TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Marketizing the digital state: the failure of the ‘Verify’ model in the United Kingdom

Verify, the UK government’s digital identity program, sought to construct a market for identity verification in which companies would compete. But the assumption that companies should be positioned between government and individuals who are trying to access services has gone unquestioned.

The story of the UK government’s Verify service has been told as one of outright failure and a colossal waste of money. Intended as the single digital portal through which individuals accessing online government services would prove their identity, Verify underperformed for years and is now effectively being replaced. But accounts of its demise often focus on technical failures and inter-departmental politics, rather than evaluating the underlying political vision that Verify represents. This is a vision of market creation, whereby the government constructs a market for identity verification within which private companies can compete. As Verify is replaced and the UK government’s ‘digital transformation’ continues, the failings of this model must be examined.

Whether an individual wants to claim a tax refund from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, renew her driver’s license through the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, or receive her welfare payment from the Department for Work and Pensions, the government’s intention was that she could prove her identity to any of these bodies through a single online platform: Verify. This was a flagship project of the Government Digital Service (GDS), a unit working across departments to lead the government’s digital transformation. Much of GDS’ work was driven by the notion of ‘government as a platform’: government should design and build “supporting infrastructure” upon which others can build.

Squarely in line with this idea, Verify provides a “platform for identity.” GDS technologists wrote the software for the Verify platform, while the government then accredits companies as ‘identity providers’ (IdPs) which ‘plug into’ the platform to compete. An individual who seeks to access a government service online will see Verify on her screen and will be prompted by Verify to choose an identity provider. She will be redirected to that IdP’s website and must enter information such as her passport number or bank details. The IdP then checks this information against public and private databases before confirming her identity to the government service being requested. The individual therefore leaves the government website to verify her identity with a separate, private entity.

As GDS “didn’t think there was a market,” it aimed to support “the development of a digital identity market that spans both public and private sectors” so that users could “use their verified identity accounts for private sector transactions as well as government services.” After Verify went live in 2016, the government accredited seven IdPs, including credit reporting agency Experian and Barclays bank. Government would pay IdPs per user, with the price per user decreasing as user volumes increased. GDS intended Verify to become self-funding: government funding would end in Spring 2020, at which point the companies would take over responsibility. GDS was confident that the IdPs would “keep investing in Verify” and would “ensure the success of the market.”

But a market failed to emerge. The government spent over £200 million on Verify and lowered its estimate of its financial benefits by 75%. Though IdPs were supposed to take over responsibility for Verify, almost every company withdrew. After April 2020, new users could register with either the (privatized) Post Office or Digidentity, the only two remaining IdPs. But the Post Office is “a ‘white-label’ version of Digidentity that runs off the same back-end identity engine.” Rather than creating a market, a monopoly effectively emerged.

This highlights the flaws of the underlying approach. Government paid to develop and maintain the software, and then paid companies to use that software. Government also bore most of the risk: companies could enter the scheme, be paid tens of millions, then withdraw if the service proved less profitable than expected, without having invested in building or maintaining the infrastructure. This is reminiscent of the UK government’s decision to bear the costs of maintaining railway tracks while having private companies profit from running trains on these tracks. Government effectively subsidizes profit.

GDS had been founded as a response to failings in outsourcing government-IT: instead of procuring overpriced technologies, GDS would write software itself. But this prioritization of in-house development was combined with an ideological notion that government technologists’ role is to “jump-start and encourage private sector investment” and to build digital infrastructure while relying on the market to deliver services using that infrastructure. This ideal of marketizing the digital state represents a new “orthodoxy” for digital government; the National Audit Office has highlighted the lack of “evidence underpinning GDS’s assumptions that a move to a private sector-led model [was] a viable option for Verify.”

These assumptions are particularly troubling here, as identity verification is an essential moment within state-to-individual interactions. Companies were positioned between government and individuals, and effectively became gatekeepers. An individual trying to access an online government service was disrupted, as she was redirected and required to go through a company. Equal access to services was splintered into a choice of corporate gateways.

