Underserved Communities
Full Title or Meme
Communities of people who have trouble obtaining and user digital Identities in Cyberspace.
Context
To Provide support vulnerable and underserved populations. At a high level, these populations include those with physical and cognitive disabilities, or who are homeless, impoverished, senior citizens, immigrants, incarcerated, institutionalized and otherwise underserved minority groups that need digital credentials to access online resources; particularly, online healthcare and financial resources. Without an easily reusable identifier, it is nearly impossible for these individuals to gain secure access to the resources and services that may be available to them.
We will work, in collaboration with other private sector and public agencies towards establishing identifiers and access management (IAM) solutions that respect privacy, promote efficiency, limit redundancy, reduce barriers to use/adoption, increase interoperability, improve security, enhance safety and trust, eliminate identification errors, support resiliency, and achieve greater empowerment across the entire spectrum of online transactions. The RIUP WG will identify, coordinate, innovate and harmonize with ongoing and emerging identity initiatives, standards, and technologies, and communicate our findings to all relevant stakeholders, both in the US and, selectively, with other countries, under the leadership of the Kantara Initiative.
(3) A SCOPE – Guidelines for Cultivating a User-Centric Trust and Promoting Adoption within Underserved Communities
To advance a user-friendly, authenticated digital identity platform that will elevate online trust for vulnerable and underserved persons, including both adults and children, and accelerate secure, convenient access, accessibility and accountability, enhanced user privacy of these populations and their delegated caregivers must be protected. The goal is not to advance more challenges and bottlenecks to exploit but to deliver user-friendly, smart device functions, applications and training features that, by incorporating cultural themes and attributes, will aid vulnerable and underserved users to securely navigate online while protecting their privacy and identity.
In order to empower an underserved or vulnerable user to engage with needed services, we must be prepared to demonstrate measured success, hence the need to create guidelines and capabilities with unique design approaches, incentives and dynamic training methods to build a trustworthy accountable messaging process so users can have a say in their data management with accountability. This mission will provide data as well as the ability to dissolve existing systemic barriers and bottlenecks faced by vulnerable and underserved populations.
The Healthcare Industry and Banking/Finance are two of the largest industries that experience the major problems from underserved and vulnerable populations and should be high priorities
(3) B SCOPE – Tools
1. Publish Use Case for Trusted Identifiers for underserved populations
a. Emphasize, highlight and prioritize user scenarios/stories from vulnerable and underserved populations to improve services for all users
b. Test the Use Case and user stories across different verticals and persons of varying backgrounds and cultures
2. Harmonized vocabulary/dictionary
a. Understandable by individual/common knowledge
i. Crosswalk of W3C data privacy vocabulary or similar taxonomies vs human centric/plain language
ii. Could be a combination of plain language and metaphor/semiotics
3. Classes of Identifiers
a. It may be necessary to create separate classes of Identifiers for selected, large, regulated industries, e.g., Finance/Banking and Healthcare among others
b. With funding of the infrastructure law, billions of dollars are tagged to subsidize broadband high-speed internet (AT&T, Verizon and a growing number of ISPs and utilities), to millions of unconnected households, at $30 per month, in rural America. This funding will enhance the reaching in providing access to the underserved. Lowering the barrier to adoption benefits this WG mission, but it will generate a need for a unique ISP identifier matrix of some type that would link to the regulated sectors of first responders, financial/banking, education through 12 and healthcare.
References
- See wiki page on Vulnerable Community which has a high overlap with Underserved Communities
- See the evolving charter on the Resilient Identifiers for Underserved Communities in Kantara'
