A World Economic Forum (WEF) think-tank produced a definitive 46-page report illustrating its ethos and purpose of a worldwide unifying digital data management policy..The WEF’s report defines digital ID as “an electronic ID (…) equivalent to an individual’s identity card, which is a way to provide verified information about a person to a program for processing.”.The ID can be used in both offline and online environments..The report, Advancing Digital Agency: The Power of Data Intermediaries, written by members of the Task Force on Data Intermediaries at the WEF, describes how the initiative would centralize data about social media, taxes, voting, food traceability, healthcare, telecommunications, and commercial and personal business transactions..In short, globally positioned central databases would pull together the Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Bodies (IoB), and global e-commerce data, among other data points, as it relates to business and personal information..Many people will already be familiar and perhaps comfortable with biometric-based digital ID systems that have already become popular and ubiquitous in Western economies after having been adopted by financial institutions for transactions and a cash-free shopping experience. Such authentication and authorization processes were described in the report as “real time and free of hassle.”.The WEF explores the potential to outsource human decision points to an agent acting on an individual’s behalf, in the form of a data intermediary..“In this Insight Report, the World Economic Forum’s Taskforce on Data Intermediaries explores the potential to outsource human decision points to an agent acting on an individual’s behalf, in the form of a data intermediary,” the WEF says on its website about the report..Despite the comprehensive and overarching nature of the proposed new global digital architecture, the report acknowledges concerns about privacy and data security and mentions “privacy” almost 40 times in the document..The report describes how data management and personal privacy concerns can be addressed by data intermediaries..“Data intermediaries can take many forms, but what they share is a primary purpose of facilitating and managing data relations between data rights holders (such as people or businesses), depending on the parties’ relationships, intentions and resources. They do so by encapsulating, communicating and enacting the shared interests of the relevant parties and safeguarding their interests. At their most basic level they facilitate the exchange of information, at their most sophisticated they can assume decision-making, including on behalf of people,” said the report..Reports and white papers on the topic of digital ID are becoming a central focus for the WEF and the topic is a major part of the WEF’s Great Reset agenda. The agenda aims to transform the world’s economy and its institutions.. Klaus SchwabKlaus Schwab. Courtesy of BBC .Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum, anticipates a revolutionary merging of the physical, digital, and biological worlds to radically alter “what it means to be human.”.Amanda Brown is a Western Standard reporter
