Transition Pathways towards Design Principles of Self-Sovereign Identity

Society\u27s accelerating digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted clearly that the Internet lacks a secure, efficient, and privacy-oriented model for identity. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) aims to address core weaknesses of siloed and federated approaches to digital identity management from both users\u27 and service providers\u27 perspectives. SSI emerged as a niche concept in libertarian communities, and was initially strongly associated with blockchain technology. Later, when businesses and governments began to invest, it quickly evolved towards a mainstream concept. To investigate this evolution and its effects on SSI, we conduct design science research rooted in the theory of technological transition pathways. Our study identifies nine core design principles of SSI as deployed in relevant applications, and discusses associated competing political and socio-technical forces in this space. Our results shed light on SSI\u27s key characteristics, its development pathway, and tensions in the transition between regimes of digital identity management

Transition Pathways towards Design Principles of Self-Sovereign Identity

Society’s accelerating digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted clearly that the Internet lacks a secure, efficient, and privacy-oriented model for identity. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) aims to address core weaknesses of siloed and federated approaches to digital identity management from both users’ and service providers’ perspectives. SSI emerged as a niche concept in libertarian communities, and was initially strongly associated with blockchain technology. Later, when businesses and governments began to invest, it quickly evolved towards a mainstream concept. To investigate this evolution and its effects on SSI, we conduct design science research rooted in the theory of technological transition pathways. Our study identifies nine core design principles of SSI as deployed in relevant applications, and discusses associated competing political and socio-technical forces in this space. Our results shed light on SSI’s key characteristics, its development pathway, and tensions in the transition between regimes of digital identity managemen

An Empty Promise? Digital Democracy in the Smart City

The digital transformation affects every part of our societies and everyday lives, including the processes and structures of our democracies. On the one hand, information and communication technologies have the potential to lower the threshold for political communication and participation. On the other hand, they can be used for large-scale data collection and surveillance, posing a risk to the public sphere. This thesis investigates the impact of digitization on the legitimacy of democracy. It first develops a novel framework based on the theories of participatory and deliberative democracy, drawing on recent work on deliberative systems. On this basis, digital democracy is examined as a system, consisting of different engagement spaces and actors within the smart city. The smart city is a particularly fruitful testbed for digital democracy as it is based on the promise of applying a high density of digital technologies to facilitate civic participation as well as better service delivery and governance. Through an in-depth case study of the smart city of Amsterdam, this thesis not only reveals the legitimacy dilemmas of digital democracy in the smart city, but also illustrates the limits of applying participatorydeliberative systems theory on a digital democracy ecosystem. The analysis demonstrates design conflicts between different online engagement platforms within the digital democracy system, as well as conflicting objectives among the actors behind them. The findings do not support the claim that digitization negatively impacts democracy’s legitimacy in the smart city of Amsterdam through marketization, large-scale data collection, and surveillance, as some authors warn. However, a significant positive impact of digitization on democratic legitimacy, through higher levels of inclusiveness, empowerment, or civic influence, is also not confirmed. The findings show that digital technologies’ promise of facilitating large-scale citizen participation and deliberation in the smart city does not live up to the normative ideal. The results from Amsterdam are exposed to smart city and digital democracy experts across the globe to test their generalizability, demonstrating that, despite its shortcomings, Amsterdam’s extensive digital democracy system is far advanced in international comparison. What may appear a contradiction in fact illustrates that we are still in the early stages of development, with potential to enhance the legitimacy of digital democracy, both in the smart city of Amsterdam and beyond