Do I Know you? Pending debts of modern identification systems
Originally published by: Find your digital self | FySelf Blog
In contemporary civilized society, knowing the identity of each citizen is essential. How would the rigor of the laws be maintained if there was no criminal record? What about the educational system? Imagine students could change their name on entrance examination. How to open a bank account, or give a credit to someone you cannot identify. How can you know whether he has got one before? For this exist identification systems.
Identification systems are usually managed by countries. In some cases, documents that support a person’s identity are issued by regional institutions, for instance United States driver’s licenses.
But, in general, it is the State that have the responsibility of granting a form of validation of people’s identity. Document that is not always valid to travel or request certain rights in other territories. An ID or a green card does not have the same prerogatives as a passport does, for example. Moreover, none of these documents contains a large body of information related to the person. If it existed, it could massively help them navigate the seas of bureaucracy still prevailing these days.
Don’t you think that in a globalized world you can aspire to a global system of identification more democratic and social, and independent of governments? It doesn’t exist yet, but it won’t take long. Meanwhile, learn a little more about the identification systems around us today.
Identification systems: a modern world pending debt?
Around 100 countries have legislated the obligation to issue identity documents to their citizens. In the same vein, the law obliges people to carry these document at all times. Wich is reasonable, then authorized personnel could require it in various circumstances.
Not all identity documents issued by national States are of the same nature or have the same validity in other territories or specific situations. For example, an ID from any of the countries of the European Union. If you have one, move through any of the territories of that regional community is really easy.
However, all that glitters isn’t gold. One of the big problems in this regard is that, since the issuance and management of identity documents is processed by countries, not all of them have a modern identification system. Because of this which is why the situation of people with respect to their identity is highly variable worldwide.
In other post, we analyzed the fundamental problems faced by people, who lack a document or endorsement that identifies them.
The cost of manufacturing the documents is less of a problem
According to this World Bank study, based on the experience of 15 countries, the cost of manufacturing identification cards varies from 3 to 40% with respect to the total cost of maintaining an identification system. However today everything is looked from the digital perspective: a “paper” document (Say no to the material itself, but to any sort of physical document) has numerous limitations and risks.
The first limitation? A physical document rarely allows anything more than identifying yourself, especially if it does not have a QR code or any other element that can link you to the digital level.
The most ancient risk? Forgery. In some countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom, identity forgery has been a recurring phenomenon at certain times, especially among teenagers who want to have the right to consume alcohol or to go to nightclubs before the age of 21.
It gets harder and harder to forge identity documents in countries that have been improving their systems using biometric elements. But there are others where the protocol still has security flaws. So it is risky to say that the problem has disappeared.
Biometrics, a key matter on identification systems
With the aim of promoting the implementation of more digital, secure and useful identity systems for the people, the World Bank has a States advisory program to the design and implementation of new identification systems.
In the studies carried out, they discovered that biometrics is an aspect still to be improved, and an essential one to create physical mechanisms that ratify a person’s singularity. 60% of the analyzed systems were based on one single biometric element… fingerprints.
Only 40% of studied cases use various biometric modalities: fingerprint, plus iris recognition and facial recognition. Combining various modalities of biometric identification is the best choice; some aspects may obscure, for example, the capture of fingerprints. This is most noticeable in countries and regions with large populations of people doing manual labor.
Achieving an international standard prevails
The aforementioned World Bank study also demonstrated that the integration between the identification systems and the civil registry mechanisms of the States results in greater savings in resources in both entities.
The process of identifying and registering citizens must be unitary, but also integrated with many aspects of daily life: health care, electronic payments, tax management and other aspects of public administration.
To achieve this, it would require very comprehensive identification systems, with a lot of information and instantaneousness, only possible in countries with high development and connectivity. A good example is Estonia, whose citizens can carry out all kinds of procedures online, except buying a property or marrying someone.
The World Bank and other organizations have initiatives to help standardize modern identification systems to all countries. But it will be difficult to create the infrastructure and achieve an agreement between so many governments.
Today, it is imperative to create an intermediate variant, a decentralized system, independent of national administrations, managed through mathematical models and high-level computer trends that process information provided by the cell of any identification system: the individual.
FySelf team is working on that identification system. Get in touch if you want to know more … and stay tunned.
