Prioritizing Access and Safety Q&A on Service Design in Digital Identity
The Digital Benefit Network's Digital Identity Community of Practice held a session to hear considerations from civil rights technologists and human-centered design practitioners on ways to ensure program security while simultaneously promoting equity, enabling accessibility, and minimizing bias.
The “Prioritizing Access and Safety Q&A on Service Design in Digital Identity” event, hosted by the Digital Benefits Network’s Digital Identity Community of Practice on March 5, focused on ensuring accessibility and equity in digital identity solutions.
Hannah Quay-de la Vallee, Senior Technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), kicked off the event by addressing key considerations for identity management in public services. Her presentation covered privacy, accessibility, equity, and deployment context, emphasizing the importance of protecting privacy and civil rights in digital identity verification systems. Read more: CDT’s Digital Identity Verification Best Practices for Public Agencies.
The next segment featured Devin Nguyen (Principal Software Engineer) and Julia Ford (Senior Director of Partner Success) from AidKit, who discussed the engineering of ID verification systems that work for everyone. They highlighted the role of community engagement for successful identity verification, stressing the importance of designing human-centered identity verification systems and its significant return on investment.
Audience questions during the event touched on the challenges of integrating secure digital identity verification with existing service provider systems where backend processes may not align with secure identity management. Speakers also addressed the role of community partnerships in building trust, inclusivity of biometric systems, including the differences between 1:1 and 1:M matching, and the potential of passwordless authentication technologies like FIDO to improve accessibility for diverse users.
If you’re interested in participating in similar events consider joining the Digital Identity Community of Practice.
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