 So, welcome everybody. This is the hard thing about virtual, I can't tell. Welcome everybody. My name is Lisa Worley. I am the marketing director, I'm marketing director in a global block. I've gotten this wrong every single time I've introduced myself this week. I'm the global marketing lead for blockchain and multi-party systems at Accenture and I'm here with my colleague, Christine Leong. Christine, I think you're on mute. Hi everybody. My name is Christine Leong and I lead Accenture's capabilities in decentralized identity and biometrics globally. So, today we're here to talk about digital identity and certainly digital identity in the context of this, I think everybody's heard of this event COVID that's happened over the past several months. And before we kick off, we're going to do a little bit of an experiment. So, Juliette, I'm going to turn this over to you. If you wouldn't mind teeing up our mentee poll. Oh, my pleasure. So we'd like to get a sense of everybody's opinions. So if you can on either your phone or your browser, go to mentee.com and just use that code there at the top. It's going to be 383-42-105. All right. And you'll continue to see that code there. I'm going to move forward really quick just to get to that first question. Elise, I'll toss it back to you. Thank you, Juliette. So while you guys are doing the mentee poll, I am going to set a little context for the conversation that we're going to be having with Christine today. As I mentioned, my role is marketing. I am not a digital identity expert, although it is a space that absolutely fascinates me. And Christine is responsible for getting me hooked on it. So I want to do a little bit of context setting in kind of relation to my role. I focus more on human behavior and understanding the market and to which we're speaking, understanding why we as humans do what we do and what motivates those behaviors and beliefs. And that's particularly important when we are essentially making a market with an emerging capability, because there's really no evidence, no experience upon which we're drawing. So we are asking messaging and other forms of opinion forming to play a big part in how people are actually thinking about this massive transition into a new way of managing their credentials. The messages people hear become increasingly important. So I have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. We are obviously still living in a time unlike any other. And we've had this odd juxtaposition that at a time when we were really forced to stay apart, technology and human ingenuity really allowed us to come together and to facilitate it really opened up a more inclusive community dialogue. And we've certainly seen conversations take hold that hopefully have a transformative impact and it will allow us to emerge stronger and better situated for what comes next. For many of us in this space, it was hard not to see what might have been different had some of the innovations that we have been working on already had been in place. When COVID hit and certainly that is more apparent than ever with digital identity, which is what we're here to talk about. So I'm just going to run through some of the obvious things about what are we talking about when we're thinking about the new reality into which we're speaking. Well, first is we have to take into account the human experience. Something of this magnitude hasn't happened before in our civilization. Even if you think about the flu in 1918 or the Industrial Revolution or global conflicts, nothing has actually influenced or changed human behavior so quickly. And I don't think we fully appreciate the consequences. And we are obviously still learning. We are still very much in this because we kind of have an uneven experience at this point with who's vaccinated, who isn't, what variants are starting to take hold. So every company, every educator, every government, every official needs to think fundamentally different about the human experience of their employees, their customers, their students, their constituents. And this understanding is going to be fundamental to the human experience and how we shape, whether or not we succeed and thrive going forward. Next is related to work. In many instances, work has become something we do. Versus a place we go. And according to Gartner, 48 percent of employees will probably work at least part time remotely after COVID-19. And that's a huge leap from the 30 percent that did so prior to the pandemic. And we'll likely see hybrid workplaces, which will allow both remote work and working in an office. And that presents new challenges and opportunities. It will also be characterized by new focus on human connection. Christine and I were just talking about this the other day. Christine is one of my closest work colleagues, closest work friends. And we haven't seen each other. And gosh, Christine, it's well over a year and a half. And that takes a toll after a while. We do need that human interaction, that face-to-face human connection. But we're going to have to be creative in how we actually take this forward and make sure that we're staying connected with people so that they feel connected even as we continue to work remotely. And we're already starting to see massive innovation in this space, particularly with extended reality. There's a whole new frontier of innovation that will be taking place in the very near future. So going forward, the future of work will be independent of time, independent of place, and hyper-automated in a very human-centric way. All right, I'm going to check in with Juliette. How are we doing on the on the mentee? So we've got a couple of responses coming in here. I feel like I'm