iterated version

CONCLUSION PART 1: hybrid solutions are dominating the new digital identity landscape (INSIGHTS)

• Today, we are at the crossroads when it comes to digital identities, whether it is establishing a system of masssurveillance by States and/or companies or a digitally secure system that respects the freedoms of citizens to present themselves in any identity they wish. Of course, we favor the latter.

Several studies highlight the growing significance of national digital identity as crucial but contested systems — both as a response to the digital acceleration caused by COVID-19 and the emergence of governments' digital sovereignty ambitions (Naghmouchi et al., 2023; Anand & Brass, 2021; Fernández, 2022; Sedlmeir et al., 2022).

These studies draw a clear link between the urgency to "solve digital identity" (Stokkink & Pouwelse, 2018) and the considerable evolution of digital identity management models over the past decade — from centralised and federated systems, which spread risk but leave individuals dependent on institutional gatekeepers, to the emergence of user-centred and self-sovereign identity (SSI) models that look to place individuals at the centre of identity management to protect their privacy and security (Rim, 2023; Weigl, Barbereau & Fridgen, 2023; Zwitter et al., 2020; Wang & De Filippi, 2020).

• they also speak about governance
• and the experiential factors from a citizens perspective which impact its social acceptance.

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For conclusion: Overall, the literature broadly uses centralised identity management models as a way of framing digital identity as an inherently political system that has the ability to reshape the relationship between citizens and the state.

Overall, the literature frames centralised identity management not as a neutral technical solution but as a profoundly political system that reshapes the relationship between citizens and the state. Overall, the centralised model reflects how digital identity infrastructure is not a neutral technology, but a deeply political system that reshapes relationships between individuals and the state.

—a point complimented by earlier findings which demonstrate that low user trust, shaped by administrative processes with limited accountability (5.3), is a potential barrier to the adoption of national identity systems (Anand & Brass 2021; Degen & Teubner, 2024; Sellung & Kubach, 2023; Tan et al. 2023).

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Digital identity infrastructures are not neutral technologies—they are expressions of how states imagine and perform digital sovereignty. Federated, centralized, or decentralized models encode distinct logics of power, shaping not only who controls data, but also how citizens experience their rights, responsibilities, and identities in the digital age.

• These shifts reflect critical trade-offs between control, security, privacy, and interoperability, with contemporary systems often combining elements from multiple models.
• Contemporary national digital identity systems now vary widely, facing a range of technical design choices with significant implications for citizen privacy, service interoperability, adoption by public and private sectors, and states' digital sovereignty objectives.
• Governments are seeking to maintain sovereign authority over identification infrastructure while honouring individual rights, autonomy and consent. This is visible through the evolving architectural models that governments are deploying as ‘hybrids’ of the models described above (maintaining regulatory oversight while shifting technical control to individuals.)

CONCLUSION: The technological and infrastructural choices underpinning national digital identity systems are fundamentally political, shaping how digital sovereignty is articulated and exercised. Centralised models maximise state control but increase systemic risks and citizen vulnerability; federated models distribute authority across trusted actors while maintaining a degree of central oversight; and self-sovereign identity models radically reframe sovereignty by empowering individuals as primary holders of their identity data. Across all models, tensions persist between state authority, individual autonomy, and systemic resilience, demonstrating that digital identity infrastructure is never a neutral tool — it actively redefines the relationship between citizens, the state, and the evolving digital order.

working draft

"The technological centralisation observed in India's Aadhaar system thus not only defines its infrastructure but also reflects broader patterns of executive-led governance (explored further in 5.3). Such alignments suggest that technical architectures and political arrangements can be mutually reinforcing rather than independently determined.”