Data Privacy Across the Digital Divide

With all the controversy surrounding the privacy practices of facebook and Google it is hard to lose sight of the stark personal choices we face regarding our digital data. Yet billions of new users are coming online and facing this question for the first time. Are they prepared?

Digital identities have become a fundamental building block of civic life in many emerging market contexts. Establishing your online identity, and navigating various levels of data privacy and consent, are no longer just necessary to social media and ecommerce. In an increasing number of societies, digital identities are key to establishing your right to welfare services like rations, guaranteed employment, etc...They are even key to private services such as purchasing a mobile sim or signing up for a banking account. Too often policy and decision-makers assume that either these users don’t really care about their identities, are not smart enough to make good choices, or existing best practices will suffice to make government accessible to all.

Yet our design research demonstrates just the opposite. These users care deeply about their identities when they have a greater awareness of potential benefits but also potential harms. And they are already feeling the concerns and consequences as they interact with poorly designed digital identity systems, like Aadhaar, the state-run biometric platform developed by the Indian government with more than 1.2 billion users. Our Mumbai based design team has conducted extensive design research to see this and other national identity systems through the eyes of these users. And we have leveraged these insights to inform policymakers at the highest levels, including the supreme court of India and the government of Indonesia.

What have we found? That people care as long as you make it tangible. That people most at risk, such as transgender or migrant workers, have little recourse to safeguard and correct their data. That there is a huge design gap between online systems and the civil servants who are in charge of supporting them. That the principles and metaphors behind the very concept of identity – of logging in – are too often drawn from design patterns grounded in western institutions and workflow. This fascinating talk will share examples from our research, provide principles and best practices and galvanize the design community to make informed choices when designing products and services that significantly leverage people’s data, particularly for those most in need.