The Alan Turing Institute has received a renewed grant of $4 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the Global South achieve a “trustworthy” digital public infrastructure (DPI).

Over the next three years, the project aims to look at the risks facing DPI, how to develop the use of digital ID in cross-border trade and how countries can be supported in understanding cyber risks.

The Institute said that digital IDs are crucial in an increasingly digital society, yet many developing countries lack a reliable identification system for their residents, which impacts their ability to access essential services like healthcare, education, finance, and social welfare programmes.

If these countries had a reliable DPI, it would be easier for them to achieve national priorities and would speed up progress towards their sustainable development goals.

During the project, researchers will launch a Digital Identity Cyber Threats Observatory which will monitor professional media and forums, vulnerability databases, and the dark web to identify emerging cyber threats, risks and incidents that are directly relevant, or closely related to the national digital identity community.

The Institute has worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the past four years following an investment of $5.1 million to enhance the security and privacy aspects of DPI and address the related privacy and security implications.

"In the past four years, we have come to share our understanding of trustworthiness in many dimensions of digital identity,” said Professor Jon Crowcroft, special adviser to the executive at The Alan Turing Institute. “In the next phase of our work, over the course of the next three years, we shall extend this understanding to digital infrastructures in general, and to digital public infrastructures in particular."

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