This is significant as the rate of successful identity verifications through Verify hovered around 40-50%, meaning over half of attempts to access online government services failed. More worryingly, the verification rate depended on users’ demographic characteristics, with only 29% of Universal Credit (welfare benefits) claimants able to use Verify. If claimants were unable to prove their identity to the system, their benefits applications were often delayed. They had to wait longer to access payments to which they were entitled by right. Indeed, record numbers of claimants have been turning to food banks while they wait for their first payment. It is especially important to question the assumption that a company needed to be inserted between individuals and government services when the stakes – namely further deprivation, hunger, and devastating debt – are so high.

Verify’s replacement became inevitable, with only two IdPs remaining. Indeed, the government is now moving ahead with a new digital identity framework prototype. This arose from a consultation which focused on “enabling the use of digital identity in the private sector” and fostering and managing “the digital identity market.” A Cabinet Office spokesperson has stated that this framework is intended to work “for government and businesses.”

The government appears to be pushing on with the same model, despite recurrent warning signs throughout the Verify story. As the government’s digital transformation continues, it is vital that the assumptions underlying this marketization of the digital state are fundamentally questioned.

March 30, 2021. Victoria Adelmant, Director of the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. 

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Fearing the future without romanticizing the past: the role for international human rights law(yers) in the digital welfare state to be

Universal Credit is one of the foremost examples of a digital welfare system and the UK’s approach to digital government is widely copied. What can we learn from this case study for the future of international human rights law in the digital welfare state?

Last week, Victoria Adelmant and I organized a two-day workshop on digital welfare and the international rule and role of law, which was part of a series curated by Edinburgh Law School. While zooming in on Universal Credit (UC) in the United Kingdom, arguably one of the most developed digital welfare systems in the world, our objective was broader: namely to imagine how and why law, especially international human rights law, does and should play a role when the state goes digital. Below are some initial and brief reflections on the rich discussions we had with close to 50 civil servants, legal scholars, computer scientists, digital designers, philosophers, welfare rights practitioners, and human rights lawyers.

What is “digital welfare?” There is no agreed upon definition. At the end of a United Nations country visit to the UK in 2018, where I accompanied the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, we coined the term by writing that “a digital welfare state is emerging”. Since then, I have spent years researching and advocating around these developments in the UK and elsewhere. For me, the term digital welfare can be (imperfectly) defined as a welfare system in which the interaction with beneficiaries and internal government operations is reliant on various digital technologies.

In UC, that means you apply for and maintain your benefits online, your identity is verified online, your monthly benefits calculation is automated in real-time, fraud detection happens with the help of algorithmic models, etc. Obviously, this does not mean there is no human interaction or decision-making in UC. And the digitalization of the welfare state did not start yesterday either; it is a process many decades in the making. For example, a 1967 book titled The Automated State mentions the Social Security Administration in the United States as having “among the most extensive second-generation computer systems.” Today, digitalization is no longer just about data centers or government websites, and systems like UC exemplify how digital technologies affect each part of the welfare state.

So, what are some implications of digital welfare for the role of law, especially for international human rights law?

First, as was pointed out repeatedly in the workshop, law has not disappeared from the digital welfare state altogether. Laws and regulations, government lawyers, welfare rights advisors, and courts are still relevant. As for international human rights law, it is no secret that its institutionalization by governments, especially where it comes to economic and social rights, has never been perfect. And neither should we romanticize the past by imagining a previous law and rules-based welfare state as a rule of law utopia. I was reminded of this recently when I watched a 1975 documentary by Frederick Wiseman about a welfare office in downtown Manhattan which was far from utopian. Applying law and rights to the welfare state has been a long and continuous battle.

Second, while there is much to fear about digitalization, we shouldn’t lose sight of its promises for the reimagination of a future welfare state. Several workshop participants emphasized the potential user-friendliness and rationality that digital systems can bring. For example, the UC system quickly responded to a rise in unemployment caused by the pandemic, while online application systems for unemployment benefits in the United States crashed. Welfare systems also have a long history of bureaucratic errors. Automation offers, at least in theory, a more rational approach to government. Such digital promises, however, are only as good as the political impetus that drives digital reform, which is often more focused on cost-savings, efficiency, and detecting supposedly ubiquitous benefit fraud than truly making welfare more user-friendly and less error-prone.

