Biometric identification system in developing countries is becoming an indispensable governance tool for ensuring access to educational opportunities, financial services, health and social welfare benefits program, as well as allowing electoral participation for citizens in making transitioning democracies more transparent and strong. The recently launched Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) goals spearheaded by the United Nations through a deliberative process involving its 193 Member States, as well as global civil society, also highlights the role of robust identification systems and their importance to development specifically as one of the proposed SDG targets (#16.9), but also as a key enabler of the efficacy of many other SDG targets. Last year the World Bank also launched its Identification for Development (ID4D) agenda highlighting the transformational potential of biometric ID systems for the delivery of basic services to the poor, with the goal of making “everyone count” by providing legal identity and delivering digital ID-enabled services to all. A person lacking a legally verifiable ID suffers legally, politically, socially, and economically. But in the developing world, enormous gains can be obtained from extending services and opportunities to all in new ways that can help developing countries improve electoral processes, political participation, functioning of governments and civil liberties. This all can help lead countries with poor democratic record transform in to a fully functional democracy. It will be really interesting to collaborate and research on mitigating the unintended consequences of digital ID systems and probably Center for Communication Governance can help create a multi-stakeholder group for furthering research and understanding of this new phenomena. Best, Arzak From: netsociety <netsociety-bounces@lists.networkofcenters.net> on behalf of Chinmayi Arun <chinmayiarun@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2017 2:12 AM To: bestbits; governance@lists.igcaucus.org; netsociety@lists.networkofcenters.net Cc: Smitha Krishna Prasad Subject: [netsociety] Infographic: Biometric ID systems & democracies Dear All, This is to introduce an ongoing project which we hope will contribute to the public debate on Aadhaar. This work is in response to the argument that India should adopt a biometric identification system because several other countries have done it. We set out to examine which other countries had done this (starting with commonwealth countries for now), whether they had data protection safeguards and whether they were democracies. Scroll.in was kind enough to build an infographic based on our dataset which you can see here. It appears that it is mostly countries with a poor democratic record that use these systems. Please do take a look. This is ongoing work, so we would welcome additional information and ways in which we can improve it. In the meantime we hope that it is of use to you. Best, Chinmayi and Smitha https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0BycAZd9M5_7NTWs4YXZxbnJXcWc&r... Chinmayi Arun | Executive Director Centre for Communication Governance | National Law University, Delhi | Sector-14, Dwarka, New Delhi - 110078 | Cell: (+91) 971-770-2630 | Fax: (+91) 11-280-34256 | www.ccgdelhi.org . www.nludelhi.ac.in | Twitter: @chinmayiarun