Reimagining Digital ID

The report explores decentralized ID as an alternative to centralized and federated systems, aiming to give individuals control over their personal data. It identifies a global gap where roughly 850 million people lack legal ID, and argues that decentralized models can improve efficiency and privacy. However, the report notes significant barriers, including technical immaturity, lack of standardized protocols, and regulatory misalignment. It provides a comprehensive set of recommendations for governments and industry to develop interoperable, privacy-preserving identity ecosystems.

• Approximately 850 million people worldwide lack an official legal identification, which hinders their ability to access essential services such as employment, healthcare, education, banking, and voting.
• Decentralized ID utilizes a 'trust triangle' consisting of issuers who sign attestations, holders who manage their credentials, and verifiers who assess those attestations to satisfy requirements.
• The contemporary ID paradigm often relies on intermediated compliance, which can lead to the over-collection of personal data, increased cybersecurity risks, and high compliance costs, estimated at $274.1 billion for financial institutions worldwide in 2022.
• Technical barriers to the mass adoption of decentralized ID include the immaturity of underlying technologies like zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a lack of alignment on standards, and high upfront costs for overhauling legacy systems.
• Digital ID systems carry significant risks of exclusion and oppression, particularly for marginalized groups and women, who constitute the majority of digitally excluded individuals globally.
• Soulbound tokens (SBTs) are proposed as non-transferable cryptoassets for credentials in Web3, but they face challenges regarding the immutability of data and a lack of user consent during minting.
• The IATA Travel Pass served as a decentralized ID pilot during the COVID-19 pandemic to verify health credentials, but it was eventually decommissioned due to poor user-experience design and business scaling limitations.
• Policy barriers include a lack of enabling regulations for reusable credentials in the US and the absence of high-assurance official IDs for millions of citizens, such as the roughly 21 million Americans without official ID.

APA

World Economic Forum (2023). Reimagining Digital ID. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Reimagining_Digital_ID_2023.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Reimagining Digital ID. 2023. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Reimagining_Digital_ID_2023.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Reimagining Digital ID |date=June 2023 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Reimagining_Digital_ID_2023.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2023reimagining, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Reimagining Digital ID}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2023}, month = jun, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Reimagining_Digital_ID_2023.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }