We built technology systems to enable data portability only to realise that system-to-system integration is a non-trivial lift. A far simpler solution is to create self-custodial verifiable credentials that are capable of being verified without relying on their issuers.
The climate consensus is rapidly unravelling. With the developing world consistently failing to make the level of commitment required to prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, we need to think differently about achieving sustainable development. Could we apply DPI Thinking to this problem?
The introduction of the term Consent Manager in the Digital Personal Data Protection Act gave rise to considerable speculation. No other data protection law had anything like it, and the law itself was unclear as to what role these entities played. Now that the Rules are with us, things are a little clearer.
There is an urgent need to re-design our energy grid to take better advantage of all that digital has to offer. A recent paper describes how we can add a digital layer to existing infrastructure and use this digital energy grid to unlock greater efficiencies. But in order to realise this goal we will need a shift in our regulatory mindset.
It has been over a year since we started to deploy DPI across the globe and it has not been easy. Despite global endorsements and multilateral commitments, actual deployment is hard. But looking back it is quite remarkable how much we have actually managed to achieve.
Brazil has developed a rural environmental registry to encourage agriculturalists to follow sustainable land use policies and promote environmental preservation. If transformed into a DPI it can provide other countries a useful tool that, with some adaptation, they can use to meet their own environmental targets.
The Account Aggregator system has implemented most data protection principles directly into code. With one exception - use limitation. A recent paper offers a technical solution to this problem through sharding and confidential multiparty compute.
India’s latest DPI focuses on leveraging non-financial data. By offering API-based access to a number of different data sources it will give lenders additional ways in which to evaluate the credit-worthiness of potential borrowers.
There comes a point in time when citizens voluntarily opt to formalise their business - recognising that the benefits they will receive are worth the downside of coming within the tax net. Countries can leverage this notion to unlock much needed revenue by following a three-step process.
The traditional approach to the digital transformation of governance has been to build full-stack solutions that are narrowly geared to addressing specific problems. This is highly inefficient and unless we commit to designing them so that they use shared, re-useable building blocks we are simply not going to achieve the outcomes we need.