going to be shy. I just don't want to do it. A little bit shy. There we go. And that's OK. That's OK. Absolutely. So I'm going to switch back over to the slides for you, Lisa. And thank you. You're welcome. All right. We were just chatting about work, right? We were. So I'm going to move on to the next slide, which is across the world, we seem to have hit the fast forward button on technology. So taking a page from Accenture's latest research, which is called Make the Leap, Take the Lead. Adoption rates across technologies have seen a huge jump just since the last time we did the study, which was in 2019. And if you look all the way over to the right, sorry, the left. I'm trying to think screenwise what that would be. The emerging technologies took a significant leap forward. And so while technology has been a lifeline during the pandemic, you know, if COVID had happened just five years ago, it would have been far more devastating from our health to our social connections, to our economic stability. My life didn't change that much, except and I'm sure Christine, you're probably the same. You who was on a plane all the time, no longer on a plane all the time. I traveled pretty frequently as well, but we got busier. So it really didn't seem like there was a big, you know, tectonic shift in what we were doing from a professional perspective other than working from home. But we also found that this makes people a bit uneasy. According to Edelman's trust barometer in 2020, 61% agree that the pace of change in technology is too fast and 66% worry that technology will make it impossible to know if what people are seeing or hearing is real. That's a huge problem, but that's no wonder. No institution in their study is seen as both competent and ethical. Business ranks 54 points higher than government in competency. NGOs rank 31% higher than government in ethics. Both government and media are perceived as incompetent and unethical, according to this study. So but interestingly, technology, roughly 75% of individuals review technology is the most trusted sector, despite a four point drop globally. And to punch this point, according to a study by Pew Research Center, half of Americans do not believe the government will protect their health records. We're obviously seeing a shift in that direction. One of the use cases for digital identity obviously pertains to health records and certainly things that are going on with the vaccine distribution. So trust is a problem. And last but not least, sorry, this but this digital growth has demonstrated the tremendous capacity for technology to add value to our society. But it is also illustrated how fragile its tools and the people who trust those tools can be. After a recent study by Tufts University and MasterCard, it illustrated this trust is rooted in the underlying digital environment, the user experience, the user attitudes and digital user behavior. So all of these play a role in determining the mental model of expectations and whether or not those expectations are being met. OK, last but not least, during COVID, we started a global conversation around social justice, inequality and the digital divide for individuals to adopt and use digital identities effectively, especially as the trend towards self management accelerates. They will need access to technology and an increased level of digital literacy. We are actually probing on what that means from a digital literacy perspective and how that actually plays out in real time, depending on where they live. Geographically, they're socioeconomic status, etc. But we'll need to find the right balance or we'll misfire. So Christine, with all of that in mind, you have a tough job ahead. So what is the current landscape for digital identity? I think the current landscape is I can see many of the folks who are in the session is very, very, very fragmented with COVID. There are numerous activities. I think it's accelerated the need for a trusted, verifiable digital credentials, digital identity, even more. There are tons of different activities today around things like health passes, health digital health credentials to enable us to travel again. And there are, of course, other aspects of this thinking through, you know, how can we use our verifiable digital credentials to be able to enable us to prove our skills, our residence status, our visa, work permits, travel, health and all sorts of things. And of course, you know, as the EU just announced a couple of days ago, there are also there's a proposed regulation that's coming into place around digital identity for all 27 states. So this COVID has definitely accelerated the growth of this area and it's going to be a very exciting space. So is there a risk when you think about the proliferation of like many new ID systems and options for for individual control? Is there a risk of information overload? I always think about that in the context of like behavioral finance that too much choice creates an action. I mean, is it possible that individuals may get tired of managing, you know, their convenience privacy tradeoffs and adopt behaviors that actually undermine their safety and other freedoms? I think so. In many ways, it already is happening today because of COVID. If you we look at many of the sort of health passes out there because of the need to go get to market quickly, there are a lot of this already a lot of fraud around, you know, let's say there are, you know, QR codes that are fake, that are static, that can be sent around and copied multiple times. There are challenges around the fact that a lot of the digital identity and I don't mean when I say that I don't mean just decentralized ID but across the board of different