copy the linklink copied! Assessment and recommendations

National identity infrastructure

Chile has an important foundation in place for the future of DI in the Country. The existing Cédula de Identidad is a familiar piece of identity infrastructure backed by the Identification and Civil Registry Service of Chile (Servicio de Registro Civil e Identificación, SRCeI). This public sector provided identity is the necessary enabler to ClaveÚnica to simplify the identity landscape in Chile. It affords an opportunity to work with the private sector in delivering services rather than needing to explore a different model for generating validated identities.

Nevertheless, the interaction between this physical identity and any future DI should be considered as part of a single service design. This means that Chile should consider how to make the enrolment process for both the Cédula de Identidad and ClaveÚnica as easy as possible for their citizens. The current manual process for initial enrolment for a Cédula de Identidad is onerous for both the citizen and the government. In line with proactive thinking about how to deliver services before citizens recognise the need for interaction with the government, Chile should consider the design of identity management (both physical and digital) as an end to end process throughout a citizen’s life from birth, through childhood, on into adult life and eventually at their death.

As Chile considers how its physical identity card can complement DI they should draw on the experiences of Italy, Spain and Uruguay in developing a contactless approach to accessing the information contained within the card. This will enable Chile to make use of NFC technology in smartphones and obviate the need for citizens and businesses to obtain devices specifically for reading cards.

DI policy

The strategic role of ClaveÚnica has been recognised by President Pinera and Government’s Digital Transformation Strategy. This commitment to its role in the future transformation of service delivery in Chile, and the subsequent high level of mandate that it provides, are essential in addressing internal obstacles to adoption. Whilst all further opportunities should be taken to reinforce this mandate, it is not sufficient by itself to ensure the quality of services or the ease of adoption.

Further political and financial support should be given to the SRCeI and Digital Government Division (DGD) to support the development of ClaveÚnica as a reliable and respected service within government and the private sector as much as for the public. This investment should include account management capability for managing and stimulating adoption, investment in technical documentation and simple on boarding to support internal colleagues and guidance on how to understand and define benefits for providing the return on investment.

Chile should consider the role of DI in the ongoing development of a more sophisticated and mature approach to the transformation of government services. The enabling technology of DI is an important element of any thinking about the design and content of assurance processes, capacity building and design guidelines. To support these efforts Chile should develop a renewed and comprehensive policy for DI that is ambitious for transforming government services and includes a roadmap for adoption and clear metrics to assess its impact.

DI should also form part of any analysis of spending for new government services to ensure that there is no competing investment in alternative DI solutions. Furthermore, Chile should ensure that the mandate provided to ClaveÚnica extends to retiring existing models of DI and leads to the development of an agreed roadmap for the delivery of functionality and the transition of users from established models into ClaveÚnica.

Finally, Chile should ensure that DI is recognised in the National Digital Security Strategy so that the necessary security operations activity is recognised and resourced to safeguard citizen data and those government services which use ClaveÚnica. A 2017 study into the reasons for citizen preferences for face-to-face interactions identified that the perception of security of transactions is a significant determining factor in the choices people make. As such, it is critical to coordinate with those responsible for the digital security strategy (MIDESO, 2017[1]).

Governance

The management of ClaveÚnica and the associated activities for providing and establishing DI in Chile require strong governance arrangements and an ongoing political and financial commitment at both the centre of government and within individual public sector organisations to support successful adoption.

Although it is a strength for Chile’s national identity infrastructure to be provided by SRCeI and for DGD to have a leading coordination role on digital transformation across the Country, the separation of responsibility for identity from those responsible for the success of the digital transformation agenda could present risks to the success of efforts to implement DI in Chile and avoidance of duplication. Therefore, coordination and collaboration must be ensured between SRCeI and DGD with continuous monitoring by the Modernisation of the State committee. To support this the Government should identify or create a senior role whose responsibility it is to shape and deliver the implementation and operation of DI on the basis of the vision established by the Government’s Digital Transformation Strategy. This senior role should be supported by an appropriate cross-government coordinating body including representation from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry General Secretariat of the Presidency (MINSEGPRES), the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior as well as representation from the Ministry of Economy to ensure the promotion of DI in the private sector as well. This may be incorporated into existing governance structures or, due to the importance and potential technical nuances of the subject, require the creation of something new.

