Open Challenges — Towards the (Not So Distant) Future of Identity

Identity was a multifaceted and challenging topic, when FIDIS started to work on it, and it will be multifaceted and challenging in future. It has relations to aspects, such as societal values (e.g., privacy), societal phenomena (e.g., crime), application areas (e.g., eGovernment and mobile communications), technologies (e.g., High-Tech IDs), and last but not least scientific disciplines. In each of these areas FIDIS worked on identity, and it became clear that each of the areas is changing, keeping identity a dynamic and multi-faceted field. It may actually get even more aspects in the future, given the fact that none of the questions have disappeared during FIDIS' work so far, but new aspects showed up, e.g., with new technologies showing up. So even after 5 years of FIDIS, not all questions are answered. Some dimensions for future work are discussed in the following sections of this chapter including:

Identity reference architectures

Identity Management (IdM) and Privacy

IdM and Multilateral Security

Identity in the ‘Internet of Things’

The discussion of these topics is especially focusing on the questions: ‘What is to be done? How can it be done? What needs to be considered?’, for shaping the future of identity in the information society and to adequately address its underlying challenges and opportunities.

In all cases standardisation (as it happens globally in e.g., ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27/WG 5 ‘Identity Management and Privacy Technologies’) and regulation (e.g. on data protection and privacy) are of importance and usually trigger more research questions, once the first research results are on their ‘radar’.