A Trustworthy Cross-Border Interoperable Identity System: A Review of the Literature

Table of Links

Abstract & Introduction

Background

Review of Literature

Methodology

Discussion of Findings

Conclusion and Future Work & References

3. Review of Literature

Although interoperability has the potential to create a seamless identity ecosystem for data exchange, verification, and validation of digital identities, and expand the reach of national governments for effective service delivery, there are very few research-based approaches for cross-border interoperable identity systems.

Backhouse and Halperin (2009) posited that the challenge of establishing interoperable systems is enormous, which does not only consider the technical linking of databases and systems. To this effect, they proposed a three-fold conception of interoperability for identity management systems viz-a-viz technical, legal, and regulatory components to enhance data sharing in the provision of e-government.

The factors militating against the full interoperability of federated identity management systems are studied in Catuogno and Galdi (2014). They argued that the tendency for per-site authentication and authorization of ID holders culminates in huge overhead for both the identity/service providers and the ID holders as each site stores different credentials of the user. Therefore, the authors presented Shibboleth as the de facto standard for identity management and point of access to providers of information (PAPI) as a solution that leverages the joining of federations and translation of protocols during cross-federation authentication and authorization (AA) sessions.

Sharma and Panigrahi (2015) proposed a roadmap useful to plan and implement the capabilities of interoperability in e-government solutions. The roadmap considered the notion of knowledge sharing among key stakeholders based on vital legal, regulatory, technical, and organisational components that can foster the interoperability of e-government services.

One significant limitation of this research is its inability to explore cross-country differences in legislation and regulatory requirements, as it focused only on the inputs from stakeholders in India. Also, Kotzé and Alberts (2017) proposed a baseline conceptual model to achieve an egovernment interoperability framework. The model considered the technical, legislative, social, and political environments of South Africa to serve as a guideline for enterprises that are evolving towards e-governance.

Similar studies were carried out by Kanagwa et al. (2018), who investigated the relevance of a national enterprise architecture to support several e-government systems including the systems for the registration of persons in Uganda through semantic interoperability that is achieved based on a set of related ontologies.

Still, in both studies, country-specific technical, legislative, social, and political considerations were made, which indicate the absence of cross-border considerations to interoperability, Saputro et al. (2020) discussed the Estonian XRoad as an e-governance solution for secure data exchange and the interoperability of information systems across nine countries. This notwithstanding, this research did not categorise whether the countries investigated are developed or developing to ascertain the level of inclusion or exclusion required for facilitating e-governance.

In Hölbl, Kežmah and Kompara (2023), the interoperability and compliance issues in eIDAS are discussed. The authors asserted that eIDAS has limited applicability in the public sector since the regulation does not address new market demands with the added complexity of private online providers connecting to the eIDAS network.

Further, the issue of the isolation and inflexibility of notified eID solutions in member states makes it difficult for eIDAS to support a variety of use cases. Domingo and Teevan (2022) discussed the interoperability of cross-border payment solutions to expand trade in Africa. They argued that the success of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) depends largely on the cross-border interoperability of low-value instant payment systems such as mobile money. Consequently, the authors posited that such a policy will enhance inclusion and long-lasting benefits to small-scale businesses.

Additionally, Masiero (2023) argued that the effectiveness of digital identity schemes depends on platform features, which must be considered to comprehend the true extent of harm that digital identification might cause due to interoperability. Furthermore, Benaddi et al. (2023) identified the challenges in data sharing and the interoperability of e-government systems. Their focus was on the technical interoperability of e-government entities to enhance collaboration in the use of public data. However, their approach does not consider crossborder perspectives to data sharing including the identification of entities that consume these data.