Identity Inclusion – Why it Matters

Right. Cool. So what is Women in Identity?

Well, let me start by telling you what it's not. Women in Identity is not just about women. Women in Identity was started in 2019 by a small group of, yes, at the time women started the organization and we now have over 2000 members globally. We're still predominantly run by volunteers, but essentially our mantra and our vision and our mission is really around inclusion and around diversity of all diversity within the digital identity industry. So we believe that digital identity solutions intended for everyone are built by everyone. What does that mean? Sounds like quite a lofty goal.

Why might we want that to be the case? So what I want to do now is just land us all in the area of bias.

I'm bias, everybody here in this room is bias. It is absolutely a human trait and it helps us sort through information it makes us think quickly, helps us with fight or flight, but everybody has it Now. One of the challenges with biases is, you know, they can be conscious, they can be unconscious.

And when, just like everybody in this room, we are involved in building products, what might that mean? What are the implications of bias unconscious and conscious bias within product design? So here are some examples of bias within product design. I dunno if anyone has seen this. There's a lots of YouTube videos. You can go Google it if you want to, but there's an example and it was actually one of the Facebook offices of a black man trying to use a soap dispenser in the Facebook offices.

And when he put his hand under the soap dispenser, it did not dispense soap, but when he got a piece of white tissue paper and put it under the soap dispenser, it then dispensed soap. So this is the headline for that particular one, but you can go Google that example. Here's another example. Crash Test Dummies for many years were male sized crash test dummies. So what was the impact of that?

And it's not because anyone's like a, it's not cause anyone's a bad person and they go, I'm a bad person, I'm gonna wake up in the morning and I'm gonna, you know, create seat belts that are bad for women. That that's not what happens. What happens tends to be just a group of people that are very similar, perhaps in this case it was probably men and going, well how do we, how do we test seat belts?

Well, let's get a crash. Crash test. Dummy happens to be the size of a man. And so they weren't tested, seat belts weren't tested on women for many years and that did result in more injuries for women and more fatalities for women. Here's another example. When YouTube was first created, all of the people that were designing the app were right-handed. So what they found when they first launched the app is about five to 10% of videos uploaded by users were upside down because those people were left-handed. So these are the implications of bias in product design.

And like I say, it's not because anyone is a bad person because they want to design bad products, it's because it's just unconscious biases. So what's the potential for bias in identity systems and is that happening?

Well, when we think about it and the people that we're designing some of these systems and have designed some of these systems, do we think the user, the inventors of Weblo, were thinking about this user? Probably not. Or this one, probably not this one either. What does that mean on what the implications in our world of digital identity to the, the products that we are designing? And we're starting to see examples of this, right?

So, you know, we've seen issues around biometric systems not working for darker-skinned people and darker-skinned females in particular. We see lots of issues about systems being built, digital identity systems being built on systems where people don't have, are a, aren't able to prove their identity in the identification domain to actually get into the digital domain. There's just under 1 billion people that can't actually prove their identity cuz they don't have the finite foundational identity documents.

So these create real challenges throughout our ecosystem and how we build our systems and how if we think about the systems that we are building and we want those systems to be the key to unlock the banks online banking or government systems or healthcare systems. If we want our systems, our identity systems, to allow that to happen, we have to be thinking about inclusive design for our systems. We have to allow, you know, the, we have to think about the potential bias within the systems that we're building. So it matters because humanity is really diverse.

You know, I flew here yesterday on a plane, you know, I've got a passport, I've got a driving license license that doesn't affect, you know, it doesn't affect me not having those dig those, those documents to be able to get a digital identity. You know, I've not ever incurred a problem with having, you know, biometrics, my biometrics taken, but there are people that have those problems. Humanity is incredibly diverse. And so we really as an industry have to really think about the users and the people that we're developing it for.

And too often what we do is we think about ourselves and solving the problem for ourselves or even in the group that we're working in, sometimes we're quite challenged to think about outside of ourselves and how those systems might work for others. But ultimately identity systems are about humans and humans. It is incredibly diverse. So we really have to think about it. So who's responsible for it? Is it the government? Is it a bank?

You know, if a, an I digital identity system is unable to allow somebody to access the banking application, is it the bank's responsibility? Well I think we at women in Identity believe that it is, it's everybody's responsibility and in this room, Everybody in this room has a huge opportunity to ensure that the systems that we are building are inclusive. That we are not excluding people from using those systems and they're able to access their bank account and their healthcare and their government, you know, their government things that it might need to do.

So we believe it's the responsibility of everybody. So what are we doing about it at Women in Identity? And I'm gonna hand over to Melissa who's gonna talk you through it.

Perfect, thank you very much Emma. So at Women In Identity we're really focused on a research project that will focus on identity inclusion. And if we move to the next slide, Emma, hopefully this works for us. Perfect. We actually, as we embarked on this research project, we realized there was very little guidance on how to tackle this. And it's part of the reason that at Royal Bank of Canada, we not only sponsor women in identity, but we also sponsored the research project.

We, we saw, especially on the onset of the pandemic, that many organizations were forced to digitize their services. And when they did that they not only had to become cyber experts, but they had to become identity experts. We sought to ensure that there was a practical and pragmatic guide for adopting this. And so we have, if we move to the next slide, a four step process and we're halfway through our journey. So the first step of this process was to do a literature review.

The literature review was important to us because we wanted to see what the current research was out there and evidence of exclusion across all digital identity ecosystems that didn't render as much information as we wanted. And so we, we then decided to focus on the second step, which was the human impact of identity. All too often organizations focus on technology and so we wanted to ensure that the HU human, the ID was at the center people process and then technology and some of the results were surprising. We learned a number of things across this.