What role does law play in the future digital welfare state? Several speakers emphasized a previous approach to the delivery of welfare benefits as top-down (“waterfall”). Legislation would be passed, regulations would be written and then implemented by the welfare bureaucracy as a final step. Not only is delivery now taking place digitally, but such digital delivery follows a different logic. Digital delivery has become “agile,” “iterative,” and “user-centric,” creating a feedback loop between legislation, ministerial rules and lower-level policy-making, and implementation. Implementation changes fast and often (we are now at UC 167.0).

It is also an open question what role lawyers will play. Government lawyers are changing primary social security legislation to make it fit the needs of digital systems. The idea of ‘Rules as Code’ is gaining steam and aims to produce legislation while also making sure it is machine-readable to support digital delivery. But how influential are lawyers in the overall digital transformation? While digital designers are crucial actors in designing digital welfare, lawyers may increasingly be seen as “dinosaurs,” slightly out of place when wandering into technologist-dominated meetings with post-it notes, flowcharts, and bouncy balls. Another “dinosaur” may be the “street-level bureaucrat.” Such bureaucrats have played an important role in interpreting and individualizing general laws. Yet, they are also at risk of being side-lined by coders and digital designers who increasingly shape and form welfare delivery and thereby engage in their own form of legal interpretation.

Most importantly, from the perspective of human rights: what happens to humans who have to interact with the digital welfare state? In discussions about digital systems, they are all too easily forgotten. Yet, there is substantial evidence of the human harm that may be inflicted by digital welfare, including deaths. While many digital transformations in the welfare state are premised on the methodology of “user-centered design,” its promise is not matched by its practice. Maybe the problem starts with conceptualizing human beings as “users,” but the shortcomings go deeper and include a limited mandate for change and interacting only with “users” who are already digitally visible.

While there is every reason to fear the future of digital welfare states, especially if developments turn toward lawlessness, such fear does not have to lead to outright rejection. Like law, digital systems are human constructs, and humans can influence their shape and form. The challenge for human rights lawyers and others is to imagine not only how law can be injected into digital welfare systems, but how such systems can be built on and can embed the values of (human rights) law. Whether it is through expanding the concept and practice of “user-centered design” or being involved in designing rights-respecting digital welfare platforms, (human rights) lawyers need to be at the coalface of the digital welfare state.

March 23, 2021. Christiaan van Veen, Director of the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project (2019-2022) at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law.

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

On the Frontlines of the Digital Welfare State: Musings from Australia

Welfare beneficiaries are in danger of losing their payments to “glitches” or because they lack internet access. So why is digitization still seen as the shiny panacea to poverty?

I sit here in my local pub in South Australia using the Wi-Fi, wondering whether this will still be possible next week. A month ago, we were in lockdown, but my routine for writing required me to leave the house because I did not have reliable internet at home.

Not having internet may seem alien to many. When you are in a low-income bracket, things people take for granted become huge obstacles to navigate. This is becoming especially apparent as social security systems are increasingly digitized. Not having access to technologies can mean losing access to crucial survival payments.

A working phone with internet data is required to access the Australian social security system. Applicants must generally apply for payments through the government website, which is notorious for crashing. When the pandemic hit, millions of the newly-unemployed were outraged that they could not access the website. Those of us already receiving payments just smiled wryly; we are used to this. We are told to use the website, but then it crashes, so we call and are put on hold for an hour. Then we get cut off and have to call back. This is normal. You also need a phone to fulfill reporting obligations. If you don’t have a working phone, or your battery dies, or your phone credit runs out, your payment can be suspended through the assumption that you’re deliberately shirking your reporting obligations.

In the last month, I was booted off my social security disability employment service. Although I had a certified disability affecting my job-seeking ability, the digital system had unceremoniously dumped me onto the regular job-seeking system, which punishes people for missing appointments. Unfortunately, the system had “glitched,” a popular term used by those in power for when payment systems fail. After narrowly missing a scheduled phone appointment, my payment was suspended indefinitely. Phone calls of over an hour didn’t resolve it; I didn’t even get to speak to a person, who could have resolved the issue. This is the danger of trusting digital technology above humans.

