Infographic: Rethinking national digital IDs: A decentralised approach

Have the promises of digitalising national identities fallen short? 

While India’s digital ID system Aadhar has reached more than a billion of people promising inclusive public services, it was reported that as many 815 million Indians’ data including Aadhaar card and passport details were compromised and sold on the dark web. 

“An individual’s privacy is hugely compromised with the government holding terabytes of citizens’ data in Aadhaar-type caches,” the report added. 

Decentralised IDs using blockchain technology has been touted as an effective means to reduce identity fraud cases, especially when the user data is stored on a distributed ledger and not a centralised infrastructure. 

Right here in Asia, the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan rolled out the world’s first decentralised, self-sovereign digital ID, and is looking to export its model to other countries including Papua New Guinea and Rwanda.  

Check out our infographic below, which is an explainer for decentralised IDs, the role of government in decentralisation, as well as the state of decentralised IDs in the rest of Asia-Pacific.