Such a group would help Chile rationalise its existing DI landscape to ensure that the citizen experience can be as simple as possible. Whilst the Presidential Instruction on Digital Transformation is to be welcomed in establishing the initial guidelines for converging on a unique DI mechanism, ClaveÚnica currently competes with other institutional models of DI such as that provided by the Chilean tax office (Servicio de Impuestos Internos, SII). Having committed to convergence, it is now critical to implement the necessary governance and delivery arrangements for managing the roadmap for achieving this.

Alongside the mandate from senior political leaders and senior institutional leaders, the necessary support must be provided to teams within government to simplify and support adoption. This means not only providing a high quality technical solution but providing the necessary support and guidance that instils confidence in ClaveÚnica without needing to resort to governance arrangements that force compliance. This is especially important in the context of handling any convergence of existing DI mechanisms.

The final area of governance that Chile needs to establish relates to the future working relationship between the public and private sectors. With Chile prioritising the use of ClaveÚnica, backed by the Cédula de Identidad, it is most relevant for Chile to work with the private sector to establish a common purpose in delivering a DI solution which works for accessing services regardless of whether they are provided by the public or private sectors. It is less of a priority for Chile to work with the private sector to explore a marketplace of identity provision supplied by the private sector or to invest in using private sector identity to access government services.

Legal and regulatory framework

Efforts to stimulate adoption simply for the sake of adoption are less attractive than exploring those policy levers and enablers which will ensure that DI is useful and usable and which is consequently desirable to possess. With DI acting as an enabler of access to transformed government services its utility is found when there is a need for that interaction.

The Chilean government requires anyone over the age of 18 to have the Cédula de Identidad but there is no equivalent expectation for citizens to hold a ClaveÚnica account. Requiring citizens to be in possession of a DI is one way of encouraging adoption but introduces a level of compliance and enforcement. Nevertheless, the fact that ClaveÚnica is built on top of a physical identity infrastructure that has a legal requirement to be held means the country has a strong foundation for encouraging adoption of the DI even if citizens are not habitually accessing digital government services. Chile should explore how best to simplify the relationship between the identity card and the digital element so that the user experience of enrolling, managing and using the two are closer together. Legal changes may be required to reflect any requirement to be in possession of both.

Currently, different aspects of the arrangements for identity are handled between DGD and SRCeI. An approach where the responsibilities are shared in this way can work with the appropriate coordination arrangements but it may prove more effective in terms of transformation to unify the management and delivery of identity. This would mean no longer considering identity as two separate elements, physical and digital, but to consider them part of the same service design challenge with the same underlying and enabling policy and legislative frameworks.

As Chile explores the appropriate business model for the delivery of DI, decisions will be needed about the legal and regulatory framework for that model. With ClaveÚnica being built on top of the SRCeI this reduces the role of the private sector in providing identity. However, if it is decided to explore a different working arrangement with the private sector, perhaps to consider a shared model of identity provision as implemented in Austria, Denmark and the United Kingdom, then new legal and regulatory frameworks will be needed. Moreover, as there is an ambition for Chile’s DI to be used in accessing services in the private and public sectors Chile may need to revisit its existing legal and regulatory provision for managing how private sector services consume and make use of ClaveÚnica and the data to which it grants access.

The successful implementation of DI removes one of the barriers to the data held by one part of government being accessed and reused by another. However, the technical, legal and regulatory frameworks must be in place to ensure that interoperability of data and access to information can take place. Chile has already made important progress in this area and the 2017 legislation of data protection creates the right conditions. It remains an ongoing challenge for Chile to strengthen and clarify the interoperable and standards based approach and an immediate priority should be to simplify and streamline the process by which data exchange can be agreed between two public agencies.

As Chile and its regional partners across Latin America and the Caribbean work together through networks like the e-Government Network of Latin America and Caribbean (Red de Gobierno Electrónico de América Latina y El Caribe, Red GEALC) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) they are beginning to consider the benefits of developing an interoperable identity framework such as the European Union’s eIDAS. Such an initiative would take some time to implement but it is positive to acknowledge Chile’s hosting of a Red GEALC workshop in June 2019 on #FirmaDigitalRegional looking at strengthening cross-border services and simplifying the access to services by Chilean residents in foreign countries. It is encouraging that the architectural approach being adopted to ClaveÚnica is based on international identity standards and can provide the basis for such a conversation.

