Designing a cross-organizational identity management system: Utilizing SSI for the certification of retailer attributes

Abstract

The introduction of blockchain offers new opportunities to rethink enterprise identity management. Recently, a new concept has emerged in the blockchain community called self-sovereign identity. Self-sovereign identity combines several existing decentralized identity management approaches, promising new ways to promote more convenient, connected, and secure identity services for the private and public sector. Nevertheless, research in this area is still in its infancy. Most of the very few articles focus either on the opportunities self-sovereign identity might offer or on very specific technical features. Studies on real-world applications of organizations using modern self-sovereign identity implementations and design theory are very rare. To fill this gap, we follow the design science research approach to design, implement, and evaluate a self-sovereign identity system to present tax attributes of online retailers. We present four design principles and conclude that the use of self-sovereign identity and blockchain offers opportunities to improve verification processes.