Identification for Development It Is Not: ‘Inclusive and Trusted Digital ID Can Unlock Opportunities for the World’s Most Vulnerable.’- a Review

Abstract

This review and annotated version of a July 2019 World Bank blog post on digital ID examines and challenges the favorable claims made about the benefits of digital ID by its main advocate, the World Bank and its Identification for Development (ID4D) practice. The essence of their claims is: digital ID includes those left out, and (digital) identification will deliver (economic) development. There is no satisfactory, robust evidence for these claims, which might well be the reason why the claims are mostly made in qualitative and, often, in ambiguous and vague terms. The champions also have ridden the wave of the Sustainable Development Agenda, especially with regards to ‘leaving no one behind’ (financial inclusion) and ‘SDG 16.9’ re ‘a legal identity for all by 2030’. These objectives have been married to digitization, digital ID and biometrics that the apostles of this agenda swish as magic wand (the ‘biometrics revolution’) that separates the waters and leads to the promised land in record time (even by 2022 according to one of the high priests). But scratch the surface and a different economic policy agenda becomes unmistakable. In fact the gospel comes down to: ‘service-oriented, digital ID’ will lower the cost of doing business. But at the same time it entails commodification of people’s data, and leads to ‘surveillance capitalism’. People’s rights to a legal identity are secondary, or, at best, will trickle down in the process. In this review we look at costs and benefits of digital ID in a more formal format, by looking at a number of relevant studies of benefits and costs of digital ID (and digital society) for the world, India, the United States, Zambia, Haiti, Ireland, the Netherlands, Uganda and the United Kingdom. In a next chapter we examine more specifically and quantitatively the claims that (new, digital) national ID systems make good on the promise of financial inclusion. Evidence to that effect, or to the contrary, is sparse. But what data there are—for the world, India, Ghana, Indonesia, Namibia, Pakistan, Uganda and Zambia—we present in this paper, and the data contradict the identification for inclusion gospel. That is especially ironic for Indonesia that holds the world record for digital ID project fraud (such fraud being common in digital ID projects). As for India: its Aadhaar ID, indirectly, led in 2019 to an explosion of social unrest, putting a blood-stained bookend to digital ID for unsustainable development, and laying bare the fallacy of Aadhaar as a source of ‘robust ID.’