Digital identity systems convert individuals into digital data, which are machine-readable and amenable to administration. Associated to access to public services, social protection and humanitarian schemes, digital identity systems are increasingly linked to the pursuit of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 16:9: “provide legal identity for all including free birth registrations by 2030”. Such a link is based on the view of digital identity as a force for good, capable to include all those entitled to a given service, programme or humanitarian scheme, and at the same time exclude all the non-entitled.

In spite of this orthodoxy, digital identity systems have caused severe harm on users. A recent report by the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University has found such systems associated to large-scale human right violations, resulting in an open letter demanding the World Bank and its donors to cease activities that promote harmful models of digital ID. In this masterclass, Silvia Masiero will use data from her 14-year research on digital identity systems to examine the ways digital identity systems can cause harm on their users, and explore routes to build forms of "fair ID" through which such harm is combated.

Readings
Chaudhuri, B. (2021). Distant, opaque and seamful: seeing the state through the workings of Aadhaar in India. Information Technology for Development, 27(1), 37-49.

Masiero, S., & Das, S. (2019). Datafying anti-poverty programmes: Implications for data justice. Information, Communication & Society, 22(7), 916-933.

Bio
Silvia Masiero is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is a long-term researcher of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D), with a focus on the role of digital platforms in socio-economic development processes. She has authored over 80 peer-reviewed research papers on topics including digital social protection, platform-mediated surveillance and decolonial approaches to information systems research. Silvia is Editor-In-Chief of the journal Information Technology for Development, Chair of the IFIP Working Group 9.4 on the Implications of Information and Digital Technologies for Development, and a Senior Editor at the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries. She has received the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Mid-Career Award in the year 2023.