digital identity capabilities. Lots and lots and lots of initiatives have been set up. Many have had lower adoption. Why? Because imagine we're all chasing after the same set of users. And if there are a thousand of these out there, everybody only have five users, it dilutes. And there are so many different approaches. People get fatigued and say, well, you know, if there's a thousand out there, thousand different approaches, people get tired. So in many ways, I think the conversation needs to be that technologists need to work together to come to some form of, and I think, you know, in many ways of the community here, it's very much coming towards the same standards, similar approaches and differentiate themselves as with, you know, in what we do with trust over IP in the sense of differentiate themselves based on services offerings versus, you know, the bottom line of technology stack because it shouldn't be that it should be around what the value of digital identity can bring versus just the underlying. So the conversation needs to go up a level. Otherwise, we're all going to suffer with too many apps, too many choices and actually people not using it. So if you've seen a shift, we've certainly seen a shift in consumer behaviors. And I think the study that I referenced earlier illustrated that, you know, roughly 40 percent of people were actively purchasing, you know, groceries and other staples online pre pre pandemic. Now it's 80 percent. I believe it's even higher in Europe if I'm not mistaken. So taking that into consideration, how how are we influencing or how are how is that behavioral change influencing how we are thinking about privacy and security and the trade-offs and how we are actually sharing data with the institutions that we interact with? What's what's happened as a result of COVID in that environment? I think there's plenty of instant means talking about sort of the biggest accelerator to to digitalization of life is it's COVID versus us consultants. So really, in terms of pandemic to get an uptick in your business. Right. And there is so much more around digitalization that have to happen in different industries. And as you quite rightly say, most people now have seen an inundation of, you know, activities such as e-commerce to be able to pull the groceries online, so on, so forth. And part of the challenge is that people expect privacy and security. Organizations also expect it. But the the need for sharing information, sharing that security, sharing that privately is fun, the should be fundamental as part of the any solution in the way that we define something in the way that people build anything that should be part of it. But the human behavior, when you're trying to get to say, I want to be able to, you know, buy whatever, I want to be able to share my data. There are also aspects of security and privacy that needs to be designed right. So that when we do choose to share our information, that we are protected just by the fact that I'm sharing and I might not always be thinking about, am I doing this correctly? Am I doing this privately and securely when I just want to get to I just want to buy that right now or I want to discount or I want to be able to load my data because I want to see everything. Whatever the purpose and value that I'm intending to get from that interaction, I almost need to be protected from myself. So I was just going to say that. That's exactly right. Because honestly, so I was talking to you about yesterday that I I had a password fail. I was trying to do something on a different. So I had something on my work computer that was creating a firewall that was actually was joining a session here. And so I was trying to move it to a different computer. But my my saved password credentials didn't translate. It didn't go over to my personal laptop. So I I lot I inadvertently got locked out of what I was trying to join. And I'm telling you, I would have given my first born, my dog, my, you know, my social security number, you name it, just to quickly get to where I want it to be. So that's if no sense, I kind of know a little bit about this space. It seems like that is a risk. So this would be a good protection measure to keep to help us kind of save ourselves from ourselves. So in during COVID, we also saw a shift to, like we mentioned, more privacy conscious consumers. There's actually been an uptick in privacy apps. Apple obviously using that as a brand lift to what what they're doing as far as trying to give you control or at least seeming to control your your ability to not lead a digital footprint. Is that kind of the way forward? Is that what you're seeing is that individuals will actually take on more of the privacy responsibility or is it something to your point that may that it may just have to be baked into the technology itself? I think it needs to ultimately try to be effective. It really needs to be baked in. It needs to while it needs to provide me with a choice, not everybody wants the inundation of information. So because it impacts user experience and it needs to be designed, any of the technology with the identity technology and the privacy preserving technology needs to be designed with our experienced designers together, because very often the sort of backhand technology functions, the security functions are brilliant at what they do. But if without that aspect of having the right human experience design, the aspects of testing it out with consumers, how they feel and different types of consumers also, right? Partly because we're all different and without that interaction of, you know, certain certain geographies, certain cultures, certain age groups, maybe much more willing to share