This is also the huge flaw in Income Management (IM), the “banking system” through which social security payments are controlled. I put “banking system” in quotation marks because it’s not run by a bank; there are none of the consumer protections of financial institutions, nor the choice to move if you’re unhappy with the service. The cashless welfare card is a tool for such IM: beneficiaries on the card can only withdraw 20% of their payment as cash, and the card restricts how the remaining 80% can be spent (for example, purchases of alcohol and online retailers like eBay are restricted). IM was introduced in certain rural areas of Australia deemed “disadvantaged” by the government.

The cashless welfare card is operated by Indue, a company contracted by the Australian government to administer social security payments. This is not a company with a good reputation for dealing with vulnerable populations. It is a monolith that is almost impossible to fight. Indue’s digital system can’t recognize rent cycles, meaning after a certain point in the month, the ‘limit’ for rent can be reached and a rent debit rejected. People have had to call and beg Indue to let them pay their landlords; others have been made homeless when the card stopped them from paying rent. They are stripped of agency over their own lives. They can’t use their own payments for second-hand school uniforms, or community fêtes, or buying a second-hand fridge. When you can’t use cash, avenues of obtaining cheaper goods are blocked off.

Certain politicians tout the cashless welfare card as a way to stop the poor from spending on alcohol and drugs. In reality, the vast majority affected by this system have no such problems with addiction. But when you are on the card, you are automatically classified as someone who cannot be trusted with your own money; an addict, a gambler, a criminal.

Politicians claim it’s like any other card, but this is a lie. It makes you a pariah in the community and is a tacit license for others to judge you. When you are at the whim and mercy of government policy, when you are reliant on government payments controlled by a third party, you are on the outside looking in. You’re automatically othered; you’re made to feel ashamed, stupid, and incapable.

Beyond this stigma, there are practical issues too. The cashless welfare card system assumes you have access to a smartphone and internet to check your account balance, which can be impossible for those with low incomes. Pandemic restrictions close the pubs, universities, cafes, and libraries which people rely on for internet access. Those without access are left by the wayside. “Glitches” are also common in Indue accounts: money can go missing without explanation. This ruins account-holders’ plans and forces them to waste hours having non-stop arguments with brick-wall bureaucracy and faceless people telling them they don’t have access to their own money.

Politicians recently had the opportunity to reject this system of brutality. The “Cashless Welfare Card trials” were slated to end on December 31, 2020, and a bill was voted on to determine if these “trials” would continue. The people affected by this system already told politicians how much it ruins their lives. Once again, they used their meager funds to call politicians’ offices and beg them to see the hell they’re experiencing. They used their internet data to email and rally others to do the same. I personally delivered letters to two politicians’ offices, complete with academic studies detailing the problems with IM. For a split second, it seemed like the politicians listened and some even promised to vote to end the trials. But a last-minute backroom deal meant that these promises were broken. Lived experiences of welfare recipients did not matter.

The global push to digitize welfare systems must be interrogated. When the most vulnerable in society are in danger of losing their payments to “glitches” or because they lack internet access, it begs the question: why is digitization still seen as the shiny panacea to poverty?

February 1, 2021. Nijole Naujokas, an Australian activist and writer who is passionate about social justice rights for the vulnerable. She is the current Secretary of the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union, and is doing her Bachelor of Honors in Creative Writing at The University of Adelaide.

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CSOs Call for a Full Integration of Human Rights in the Deployment of Digital Identification Systems

The Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development (the Principles), the creation of which was facilitated by the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative in 2017, provide one of the few attempts at global standard-setting for the development of digital identification systems across the world. They are endorsed by many global and regional organizations (the “Endorsing Organizations”) that are active in funding, designing, developing, and deploying digital identification programs across the world, especially in developing and less developed countries.

