Good ID supports multiple development goals

Why does the identity gap ID matter? Inclusive and trusted—i.e., “good”—ID systems are crucial tools for achieving sustainable development, including the World Bank Group’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. For this reason, ensuring that everyone has access to identification is the explicit objective of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 16.9—to “provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” by 2030.

Furthermore, identification is also a key enabler or contributor to many other SDG targets, such as financial and economic inclusion, social protection, healthcare and education for all, gender equality, child protection, agriculture, good governance, and safe and orderly migration (see Box 1). For these reasons, identification is widely-recognized as being instrumental to realizing the SDG promise to “leave no one behind.”

Inclusive and trusted ID systems can help achieve these goals by:

• Empowering individuals and enhancing their access to rights, services, and the formal economy. With proof of identity, individuals are empowered to access basic financial, health, and social services for which identification is often a prerequisite (see Box 1). The ability to prove your identity or particular attributes (e.g., age) is also essential to accessing key rights, such as voting and the prevention of child marriage, as well as economic opportunities such as labor mobility, formal employment, and property rights. These opportunities and protections are particularly necessary for vulnerable populations who are also least likely to have proof of identity, including those living in poverty, marginalized women and girls, inhabitants of rural and remote areas, refugees, stateless populations, and migrants.

• Strengthening the transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness of governance and service delivery. Central to a government’s ability to deliver services to its people—including education, healthcare, safety nets, pension payments, land registration, agricultural extension, and more—is knowledge of who those people are and relevant attributes (see Box 2). For governments, ID systems therefore play an important role in enhancing the capacity to ensure that government to person (G2P) transfers, such as cash transfers, wages, and subsidies, reach their intended beneficiaries, and are not subject to leakage or fraud. Digital ID systems can also improve services by creating a foundation on which to build new modes of delivery, including e-government and direct benefits transfers and increasing the overall efficiency of administration.

• Supporting private sector development and service delivery. As in the public sector, private enterprises also have identification and authentication needs for their clients. For example, a bank’s ability to offer services—such as opening a bank account or securing a loan—requires a certain knowledge about a prospective client’s identity and the ability to ensure that they are interacting with the same person (and not an identity thief) over time. Trustworthy ID credentials can thus reduce operating costs for private firms associated with identity verification for regulatory compliance (e.g., know-your-customer or customer due diligence requirements), widen customer bases, generate new markets, and support a business-friendly environment more broadly.

• Growing the digital economy. Given the fundamental need for secure and accurate online identification and authentication, digital ID and other trust services—such as e-signatures—form part of the core foundation or a “stack” needed for successful digital economies. When enabled by digital infrastructure that brings people and organizations online, digital ID and trust services can be leveraged by government and commercial platforms to facilitate a variety of digital transactions, including digital payments. Together, digital ID and payments platforms provide the means to move towards a cashless society, creating productivity gains, reducing corruption and fraud, and further improving user convenience.

• Regional and global integration. With economies and societies becoming more integrated across the world, identification can accelerate these physical and digital connections. Physical or digital foundational IDs can be recognized as a travel document in lieu of a passport, which can streamline travel and make migration more accessible. Similarly, digital IDs issued by one country can be recognized by other countries, enabling trusted transactions to take place across borders (e.g. entering contracts or registering businesses), thereby boosting the economic and social inclusion of migrants and facilitating trade.

• Generating reliable and continuous statistics to measure progress and inform policy. Civil and population registers are a critical administrative sources of demographics and vital statistics, which in turn provide essential evidence to support the ability of governments and the private sector to engage in long-term planning and policy making in areas such as public health and infrastructure. For example, civil registration—with inputs from the health sector—enables policymakers to monitor cause of death and maternal and infant mortality rates and to rapidly respond to epidemics (e.g., HIV/AIDS and non-communicable diseases).

These benefits can increase substantially with the adoption of digital technology—including electronic databases and credentials, biometric recognition for automated deduplication of identity records and/or authentication, mobile devices and applications, and interoperability platforms (see Figure 2)—that improve the accuracy of identity data and increase the efficiency of identity verification and authentication. However, while ID systems can create opportunities to further development goals, they also present multiple important challenges and risks.

Figure 2. Building blocks of digital ID systems

Source: Adapted from the Digital Identity Toolkit