Enhanced Digital Identity Model for Humanitarian Agencies in Kenya

Abstract

Digital identity systems have the ability to enhance the core elements of the sustainable development goals ensuring no one is left behind. These includes, enhancing digital inclusion, strengthening access to legal identity, improved accountability and effectiveness in delivery of social protection. Humanitarian agencies are exposed to risks such as commodity losses, disallowed costs, and damaged reputation caused by shortfalls in the existing beneficiary identification systems that have led to falsification of identity documents, siloed registries, duplication of assistance, and inadequate privacy safeguards. The study aimed to develop an enhanced digital identity model for beneficiary targetting and registration that will support equal access to data for all humanitarian actors and linkages with civil registries. The literature review details the Kenyan identity ecosystem and discusses identity frameworks within the humanitarian sector. The study further discusses factors affecting beneficiary identification and the current digital identity trends in social protection. The proposed conceptual model was adopted from the Christopher Allen Self Sovereign identity framework and the World Bank identity guidelines. A survey was conducted to obtain quantitative data from 74 humanitarian actors, and the sample data was evaluated using factor and regression analysis. The study found that access, privacy, persistence, governance, and interoperability are the key components when designing a beneficiary-centric identity system for humanitarian actors. Awareness, funding, resource allocation, support and ownership were moderating, affecting all the relationships between the independent and dependent variables.