshop 4)…
Identity is a data-rich resource that acts as a key to connect all levels of emerging digital ecosystems. All forms of ID carry some risk, but digital forms of ID, or “dematerialized ID,” cuts across all sectors and links copious data about individuals, their behaviors, financial status, associates, and potentially even political and religious views. Over time, distinct patterns emerge from the linked data and create new kinds of risks for individuals and groups. As the world becomes increasingly and intensely digitalized, we can expect challenges in the identity space to grow apace unless proactive attention is given to identifying and mitigating the current and future risks.
WPF is launching a mini-documentary about problems in identity systems on 17 November, 2021. Digital identity systems are generally accepted as positive tools for social good. Nevertheless, they can pose several dangers and cause significant concerns. This mini-documentary takes viewers on a tour around the world to hear from real people as they interact with identity systems in their own
Recently, ID4Africa held an extremely compelling and meticulously researched livecast on the issue of gender and identity systems, with good discussions that also touched on privacy in this context. The livecast boasted an excellent roster of experts, all of whom are active work in the field. Each presented well-substantiated, groundtruthed research and insight about the myriad ways that how identity systems mediate gender matter a great deal. The cumulative effect was eye-opening.
The World Privacy Forum is pleased to announce its work on a new project with the Center for Global Development (CGD). This project, Governing Data for Development, is led by CGD, with WPF’s Executive Director Pam Dixon as co-chair of the project working group with co-chair and Oxford professor Benno Ndulu, who is also the former Governor of the Central Bank of Tanzania. The project, which has been underway for a year, has produced its first report, which is a scoping report based on interviews with key stakeholders. This blog post, which provides background on the project and links to the first project report, is being jointly posted at WPF and CGD.