Digital identification programs are coming up across the world in various forms, and will have long term impacts on the lives and the rights of the individuals enrolled in these programs. Engagement with civil society can help ensure the lived experience of people affected by these identification programs inform the Principles and the practices of International Organizations. 

Access Now, Namati, and the Open Society Justice Initiative co-organized a Civil Society Organization (CSO) consultation in August 2020 that brought together over 60 civil society organizations from across the world for dialogue with the World Bank’s ID4D Initiative and Endorsing Organizations. The consultation occurred alongside the first review and revision of the Principles, which has been led by the Endorsing Organizations during 2020. 

The consultation provided a platform for civil society feedback towards revisions to the Principles as well as dialogue around the roles of International Organizations (IOs) and Civil Society Organizations in developing rights-respecting digital identification programs. 

This new civil society-drafted report presents a summary of the top-level comments and discussions that took place in the meeting, including recommendations such as: 

1. There is an urgent need for human rights criteria to be recognized as a tool for evaluation and oversight of existing and proposed digital identification systems, including throughout the Principles document 
2. Endorsing Organizations should commit to the application of these Principles in practice, including an affirmation that their support will extend only with identification programs that align with the Principles 
3. CSOs need to be formally recognized as partners with governments and corporations in designing and implementing digital identification systems, including greater country-level engagement with CSOs from the earliest stages of potential digital identification projects through to monitoring ongoing implementation
4. Digital identification systems across the globe are already being deployed in a manner that enables repression through enhanced censorship, exclusion, and surveillance, but centering transparent and democratic processes as drivers of the development and deployment of these systems can mitigate these and other risks

Following the consultation and in line with this new report, we welcome the opportunity to further integrate the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other sources of human rights in international law into the Principles of Identification and the design, deployment, and monitoring of digital identification systems in practice. We encourage the establishment of permanent and formal structures for the engagement of civil society organizations in global and national-level processes related to digital identification, in order to ensure identification technologies are used in service of human agency and dignity and to prevent further harms in the exercise of fundamental rights in their deployment. 

We call on United Nations and regional human rights mechanisms, including the High Commissioner on Human Rights, treaty bodies, and Special Procedures, to take up the severe human rights risks involved in the context of digital identification systems as an urgent agenda item under their respective mandates.

We welcome further dialogue and engagement with the World Bank’s ID4D Initiative and other Endorsing Organizations and promoters of digital identification systems in order to ensure oversight and guidance towards human rights-aligned implementation of those systems.

This post was was originally published as a press release on December 17, 2020

Statements of the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project do not purport to represent the views of NYU or the Center, if any.

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Silencing and Stigmatizing the Disabled Through Social Media Monitoring

In 2019, the United States’s Social Security program comprised 23% of the federal budget. Apart from retirement benefits, the Social Security program provides Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), which are disability benefits for disabled individuals unable to work. A multimillion-dollar disability fraud case in 2014 provoked the Social Security Administration to evaluate their controls in place to identify and prevent disability fraud. The review found that social media played a ‘critical role’ in this fraud case, “as disability claimants were seen in photos on their personal accounts, riding on jet skis, performing physical stunts in karate studios, and driving motorcycles”. Although Social Security Disability fraud is rare, the Social Security Administration has since adopted social media monitoring tools which use social media posts as a factor in determining when disability fraud is being committed by an ineligible individual. Although human rights advocates have evaluated how such digitally enabled fraud detection tools violate privacy rights, few explore other human rights violations resulting from new digital tools employed by governments in the fight against benefit fraud.

To help fill this gap, this summer I conducted research to provide a voice to disabled individuals applying for and receiving Social Security disability benefits, whose experiences are largely invisible in society. From these interviews, it became clear that automated tools such as social media monitoring perpetuate the stigmatization of disabled people. Interviewees reported that, when aware of being monitored on social media, they felt compelled to modify their behavior to fit within the stigma associated with how disabled people should look and behave. These behavior modifications prevent disabled individuals from integrating into society and accessing services necessary to their survival.

