News from HCF Digital Governance Periscope

Geneva, September 16 2024

As we enter the second half of 2024, a time full of global digital governance initiatives, we're excited to share our progress at the Human Colossus Foundation from the governance perspective. This update encapsulates the recent strides of the Swiss E-ID, G20 Digital Public Infrastructure, UN Development Program, and the inaugural event for European Digital Independence.

Distributed Governance

Progress update

In the summer of 2023, the Human Colossus Foundation published Part 1 of the HCF Distributed Governance Model[1]. The model, though abstract in concept, tackles governance through the lens of the Principal-Agent problem. The core idea is to view information systems (i.e. technology) as agents serving users (i.e. humans) -whether individuals, businesses or any sovereign organisation with a decision power.

In today's hyper connected digital society, we lose control over information. It has become challenging to know what happens to the data we share and even more difficult to assess the accuracy of the data we use. Part 1 addressed this need for control and accuracy by introducing a governance framework integrating digital technology with existing (non-digital) frameworks.

While Part 1 lays the conceptual foundation, Part 2 turns theory into action. By collaborating directly with the key players in digital transformation across various sectors, we are building the technology stack that will demonstrate the crucial role of data authenticity and integrity in shaping a digital governance model. This practical approach is a prerequisite to our future work on AI governance for example.

Therefore, Part 2 develops a concept into a reality we shape through multiple projects. We are well underway and excited to share the progress here.

Switzerland’s E-ID - a Sovereign Digital Legal Identity

Sep.10 -Bern The Swiss parliament's high chamber (States Council) agreed to the design principles of the Swiss E-ID by a clear 43 against 1 vote[2]. Together with the low chamber (National Council), they will iron out the remaining differences and pave the way for parliamentary approval in 2024. This agreement further confirms the readiness of the legislative basis for introducing the Swiss E-ID[3].

HCF Contribution: The E-ID project, led by the Federal Department of Justice, has selected HCF's decentralised semantic architecture, Overlays Capture Architecture (OCA) [4] as a core technology for the first E-ID implementation.

As highlighted during the September 5th E-ID Participation Meeting, Swiss E-ID leverages OCA to present verifiable credentials in digital wallets securely. We are proud to be part of this significant project, and more information is available on the E-ID project's official Git-Hub repository[5].

Europe -moves Toward EU Digital Independence

Sep. 24 -Brussels Kick-off event.

A diverse group EU parliament members from different parties and leading European and international experts will gather to engage and discuss the critical building blocks for a secure, accountable digital public infrastructure. The ultimate goal is to firmly establish the objective of European Digital Independence in the next EU Commission agenda. The Human Colossus Foundation has accepted the in-person invitation to participate in this efforts.

HCF Contribution: Digital independence requires technological independence. The Human Colossus develops an Open-Source distributed technology stack to implement applications based on a distributed governance model. Creating these technologies and making them accessible to everyone requires developing an ecosystem of tools to harmonise data across multiple stakeholders (possibly millions) and ensure interoperability across different jurisdictions. The Foundation is creating some of these tools as part of the digital healthcare NextGen EU Horizon project[6] with funding from the EU, Switzerland and UK to integrate sensitive health data (including genomics) in personalised medicine for cardiology. The press release of the European Society of Cardiology provides more information [7].

International -Momentum behind Digital Public Infrastructure

Oct. 1 to 3 -Cairo Global Summit on DPI -Digital Public Infrastructure

The Human Colossus Foundation will be present at this convening of stakeholders in the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) ecosystem. This event will present how the HCF Dynamic Data Economy governance model and technology stack can support DPI implementation strategies for sustainable horizontal scaling. Our approach enables effective data exchange for economic development.

HCF Contribution: In 2023, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) published a Legal Digital Entity Framework[7]. Within that framework, UNDP develops the model governance assessment for data exchanges that respect the country's (i.e. sovereign entities) existing governance and fundamental Human Rights principles. The Human Colossus Foundation is part of a UNDP Advisory Board that provides its expertise in developing this work.

Current Work at the Foundation:

The above initiatives provide input for the continuous development of the core HCF technologies. They help to demonstrate the essential relevance of accurate data for digital governance. From a governance perspective, we can summarise them as follows:

The 'Ambient Infrastructure' is a reputation-based authentication system built upon the decentralised key management infrastructure KERI (Key Events Log Receipts Infrastructure). Launched in 2023 as part of the EU Horizon 2020 eSSIF-Lab project[9], the Ambient Infrastructure is now advancing in NextGen, an EU Horizon project focused on personalised cardiovascular medicine.
Version 2.0 of the OCA specification[4] supporting the OCA ecosystem. Decentralised semantics architectures are significant developments for digital governance to ensure the respect of different sovereign digital governance.
OCA Ecosystem v1.0. Community based solutions and tooling including extensions (i.e. overlays not part of the core specification). The Human Colossus Research and Technology Councils have open a dedicated focus group to collect community requirements.

This ecosystem, featuring a suite of tools and protocols, ensures consistent and interoperable data flows across multiple stakeholders and jurisdictions.

Conclusion

The Human Colossus Foundation has a busy autumn ahead. If you would like to help map a distributed governance framework into real-world applications, the HCF Research Council invites you to join its new Focus Group.

Joining this group will provide you with the opportunity to work closely with our team, share your expertise, and help shape the future of digital governance. We are also expanding our network of subject matter experts. Please get in touch with rc@humancolossus.org to learn more and express your interest.

References

[1] “Distributed Governance: a Principal-Agent Approach to Data Governance -- Part 1 Background & Core Definitions”, P.Page, P.Knowles, R.Mitwicki, arXiv:2308.07280v2 [cs.CY] , Aug. 15 2023

[2] “PARLAMENT IST SICH ÜBER AUSGESTALTUNG DER E-ID IM GRUNDSATZ EINIG”, SDA
KEYSTONE-SDA-ATS AG, September 10 2024

[3] “Parliament gets closer to finalising new digital ID scheme”, Swiss Info.ch, September 10 2024

[4] “Overlays Capture Architecture: Official Resources”, ColoSSI Network website, August 2023

[5] “Specification de Design pour les preuves électroniques”, Swiss E-ID Participation-Meeting, September 9 2024

[6] “Next Generation Tools for Genome-Centric Multimodal Data Iintegration in Personalised Cardiovascular Medicine”, EU Horizon Grant Number 101136962, funded by the EU, the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, and UK Research & Innovation.

[7] “Heart patients set to receive treatment tailored to their genetic and health information”, European Society of Cardiology Press Release, February 12 2024
[8] “UNDP Model Governance Framework for Digital Legal Identity Systems“, United Nation Development Programme & Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Link as of September 16 2024

[9] “Decentralized Key Management Infrastructure for SSI by The Human Colossus Foundation“, NGI eSSIF-Lab project July 2021

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