Funding and Enforcement

Although there are challenges in the provision of identity being the joint responsibility of DGD and SRCeI it is encouraging to see the commitment to ClaveÚnica in the funds that have been committed to support DI. Nevertheless, the absence of a single figurehead for leading the transformation of identity, and with the responsibility for its funding, means there are risks associated with coordination and delivery. This makes it critical for there to be a long-term and stable commitment for funding the transformation of identity in Chile ensuring that both physical and digital mechanisms maximise the benefits to the State and realise the potential of digital government. This would reflect the experience of the majority of countries who have established mechanisms to provide ongoing, centralised funding for a core part of the digitally enabled state so that the user experience and the functionality of the solution itself continue to evolve in response to the needs of society and the opportunities of technology

This funding needs to recognise the importance of developing a technically excellent platform with clear technical documentation to simplify integration with ClaveÚnica but also in investing in the roles of engagement and account management for ‘customers’ elsewhere in government that will help to communicate the value proposition and support adoption efforts.

The standardised model for business cases provides an important opportunity before any funding is committed to allow for a specific discussion around the use of ClaveÚnica. Whilst funding could be made to be contingent on the use of ClaveÚnica this may not be appropriate in all cases; should there be a situation where ClaveÚnica does not meet the needs of a given project there should be mechanisms in place for those unmet needs to be factored into the future development of ClaveÚnica. After funding has been committed Chile should use guidance and standards to consider the role of identity and the design of services which rely on it.

Government services

An effective DI is a catalyst for transforming service design. Instead of citizens needing to bring pieces of paper into offices to access services it becomes possible to prove who they are remotely, unlocking quicker and more efficient services. In Chile, only 40% of procedures can be carried out online, often because there is not a sufficiently robust identity model. Whilst the immediate priority should be to explore where ClaveÚnica can be most effectively deployed this should not come at the expense of considering how services can be transformed, especially through the ChileAtiende network. Indeed, a multi-channel approach to services allows for the country to consider the holistic, end to end experience of the entire service for its citizens and understand the opportunities offered by ClaveÚnica, even if services are not yet always accessed online. This means that the transformative potential of DI must form part of any service standards that are developed in Chile and the quality assurance processes that accompany them.

Chile faces the challenge of reconciling the existing provision of identity with the transition to ClaveÚnica. Half of the transactions in Chile which are carried out online use their own authentication mechanism that is not ClaveÚnica and this includes the services provided by the SII. Tax offices can be an attractive partner to work with early on but this introduces challenges around migration and governance due to the critical importance of tax receipts to a country. Whether ClaveÚnica is the preferred solution or not, Chile should ensure that their identity strategy understands the needs of businesses and the areas of health and municipal government too.

The planned functionality of ClaveÚnica is to include not only data authentication but a data wallet, electronic signature, citizen mailbox and a website for managing the granting, and revoking, of permissions. The development of this approach will meet several common needs for teams across government and can reflect Government as a Platform thinking to accelerate the transformation of other services that would otherwise have to develop their own solutions.

Private sector services

Chileans are already familiar with using the Cédula de Identidad to underpin their identity in interactions with the private sector. This familiarity of citizens and businesses provides Chile, and ClaveÚnica with an important starting point from which to consider its wider application. Moreover, that physical identity infrastructure provides the basis for a DI solution in ClaveÚnica that has been built with technology that is highly interoperable and easily deployed. Chile should identify the benefits to citizens, government and businesses and develop an understanding of how needs can be met across sectors. In order to do this Chile will need to establish a legal and practical framework for collaboration and partnership.

As an active member of the OECD Working Party of Senior Digital Government Officials (E-Leaders) Thematic Group on Digital Identity, Chile can draw on the extensive experiences of their peers, including Estonia, New Zealand and Portugal, in realising the benefits of developing ClaveÚnica to provide citizens with access to private sector services such as banking and telecoms.