Since the creation of social benefits, disabled people have been stigmatized in society, oftentimes being viewed as either incapable or unwilling to work. Those who work are perceived as incapable employees, while those who are unable to work are viewed as lazy. Social media monitoring is the product of that stigma as it relies on assumptions about how a disabled person should look and act. One individual I interviewed recounted that when they sought advice on the application process people told them, “You can never post anything on social media of you having fun ever. Don’t post pictures of you smiling, not until after you are approved and even then, you have to make sure you’re careful and keep it on private.” Being unable to smile or outwardly express happiness ties to family and professionals underestimating a disabled individual’s quality of life. This underestimation can lead to the assumption that “real” disabled people have a poor quality of life and are unable to be happy.

The social media monitoring tool’s methodology relies on potentially inaccurate data because social media does not give a comprehensive view into a person’s life. People typically create an exaggerated, positive lens of their lives on social media which glosses over more difficult elements. Schwartz and Halegoua describe this perception as “spatial self”, which refers to how individuals “document, archive, and display their experience and/or mobility within space and place in order to represent or perform aspects of their identity to others.” Scholars on social media activity have published numerous studies on how people use images, videos, status updates, and comments on social media to present themselves in a very curated way.
Contrary to the positive spin most individuals put on their social media, disabled individuals actually feel compelled to “curate” their social media activity in a way that presents them as weak and incapable to fit the narrative of who deserves disability benefits. For them, receiving disability benefits is crucial to survive and pay for basic necessities.

The individuals I interviewed shared how such surveillance tools not only modify their behavior but also prevent them from exercising a whole range of human rights through social media. These rights are essential for all people but particularly for disabled individuals because the silencing of their voices strips away their ability to advocate for their community and form social relationships. Although social media offers avenues for socialization and political engagement to all social media users, social media significantly opens up opportunities to disabled individuals. Participants expressed that without social media they would be unable to form these relationships offline where accommodations for their disability do not exist. Disabled individuals greatly value sharing on social media as the medium enables them to highlight aspects of their identity beyond being disabled. An individual expressed to me how important social media is for socializing particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, “I use Facebook mostly as a method of socializing especially right now with the pandemic going on, and occasionally political engagement.”Participants expressed that they feel like they need to modify their behavior on social media, with one participant saying, “I don’t think anybody feels good being monitored all the time and that’s essentially what I feel like now post-disability. I can’t have fun or it will be taken away.” This is fundamentally a human rights issue.

These human rights issues include equality in social life, and the ability to participate in the broader community online. Long-term these inequalities can harm their human rights as their voices and experiences are not taken into account by people outside of the disability community. In many reports on the disability community, the majority consensus rests on the fact that the exclusion of disabled people and their input undermines the well-being of disabled individuals. Ignoring or silencing the voices of disabled people prevents them from using their voices to advocate for themselves and participate in decisions involving their lives, making them vulnerable to disability discrimination, exclusion, violence, poverty and untreated health problems. For example, a participant I interviewed shared how the process reinforces disability discrimination through behavior modification:

There was no room for me to focus on anything I could still do. Because the disability process is exactly that, it’s finding out what you can’t do. You have to prove that your life sucks. That adds to the disability shame and stigma too. So anyways, dehumanizing.

In addition to the social and economic rights mentioned above, social media monitoring also impacts the enjoyment of civil and political rights for disabled individuals applying for and receiving Social Security disability benefits. Richards and Hartzog write, “Trust within information relationships is critical for free expression and a precursor to many kinds of political engagement.” They highlight how the Internet and social media have been used both for access to political information and political engagement, which has a large impact on politics in general. Participants revealed to me that they used social media as a primary method for engaging in activism and contributing to political thought. The individuals I interviewed shared that they use social media to engage with political representatives on disability-related legislation and to bring awareness of disability-related issues to their political representatives. Social media monitoring restricting freedom of expression can remove disabled individuals from participating in the political sphere and exercising other civil and political rights.