Number one, we learned that users don't have the ability to obtain ID or documentation and then as a result they don't get services. We realized that a lack of finances to obtain documentation will render them not being able to get those services. And then also a lack of knowledge on the exception process. When we went to embark on this study, we realized that across the globe we needed to finite, put finite scope to our study. And so we focused on the financial industry and we focused on two markets, the emerging market and a mature market for the emerging market.

We picked Ghana and for the mature market we picked the UK and the results were somewhat surprising, at least for me, it broke some of my own biases. And so if we move to the next slide, there are a number of short YouTube videos, maybe a minute, two minutes. And so if you're waiting for a plane at the Berlin airport stuck on the tarmac, then that's an opportunity to watch some of these videos. I'll tell you some of the videos I saw and the experiences I had.

The first one was a story of vanet in Ghana and their story was interesting because they had a bank account, they had the ID to obtain the bank account, they invested in the bank account, but Vanet was in the process of transitioning. And so in the process of transitioning, their identity was not taken, their form of identity was not taken by the financial institute and so they couldn't take the money out of the banks and they went to multiple locations in order to do that so many miles away.

When we looked at stories from the uk, we heard a story of Ayesha and Ayesha's story was she was new to the country, she had documentation, a passport to get into the country, but unfortunately that wasn't sufficient documentation to get a bank account. And so her children and her often felt they were being treated like criminals. And then you think about the story of Terry in Terry's story, he had been in the country for 59 years but still didn't have a form of identity that allowed him to get into into get a bank account.

And while he wanted to work, it's very difficult to find a job without a bank account. In addition to the YouTube videos that are found on our women identity site, we also have the full report. There were five things that we discovered through that full report. The first thing was that the user really has to be the center of the identity ecosystem. And that's across all systems, not necessarily just across a single system. The second thing we discovered is it's not one size fits all. If you look at the way the society is changing our processes and our customer journeys need to change as well.

The third thing was we really have to reduce the burden of identity on the user. And so we have to rely on things like proportionality, vouching, K Y C E K Y C, drawn government and other documentation in the fourth area that we discovered and are going to become the foundation of our next steps that we need to account for the identities extended network. If you think of the Alzheimer patient who relies on their caregiver to assist them when they're working with the financial organizations, that's something that we as technologists need to build into our processes.

And finally, diversity needs to start at design through the entire life cycle. Now if we move to the next slide, we're excited to say that we're embarking on our next two phases. And so two B really looks at the economic impact of identity exclusion. Not only what happens to the users financially, but what happens to the businesses. And then we are eager to start what we're calling the code of conduct, the minimum practical guidelines for identity inclusion for organizations.

Finally, no process or no step is complete without being able to measure that. And our final stage is the implementation framework. We move to the next slide Emma. So how can you be involved? Well firstly share some of these stories. So watch some of the stories and then share with others. Engage not only within your organization but in continue to engage in discussions on this topic. Collaborate. So we too are breaking our own bias cuz we are bias. And so it's really important that through this study we're looking for as many people across the globe, across industries to collaborate with.

And then finally sponsorship. And while we are a non-profit and we do seek op options for fundraising, we're seeking those outside the box as well. People to help us build these YouTube videos, people to help us build sites. Anything and everything that you can do to assist us in this, the better and the richer our solutions will be. And so with that, if we move to the next slide, what's really important is as many people as possible, if you want to join us, it's free to join women in Identity. And so look forward to that from a women and identity perspective.

Just before we turn it over to questions, we just wanted to thank Oxana yore and the rest of the KuppingerCole team for not only giving us the opportunity to speak here, but we do have two other sessions. So we have one tomorrow, a panel discussion and we have one on Thursday, which is we're going to give an early look to the EIC of our next phase and some of the research in a report we'll be issuing this week. Not sure if there's any questions. I can't. I see that works. Thanks Melissa. Thanks Emma. It worked.

Yeah, we were, I was just looking for some questions but still there. No, no questions. But I was actually wondering for which, are you already in contact with other organizations with whom you could start implementing this?

Yeah, so I mean we've been talking to a number of the banks cuz I think you know, a number of the banks were obviously really interested in, in the UK and obviously RBC is, you know, Royal Bank of Canada involved. I think cuz the banks are very interested about ensuring that they are able to get users onto their, you know, onto their platforms. So for sure we're talking to the banks.

And then we're, we're also, as we go into the phase of the, the sprint phases in the code of conduct, we've got governments involved, we've got other nonprofits involved, relying parties like the banks and we've got other identity companies involved as well. Yeah, yeah. Perhaps the final question from my side, I think you talked about inclusion, I think on, on, on, on in this world we also have the other problem. So I recently was visiting the UAE and they also already have an digital id, which everyone must have. So they actually have no re no choice. They cannot refuse it.

So how can we deal with this problem? What the exclusion side of it or, Yeah, so, so they, everyone must have an identity, a digital identity. Yeah. So they cannot even say I don't want one. So I mean I believe it should be choice. Yeah.

You know, so we have to give people lots of different options by which they can either get a digital identity or decide that they potentially don't want to. I know there is other work happening elsewhere around things like in-person briefing so that you can go in person to enroll for a digital identity if you want one.

I mean, where I am in the, in the UK and if we look across, you know, Europe deciding to have a digital identity is more often than not optional. So, and I think making it mandatory is something that is a political thing. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for this. Thank you. Interesting presentation. Thanks to both.