The importance of regular people feeling heard and that the processes are broad and inclusive should not be underestimated. A trip to Marin last month made this particularly apparent to me. I stopped at a “groovy organic grocery store” to pick up a snack for the long ride I had ahead of me. Outside were two women with a table of stickers and literature about various progressive causes and issues. They had a sign on a chair saying “STOP THE SMART GRID”. I was interested what their concerns were. Why did they want to stop it. They were concerned about many things, but in particular the data collection from houses, the use of the data, who had the ability to see the data and what it would be used for.
I founded the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium because I believe that people should have the tools to collect, manage and get value from their own data (including electricity use). I challenged some aspects of their assumption when I put forward the idea that getting more data, more information about the electricity use in their houses could be a good thing. It was information that could empower them to know more, save money and conserve energy. They just didn’t buy it – they were very concerned about being exploited by the corporate power company and spied on by the government.
This was a reaction to changes in the way electricity is tracked and metered. NSTIC is about “identity”, and broadly defined identity in digital forms touches on a vast array of personal information. This diagram below is from the World Economic Forum Rethinking Personal Data Project:
Source of data types from the Rethinking Personal Data Pre-Read Document published by the World Economic Forum written by Marc Davis et al. published in June, 2010.
It illustrates the vast amount of personal data that exists on people. Iain Henderson, founder of two startups in the nascent personal data banking space, has a taxonomy of 4500 attributes that are found across a range of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) services that companies use to manage their relationships with existing and potential customers.
The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel was spun up by NIST a few years ago and they are, as an industry, a few years ahead of this industry in terms of rollout and adoption of common standards and pilots being spun up. This private sector led ( with government participation) structure is being suggested as a potential model on which to base the Identity Ecosystem Framework Steering Group.
I figure that the negative public reaction to the Identity Ecosystem will be even greater then the the one happening to the Smart Grid right now. The concerns and issues of regular individuals (the users of the Identity Ecosystem) from all walks of life must be surfaced and addressed earlier rather then later in the evolution of the ecosystem. This can be done with systemic processes that are clearly organized and that really listen to concerns and take action to incorporate feedback. I think there are still many legal and organizational innovations needed to make a network of accountability frameworks address the full spectrum of identity.
If these are not developed, then I don’t think the overall system can succeed. It will be very important that when the public can begin to use strongly verified identities within the Identity Ecosystem there is also the choice to use pseudonymous identifiers linked to accountability frameworks as a viable option.
Unless the stakeholder engagement processes focus on broad inclusion and the results are made public, not just posted on a wiki but proactively distributed to foster public discussion, the public socialization and cultural conversations needed for the Identity Ecosystem to succeed won’t happen. It is vital to remember that this is NOT about technology and standards; it is about human beings, living in social systems. An effective strategy for socializing NSTIC with the public will be key to success.
This post is from pages 51-52 of Kaliya’s NSTIC Governance NOI Response – please see this page for the overview and links to the rest of the posts. Here is a link to the PDF.
This is the section before: Insight for Governance [not posted yet..coming in next day]
This is the section after: Summary of NSTIC NOI response [not posted yet..coming in next day]
Leave a Reply