I am a disabled person who recently qualified for disability benefits, so I personally understand this pressure to prove I deserve the benefits and accommodations allocated to people who are “actually” disabled. Social media monitoring perpetuates this harmful narrative that disabled individuals applying for and receiving disability benefits need to prove their eligibility by modifying their behavior to fit disability stereotypes. This behavior modification restricts our access to form meaningful relationships, push against disability stigma and advocate for ourselves through political engagement. As social media monitoring pushes us out of social media platforms, our voices are silenced and this exclusion leads to further social inequalities. As disability rights activism continues to transform in the United States, I hope that this research will inspire future studies into disability rights, experiences applying for and receiving SSI and SSDI, and how they may intersect with human rights beyond privacy rights.

October 29, 2020. Sarah Tucker, Columbia University Human Rights graduate program. She uses her experiences as a disabled woman working in tech to advocate for the Disability community.

TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Digital Identification and Inclusionary Delusion in West Africa 

Over 1 billion persons have been categorized as invisible in the world, of which about 437 million persons are reported to be from sub-Saharan Africa. In West Africa alone, the World Bank has identified a huge “identification gap” and different identification projects are underway to identify millions of invisible West Africans.[1] These individuals are regarded as invisible not because they are unrecognizable or non-existent, but because they do not fit a certain measure of visibility that matches existing or new database(s) of an identifying institution[2], such as the State or international bodies.

One existing digital identification project in West Africa is the West Africa Unique Identification for Regional Integration and Inclusion (WURI) program initiated by the World Bank under its Identification for Development initiative. The WURI program is to serve as an umbrella under which West African States can collaborate with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to design and build a digital identification system, financed by the World Bank, that would create foundational IDs (fID)[3] for all persons in the ECOWAS region.[4] Many West African States that have had past failed attempts at digitizing their identification systems have embraced assistance via WURI. The goal of WURI is to enable access to services for millions of people and ensure “mutual recognition of identities” across countries. The promise of digital identification is that it will facilitate development by promoting regional integration, security, social protection of aid beneficiaries, financial inclusion, reduction of poverty and corruption, healthcare insurance and delivery, and act as a stepping stone to an integrated digital economy in West Africa. This way, millions of invisible individuals would become visible to the state and become financially, politically and socially included.

Nevertheless, the outlook of WURI and the reliance on digital IDs by development agencies proposes a reliance on technologies, also known as techno-solutionism, as the approach to dealing with institutional challenges and developmental goals in West Africa. This reliance on digital technologies does not address some of the major root causes of developmental delays in the countries and may instead worsen the state of things by excluding the vast majority of people who are either unable to be identified or excluded by virtue of technological failures. This exclusion emerges in a number of ways, including the service-based structure and/or mandatory nature of many digital identification projects which adopt the stance of exclusion first before inclusion. This means that in cases where access to services and infrastructures, such as opening a bank account, registering sim cards, getting healthcare or receiving government aid and benefits, are made subject to registration and possession of a national ID card or unique identification number (UIN), individuals are first excluded unless they register for and possess the national ID card or UIN.

There are three contexts in which exclusion may arise. Firstly, an individual may be unable to register for a fID. For instance, in Kenya, many individuals without identity verification documents like birth certificates were excluded from the registration process of its fID, Huduma Namba. A second context arises where an individual may be unable to obtain a fID card or unique identification number (UIN) after registration. This is the case in Nigeria where the National Identity Management Commission has been unable to deliver ID cards to the majority of those who have registered under the identity program. The risk of exclusion of individuals may increase in Nigeria when the government conditions access to services on the possession of an fID card or UIN.

A third scenario involves the inability of an individual to access infrastructures after obtaining a fID card or UIN, due to the breakdown or malfunctioning of the technology for authentication by the identifying institution. In Tanzania, for example, although some individuals have the fID card or UIN, they are unable to proceed with their SIM registration process due to breakdown of the data storage systems. There are also numerous reports of people not getting access to services in India because of technology failures. This leaves a large group of vulnerable individuals, particularly where the fID is required to access key services such as SIM card registration. An unpublished 2018 poll carried out in Cote d’Ivoire reveals that over 65% of those who register for National ID used it to apply for SIM card services and about 23% for financial services.[5]

