What are the benefits of cross-industry collaboration?

Question: What benefits could be realized through public and private sector collaboration?

There are many different models available for collaboration in establishing a digital identity initiative. Given the nature of the government being a crucial Authoritative Issuer for foundational identity instruments for both people and corporations the government needs to be an active player. Many private sector networks feel that the complete digital identity can reside solely in a private sector context - but this is to be avoided. Leaders at the Trust Over IP Foundation disagree - government plays a crucial role in establishing a digital identity ecosystem. The role of government is at least as a peer participant. In some areas government must lead - though that role will likely fall under regulatory and policy cover, and not require all costs to be borne by government.

Given the crucial need for government to be an Authoritative Issuer for key identity credentials, permits, and licenses the Trust Over IP Foundation recommends that Government Agencies participate as full member of the trust ecosystems they deem relevant to their mission - thus a public/private partnership of some kind is likely to be the best fit.

Collaboration at Layer 1 where the root of trust infrastructure is established, is an example of where a Government Agency could participate.

For example, in many public identity utilities entities (sometimes referred to as "Stewards") from various industries and jurisdictions run compute nodes to a degree of diverisity to a decentralzied public identity utility. The Sovrin Network, run by the Sovrin Foundation, aims to have nodes run in many industries (big business, tech, universities, NGOS, etc.) and locales (all major continents covered). The Bedrock Business Utility (BBU) is operated by the Bedrock Consortium which is comprise dof international private sector companies. The BBU is an independent self-governed and self-sustainable public identity utility that is intended to serve organizations that desire to participate in digital trust ecosystems and require an enterprise grade governance framework. But the BBU can be trusted and leveraged by public sector entities as part of their ecosystem governance frameworks.

Meaningful and effective public/private sector collaborations, in any economic or industrial sector, require entities with very different bottom lines to agree on how to share risks, ownership, accountability and cost over time. This will continue to be true in the area of decentralized identifiers.

As a standards setting body the Trust Over IP Foundation would also recommend strong involvement of the government in the development and use of standards.

This area is one of the least visible ecosystem activities. Nevertheless, this is an area where the incentives for private entities to define common technical standards often reflect public sector requirements and regulations.

Trust over IP is an example of this: an organization whose mandate is to define an architecture for Internet-scale digital trust, doing so in a way that is open and extensible and that allows for multiple, often competing, participants to work together towards a common goal. Similar organizations exist for defining and managing standards for the Internet (World Wide Web Consortium, Internet Engineering Task Force), industry (Canadian Standards Association), food (Codex Alimentarius), supply chain (GS1), and many more.

Many of the standards that these associations develop are done at the behest of their members, but they also do so in response to legal and regulatory requirements. For example, in the United States, the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) “outlines steps to build an electronic, interoperable system to identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed in the United States”.

In response to this, industry has come together, under the umbrella of GS1 US, to figure out how best to apply existing supply chain identification and traceability standards to the Act.

Similarly, the Canadian industry worked with GS1 Canada to develop identification and traceability standards for food traceability, resulting in the Canadian Food Traceability Data Standard.

Better collaboration in the area of regulation and standards development, therefore, is worth exploring.

Further, a directed outcome approach, where government publishes regulations, backed by formal requirements and performance goals, is a significant enabler of standards development. This methodology merits close consideration as well.

A collaborative model in which industry experts, backed by government funding and supported by government representatives with appropriate project management expertise, can work to meet well-defined requirements put forward by the government, stands the best chance of success by bringing in the appropriate industry knowledge while ensuring that the project is on track and aligned with the government’s goals.

Moreover, very important elements related to (among many others) how achieve broad interoperability between digital trust ecosystems, and what design features need to be introduced to support people in navigating the use of these credentials, have yet to be discovered. It is important for the public sector to avoid vendor-lock and the constraints that come along with investing to much, too soon in systems/solutions that are not fully evolved.

Where the public sector maintains a clear focus on creating value for citizens and setting the rules of the game, through policy and regulation, the private sector will be able to drive innovation and respond to market dynamics as they emerge.

In as much as this balance can be achieved and sustained, opportunities to pursue public/private collaboration will take many forms.