Utah forms digital ID consortium

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Dive Brief:

• Utah is forming a multi-state consortium of governors to advance a governance framework and principles for state-issued digital identification credentials, Utah’s chief privacy officer said Sunday on the first day of the Money20/20 financial technology conference. The coalition is focused on advancing the idea that people inherently own their identification data and should be able to limit how much personal information they share through their digital IDs.
• Utah hasn’t announced which states have joined the group, and is awaiting “a few more that will be aligning around these shared principles,” Christopher Bramwell, Utah’s chief privacy officer, said at the discussion on digital identification. By January, 10 states will have either their legislatures or executive branches working on ID governance frameworks modeled after Utah’s privacy-focused “state-endorsed digital identity" program, he said.
• States such as Utah and California have been leading in the area of digital identity, said Jennifer Kerber, head of global government affairs for Socure, a digital ID verification and fraud-prevention firm, who spoke with Bramwell during the Sunday panel. California has about 2.2 million digital IDs in use, she said.

Dive Insight:

Digital identities raise important issues in the payments realm because such personal information is often tied to transactions, particularly in e-commerce. That's becoming an increasingly key issue as more fintechs aim to use that data to personalize services.

Currently, 21 states and Puerto Rico issue digital IDs, according to the Transportation Security Administration. 

Utah enacted what it called the first digital ID “bill of rights” law earlier this year, which created a “state-endorsed digital identity” program aimed at giving people control of their identity data.

“What good is digital identity if nothing in it says that somebody can't use it to do surveillance pricing in a way that harms you, or they can't track and surveil every single usage of it?” said Bramwell, who is also director of the Utah Office of Data Privacy.

States need a governance framework for IDs because there are “168 million different digital identities in use across different platforms in the U.S. lacking these rules of the road,” he said.

Ajay Gupta, chief digital transformation officer for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, was also scheduled to appear at the panel. Ultimately, he didn’t appear, with Kerber pointing to travel complications.

Utah is working toward an ID system that would render a person’s data, if it’s breached, virtually useless for fraud and impersonation, because the criminal doesn’t have access to the ID credentials, he said. “How do we empower each of you to have something you control, so that even when your personal data has been breached, it can't be used to impersonate you and commit fraud?” he said. 

Utah began its digital ID work by establishing a policy framework before issuing any products, Bramwell said. With the policy framework passed, Utah officials have begun working on the technology to power the new IDs. “Now we're working on the tech to actually come in and say, ‘What are we actually able to do?’” Bramwell said.

The range of digital IDs across states so far has provided Utah insights on various approaches, he said. 

Utah hopes that as it works with other states, “we actually end up meeting in the middle where we bring the governance, they brought some of the tech, and we'll all be able to exist in this ecosystem, regardless of which technology approach,” Bramwell said.