The mandatory or service-based model of most identification systems in West Africa take away powers or rights of access to and control of resources and identity from individuals and confers them on the State and private institutions, thereby raising some human rights concerns for those who are unable to fit the criteria for registration and identification. Thus, a person who ordinarily would move around freely, shop from a grocery store, open a bank account or receive healthcare from a hospital can only do that, upon commencement of mandatory use of the fID, through possession of the fID card or UIN. In Nigeria, for instance, the new national computerized identity card is equipped with a microprocessor designed to host and store multiple e-services and applications like biometric e-ID, electronic ID, payment application, travel document, and serve as the national identity card of individuals. A Thales publication also states that in a second phase for the Nigerian fID, driver’s license, eVoting, eHealth or eTransport applications are to be added to the cards. This is a long list of e-services for a country where only about 46% of its population is reported to have access to the internet. Where a person loses this ID card or is unable to provide the UIN that digitally represents that person, such person would be potentially excluded from access to all the services and infrastructures that the fID card or UIN serves as a gateway to. This exclusion risk is intensified by the fact that identifying institutions in remote or local areas may lack authentication technologies or electronic connection to the ID database to verify the existence of individuals at all times they seek to be identified, make a payment, receive healthcare, or travel.

It is important to note that exclusion does not only stem from mandatory fID systems or voluntary but service-integrated ID systems. There are also risks with voluntary ID systems where adequate measures are not taken to protect the data and interests of all those who are registered. An adequate data storage facility, data protection designs and data privacy regulation to protect the data of individuals is required, else individuals face increased risks of identity theft, fraud and cybercrime which would exclude and shut them off from fundamental services and infrastructures.

The history of political instability, violence and extremism, ethnic and religious conflicts, and disregard for the rule of law in many West African countries also heightens the risk of exclusion of individuals. Different instances of this abound, such as religious extremism, insurgences and armed conflicts in Northern Nigeria, civilian attacks and unrest in some communities in Burkina Faso, crisis and terrorist attacks in Mali, election violence, and military intervention in State governance. An OECD report accounts for over 3,317 violent events in West Africa between 2011 – 2019 with fatalities rising above 11,911 within those periods. A UN report also puts the number of deaths in Burkina Faso to over 1800 in 2019 and over 25,000 displaced persons in the same year. This instability can act as a barrier to registration for a fID and lead to exclusion where certain groups of persons are targeted and profiled by state and/or non-state (illegal) actors.

In addition to cases where registration is mandatory or where individuals are highly dependent on the infrastructures and services they wish to access, there might also be situations where people might opt to rely less on the use of the fID or decide not to register due to worries about surveillance, identity theft or targeted disciplinary control, thereby excluding them from resources they would have ordinarily gotten access to. In Nigeria, only about 20% of the population is reported to have registered for the Nigerian Identity Number (NIN) (this was about 6% in 2017). Similarly, though implementation of WURI program objectives in Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire commenced in 2018, as of date, the registration and identification output in both countries is still marginally low.

World Bank findings and lessons from Phase I reveal that digital identification can exacerbate exclusion and marginalization, while diminishing privacy and control over data, despite the benefits it may carry. Some of the challenges identified by the World Bank resonate with the major concerns listed here, and they include risks of surveillance, discrimination, inequality, distrust between the State and individuals, and legal, political and historical differences among countries. The solutions proposed, under the WURI program objectives, to address these problems – consultations, dialogues, ethnographic studies, provision of additional financing and capacity – are laudable but insufficient to dealing with the root causes. On the contrary, the solutions offered might reveal the inadequacies of a digitized State in West Africa where a large population of West African are digital illiterates, lack the means to access digital platforms, or operate largely in the informal sector.

Practically, the task of tactically addressing the root causes to most of the problems mentioned above, particularly the major ones involving political instability, institutional inadequacies, corruption, conflicts and capacity building, is an arduous one which may involve a more domestic/grassroot/bottom-up approach. However, the solution to these challenges is either unknown, difficult or less desirable than the “quick fix” offered by techno-solutionism and reliance on digital identification.

October 19, 2020. Ngozi Nwanta, JSD program, NYU School of Law with research interests in systemic analysis of national identification systems, governance of credit data, financial inclusion, and development.