Privacy-friendly identity management in eGovernment

Abstract

This paper starts from the empirical finding that privacy principles are not rated very high in current eGovernment architectures. This is problematic because it leads to a substantial privacy erosion and undermines the existing power relations between a government and its citizens with regard to a particularly valuable asset: personal data. Precisely because of these power relations, there are very few incentives for government managers to implement Privacy-Enhanced Identity Management Systems on a large scale in an eGovernment architecture. Hereafter we introduce a less far-going alternative to Privacy-Enhanced Identity Management in eGovernment: "Privacy-Friendly Identity Management". We conclude with a brief analysis of one important driver for government managers to choose for Privacy-Friendly Identity Management: risk management. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.