information and and other demographics may find it very, very hard to navigate. So thinking through what the experience needs to look like, so to help help me help myself, so to speak. I think that aspect is very important. So I would say that for organizations, they need to stay designing identity solutions. It's not just about having sort of the privacy by design. Yes, but how do you bring the privacy by design to life for your user group? And that's not just a technology conversation. That's a human behavior, design, thinking and other types of sort of, you know, your target audience and all of the things that I don't know think about a conversation and a business level conversation also. Because certain things you might want to make it really easy. If I'm just fine, go to go into the supermarket. Maybe I don't need to to have this many steps because because it discouraged me to go and complete a simple transaction. But if I'm applying for a mortgage, it better be quite complex. So that aspect of friction, the aspects of what it should be, how it should be catered needs to be thought through. So you brought up so many interesting points, but I'm going to pull on one big thread. The Davos 2021 agenda and I know you have a strong relationship with the World Economic Forum is around rebuilding trust. So why is that so important right now? And certainly in this context, why is it so important? And how do we go about creating that dynamic where somebody actually does feel comfortable with something that they may not necessarily inherently understand? I think to break it down into a lot of the governments and many, many of our high ledger friends and colleagues, especially in the identity space, have seen a lot of discussions, work and probably wrote a lot more than me around what is a trust framework? Think about the fact that rebuilding trust. What does that even mean? Trust is something that's very illusive. It's intangible. I often say this to in speaking, engagements and in working with the World Economic Forum different. What a one government or one organization or one entity terms as a trust framework could be could mean completely different things to different entities. But the aspects of need to rebuild trust is what everything has gone digital, half of our lives are now digitalized. And that aspect of implicit trust, I was speaking to one of my clients earlier of, well, if I were to say I want to apply for a job, a new job, say, and I need to do it remotely now because I don't have a choice. And I have to believe that I'm who I say I am. All of my educational credentials, my professional qualification, my identity data credentials are all on paper. To scan all of that, that's trusting that's somewhere along the line, I'm real. Those pieces of paper are real. They have not been documented. They can't physically touch these things anymore, or it's going to be very difficult. So how are they going to trust that? Rebuilding the aspects of trust today, most of that trust is physical based. You can touch it, you can feel it, and there's a degree of human trust between the entity. In the digital world, it's no different. That human sort of trust, that network of trust, what underpins that trust and therefore in no different than the example that I always use is, well, when I travel, I use my passport. But you say if I'm going from the UK to London to New York, the US government trusts that the UK government have done their due diligence to say the holder of this passport is who they say they are. And that aspect of trust needs to be rebuilt in a digital manner. And there are multiple ways of doing it. And ultimately, those kind of trust frameworks needs to be harmonized, organizations, sectors needs to come together to say, right, this level of trust means this and you need to harmonize in order for us to be able to continue our lives digitally in a more trusted manner, because today you may be able to hold your passport or your driving license in order to open the bank accounts in order to go get a mortgage in order to buy a car, whatever it is, rent a car. But in the future, as we move into the digital world, that aspect of physical document may be replaced digitally. So how do we verify that trust? How do we enable that trust? And so. So Pablo asked a fantastic question, which is what's the level of technical technological literacy worldwide? And and what do we think the biggest challenge is going to be introducing new technologies to people around the world? And I think if I remember correctly, Christine, in roughly 2019 at the Davos conversations that you guys were having, it was roughly 50 50 and that but it was more women were being impacted by not being able to access, you know, online services versus versus men. So we do know that there is a digital literacy divide, that we do know that there is an access issue to online services. What do you see as one of the ways that we might be able to assure that we don't actually exacerbate this issue, right, that we're going to have two realities of a digital world and it's going to only continue to to spread? How can we actually address some of these issues where those that are underserved by by a digital environment currently don't have access? But it's clearly need to. I think there needs to be multiple options. It's not about going away with paper. And is it about going away with the existing legacy systems? There needs to be a way to incorporate all of that. And some of the digital literacy has to go hand in hand. And so I often say, well, this area and one of my biggest clients is that I'm very proud of is a United Nations High Commission for refugees. We need to often think of, well, in certain