In the real world, most of us can ‘feel’ when a situation is not trustworthy. Subconsciously, we have our own ‘policies’ to help us make decisions on whether to trust or not trust. This comes from our personal and shared lived experiences, building up our personal ‘trust muscle memory’ over time.

“I don’t buy from door-to-door salesmen”, “I don’t walk down that street at night” or “My children can’t go to parties where I haven’t met the parents” and so on. We sometimes override our ‘gut feeling’, no doubt, and may break our own policies from time to time. Whilst trust is important, it is also subjective, evolving and hard to define.

People transact more when they trust in the environment in which they do so; the people, the processes and the places. Most importantly, they need to have confidence in the rules and how to seek redress if things go wrong. Trust is important for business: it lowers the cost of transacting.

Countries prosper where they have a ‘trust infrastructure’. ‘Brand’ and ‘reputation attract people to a market’.

Digital trust

The internet was built without a “trust infrastructure” but that hasn’t stopped it from being hugely successful; over the last three decades it has revolutionised every aspect of our world. But trust is waning.

New statistics indicate that digital fraud and criminality are accelerating. The Economist’s podcast, Scam Inc, has highlighted a rational and replicable economic model behind digital criminality. AI has become the scammer’s friend, putting new powers in their hands.

As problems of fraud and misinformation continue to rise, the burden of establishing trust seems to land increasingly on people and businesses. Most of us do not have the skills or expertise to understand what we should and shouldn’t trust in the digital world. The need for a trust infrastructure is becoming more apparent.

Trust and Identity Orchestration services

Governments can’t make people trustworthy, but they can create an environment in which people can trust one another. The UK government is establishing in law a ‘Trust Framework’ under which the trust infrastructure for the digital economy will develop.

The Data (Use and Access) Bill is currently in the final stages of its process through the UK parliament. It will bring into effect the Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF).

In this series of blog posts, we will explore key facets of the Trust Framework. We start by exploring what we call Trust and Identity Orchestration (TIDO) services and why these will be a critical component in making the UK digital economy an attractive place to do business.

Digital policies for trust

As in the real-world examples above, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to establishing trust digitally. How trust is established will vary from transaction to transaction, context to context and from person to person. But policies help the decision-making process and TIDO services ensure that these policies are enforced digitally.

The Trust Framework allows different digital policies to be defined for each context by the appropriate authorities. Already, secondary legislation has been passed so an employer can check a new employee’s right to work in the UK digitally in compliance with regulatory requirements, and likewise for a landlord checking a new tenant’s right to rent. This regulatory certainty removes a burden from the employer and landlord.

People are all different and there are numerous ways in which digital policies can be met. Orchestrating Identity has developed a platform that caters for this reality. It provides the flexibility for organisations to make decisions based on the context of the individual person with whom they are interacting.

The UK government’s legislation and Trust Framework have been many years in the making with thorough consultation with people and businesses. At Orchestrating Identity, we are proud to support the initiative to create a trustworthy environment for digital transactions. We are the first Orchestration Service Provider (OSP) to be certified by Kantara under the Digital Identity & Attributes Trust Framework.

In our next posts we will explain the significance of this and explore the relationship between TIDO services and the government’s Smart Data initiative.