Self-Sovereign Identity Ecosystems: Benefits and Challenges

Verifiable credentials, coupled with decentralized ledger technologies, have been potential providers of trustworthy digital identity for individuals, organizations, and other entities, and thus, potential enablers of trustful digital interactions. The rapid development of this technology—called self-sovereign identity (SSI)—and the ecosystems built around it have been fostered even more by the societal needs stemming from the current pandemic crisis, when governments, non-profit organizations, businesses, and individuals are working together on different aspects of SSI to enable mainstream adoption. In this study, we build on rich qualitative data gathered from SSI practitioners to give a fresh overview of the perceived benefits and challenges of SSI. The paper advances research on the domain of SSI adoption and provides valuable insights into the feasibility of SSI for practitioners both in the private and public sectors

Digital Me : Controlling and Making Sense of My Digital Footprint

Peer reviewe

Seizing the business opportunities of MyData service delivery network: Transforming the Business Models for Health Insurance Companies

Purpose: This paper discusses how personal data-driven service delivery networks based on MyData phenomenon may impact and transform the business models and offer new kinds of business opportunities especially for health insurance business Design/Methodology/Approach: This research is a case study / empirical Findings: This study demonstrates how health insurance organizations are heading towards acting as active members of human centric, collaborative service delivery networks. The biggest opportunity transformation from transaction based to service-based businesss Research limitations/implications:  As the use of personal data is still a paradigm in Europe, the results of this study address the potential use and implications and cannot be validated through large-scale empirical studies. Practical implications: This research highlights how companies should build adaptable service architecture that are easily connected or disconnected from the other organizations in their business ecosystems in order to allow smooth data usage and sharing. The service delivery network approach may offer insurance companies the needed structure and role in the emerging MyData business. &nbsp

Individual control and data protection. Looking back and moving forward.

This work aims at investigating the concept of “individual control over personal data”, as a core constituent of data protection law. In an era in which personal data have become a main driving force behind innovation, growth and prosperity; companies and governments are at war to gain new usable knowledge; technological advances are upstaging expectations in terms of what can be inferred, predicted and manipulated through data, and people are milked at an increasing speed to fulfill the generalized data hunger, calls to bring individuals back in control of their personal data and develop a more individual-friendly data ecosystem have been increasingly pressing. Yet, older and newer hurdles still hinder a satisfactory implementation of this vision. Against this backdrop, this work intends to investigate in depth the notion of “individual control” in the data protection realm and its persisting shortcomings, and attempt to further explore what steps could be made to move forward, in order to offer the necessary support or supplementation to this underlying principle of data protection. To this end, the analysis starts by providing a historical overview to track the emergence of this notion in the European data protection context, taking into account the role assigned to the concept of “control” in the doctrinal debate, its legal manifestation within regulatory provisions (at national, international and EU level) and the approach of the CJEU jurisprudence on the matter. The analysis further considers the manifold issues that undermine the effective implementation of the idea of individual control, particularly as a result of the technological changes that have transformed our society and revolutionized the way in which we live and communicate. Finally, in light of the shortcomings affecting the privacy self-management logic, the work seeks to explore possible a selection of mechanisms and approaches that, if adequately leveraged and implemented, could offer effective support and complementation to the individual control model, with a view to increasing the level of protection offered to individuals. These mechanisms include both “individual-centric” measures, whose leading actors remain data subjects and whose objective is to enhance the means individuals can use to gain better control, but also measures that move beyond a strict “data subject-focused” dimension, in that they are addressed to different societal actors and approach data protection from a broader collective rather than strictly individualistic perspective. As the analysis shows, there is, unfortunately, no silver bullet. However, the promotion and valorization of the proposed mechanisms and the combined benefits that these could bring, in their own way, on the data protection table are a first essential step to start building a systemic and comprehensive response to the protection gaps that afflict individuals and society as a result of the weaknesses currently affecting the individual control logic