communities, they may not have electricity. They may not have mobile phone network that are often, you know, that are always up and running. Well, I don't I live in central London and very often my internet doesn't work. So different ways of network connectivity. So maybe partner separately with, you know, mobile phone companies, network companies, thinking through what is your ecosystem and expanding that ecosystem to help with tech literacy, to help with closing the digital divide. And then also thinking through that there are some very basic things like including paper from paper to to digital. How can that work? And being able to actually ensure that that has a level of continuity because there are folks that, you know, like the sort of diversity inclusion panel that we did yesterday, that we're going to have to have multiple formats, multiple form factors to be able to support people from all sorts of different background and different capabilities in order to and digital may not be the only way. So before I ask you one more question, Juliet, can we give another shout out for the mentee poll? Can we just see if we can't if people can actually answer those questions? Absolutely. Let me put that URL in here for everybody. Thank you so much, Juliet. Of course. All right. So now the big question, Christine, in the last three minutes, what needs to happen? We know that COVID fast forwarded the need for digital identity. So and we know that there's also been a shift in how people view trust in their government, trust in institutions, trust in business, etc. So what happens from here? Big question, I think, at least in my own personal experience, I would say transparency is essential in order to rebuild trust, whether it's transparency for governments, especially in the identity space, whether it's any government led schemes around identity, whether it's private sector led, a mixture, aspects of transparency, aspects of ensuring that the consumer, the user know what they're doing, how it works. The fact that it's there, how who has access to your information, how is it access so on and so forth, helps to build trust. It might mean that in six months time, no one look at that information, but that aspects of being available to be viewed by all is critically important. Second of all, collaboration across sectors. We COVID has shown that and I'll use the some health arts example that very often when we want to roll something out, there's the health bit, the health data bit. There is the identity credentialing bit. There's the digital bit. There's the border control, border control bit. There's the transportation bit. There is domestic travel bit. Even within governments, there are probably five or six different government departments that need to work together. There is no single ownership. So collaboration across sectors within, say within a government, across the board needs to happen. There needs to be more sort of understanding that identity as a whole is not about each organisation by myself and inside my own four walls. My identity is surely a piece of digital something of paper, something that needs that I'm giving to somebody else in order to do something. Identity itself is not that it's a means to an end. I don't think about it when I don't need to travel. I don't need to do something about it, but it is an enabler to whatever things, whatever that you need to do. So thinking through what is user centricity and how do you deliver that will mean that you need to build ecosystem with partners across sectors. So think beyond your sector, think about the people you serve. So I think that aspects of collaboration, building ecosystem, as well as transparency and having that conversation beyond technology. This is really got to go to the policy level conversations, a business level conversation about value. Otherwise, we will keep building solutions and people won't use it because it's not useful. Like you said, that human behaviour of I need to get to do whatever it is that I need to get to do. That's the most important. So thinking through that and having listening to the conversations up the level would really be would help all of us to get to get to a better digital identity. It's it's it's absolute your spot on. Sorry, I mean, violently agreeing with you. Getting the language right is critical. It's too easy for us to as marketers, for example, to use language that people actually can't make it concrete. We sometimes do a challenge where we say because value is a word that is really hard to interpret. And when you're trying to pull somebody into a story, here's a challenge for you if you're looking for the right language to kind of give somebody a vivid story that they can kind of adopt and bring into their own right so they can actually make their own. Take five seconds and draw value, not the word, but kind of draw what it means any any concept that's that's tricky. That's that's a good litmus test to see if you are actually speaking kind of in the concrete words that people can actually adopt. So, Christine, it sounds like from everything that you've said, we are at a moment of truth and and trust, right, that people trust what how we're we're rolling this out and getting this right. Couldn't be couldn't be more important. So thank you so much and thank you for everybody that that attended. And if the menti poll will still be open, if you don't mind answering these questions, we would love to hear from you. It's it's actually part of the research that we currently have in the field. So I would just love to give this get this audience get their impression. Christine, thank you again. Thank you, everybody, and have a great rest of your day. Thank you.