Day one: on the way to Geneva

Written on the 07:36 out of Marseille, Geneva by midday.

Global Digital Collaboration opens today at Palexpo. 348 speakers, around forty co-organizers, 24 plenary sessions today, 84 tomorrow, 53 on Thursday. The Chatham House Rule applies to all three days: the substance can be reported, the speakers cannot be named.

The question we are carrying

It is not a technology question.

Samoa has a national digital identity programme due in December 2027 and five IT staff in the implementing agency. Its counterparties sit on different technical trajectories: Australia moving toward mdoc under ISO/IEC 18013, New Zealand accrediting domestic providers under its own trust framework. There is no Pacific trust list. There is no procedure anywhere in the region for recognising a foreign sovereign issuer.

So the question is not which credential format to choose. The standards are mature enough to procure. The question is who operates the trust, whether a country of that size can afford to be inside it, and who carries the liability when a credential turns out to be wrong.

A signed credential built on a bad civil registration record is still a bad record. That constraint does not move, whatever the cryptography.

What we will publish

ID30 will post field notes after each conference day, written for the governments that have to implement rather than the vendors that sell, and within the Chatham House Rule.

We are on site this afternoon and all day Wednesday. If you are in Geneva, or if there is a question you would ask in that room, tell us. We will carry it in.

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