Enablers and constraints

The benchmarking study identified six areas – business model, hardware infrastructure, awareness, enrolment, user experience and societal digital literacy – that have the potential to be seen as an enabler or a constraint for DI in Chile.

The business model for DI in Chile should be built on the SRCeI provided identity that every citizen over 18 must have in the Cédula de Identidad. At this point in the development of identity in Chile, there are multiple possible models that can be explored. In doing so there should be a focus on working with both public and private sector providers to encourage adoption and deliver value.

Although the Cédula de Identidad does require certain hardware infrastructure to use its most secure features, this is not relevant for ClaveÚnica. Chile should instead focus on designing a DI model and user experience that takes advantage of high levels of mobile phone penetration in the Country.

Chile could invest in marketing to raise awareness of ClaveÚnica, but this may not be necessary given that implementation of ClaveÚnica to access services has previously been successful in driving adoption. Instead, the focus should be on designing an excellent enrolment and ongoing user experience for ClaveÚnica that makes it easy for people to adopt and embrace DI. This will rely not only on the experience of using the DI but in the quality of the services which people are accessing too.

Arguably the greatest societal value in developing and enhancing the provision of DI in Chile could be through associated digital literacy and access benefits. With ClaveÚnica requiring face to face interactions to initially activate the DI it is possible to combine that with skills training through ChileAtiende and help people to carry out their subsequent government interactions away from face to face offices and through digital services instead.

Citizen control of their data

The future ambition for ClaveÚnica in terms of how much control it will give to citizens is at the cutting edge of how governments are thinking about the relationship between citizens and their data. Placing the citizen in control of their data through the provision of a data wallet and developing an online experience where they can control who has access to what, could become a model for other countries to emulate. This will require that the vision, leadership and funding are provided to enable ClaveÚnica to deliver on that promise as well as a commitment to interoperability between government services and the participation of a suitably informed, appropriately trained and sufficiently trusting public.

Performance data

In measuring the performance of DI there is a risk of adopting overly simplistic measures to gauge adoption like the number of active accounts. This might help to show penetration of DI in the population but its value is best understood in the context of the services it transforms. Therefore, it should be a priority for Chile to identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be measured by identity reliant services, regardless of whether or not they are currently using ClaveÚnica. Such KPIs could consider the length of time it takes to process an application without DI, the costs incurred due to errors introduced by an analogue identity process that subsequently need to be resolved, or the quantifiable damages caused by criminality. These will help demonstrate the relative benefits of migrating to ClaveÚnica compared to the status quo. Once the KPIs are identified they should be incorporated into the impressive open performance dashboards for ChileAtiende..

A less public but equally important consideration of measuring performance should be on the internal expectations placed on senior officials across the public administration. By establishing ClaveÚnica as the strategically agreed model for DI for government services in Chile performance indicators that link individual leadership achievements to its implementation could help to reduce the duplication of effort on alternative models of DI and ensure a more collective and coherent approach to DI.

Impact assessment

One of the most important pieces of information for a country evaluating the impact of its DI approach is a clear cost-benefit analysis of both the solution, in Chile’s case ClaveÚnica, and the experience of individual adopting services. However, the study has shown that in general this is not always a priority. Providing a political mandate is important, but accountability and analysis is still required to ensure that the approach to DI is, and continues to be, the best fit for the issues being addressed.

As Chile implements DI they should be clear about the costs, and the benefits, of their chosen model and use the analysis of return on investment to prioritise features and to target adopting services. In considering costs it is important for Chile to be realistic about the different nature of costs that will be involved during the development, implementation and operating stages for different models of DI. Should Chile continue to use the SRCeI as the basis for ClaveÚnica then initial development costs will be minimised, but there are different costs associated with the ongoing operation of the face to face network provided by the SRCeI and the physical identity card.

This exercise is not only important for proving the value of ClaveÚnica to political leaders, who are committing funds to its development, but will help government teams, and private sector companies, make the case for developing solutions and services that use ClaveÚnica and simplify arguments about adoption. Doing this analysis against agreed baselines will also help to clearly, and quickly, demonstrate whether any of the assumptions in the business case need to be revisited and the projected costs and benefits revised accordingly.