Transition Pathways Towards Design Principles of Self-Sovereign Identity

Title data

Sedlmeir, Johannes ; Barbereau, Tom ; Huber, Jasmin ; Weigl, Linda ; Roth, Tamara:
Transition Pathways Towards Design Principles of Self-Sovereign Identity.
In: Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). - Kopenhagen, Denmark , 2022

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Abstract in another language

The accelerating digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed once more that the Internet lacks a secure, efficient, and privacy-oriented identity model. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) aims to address core weaknesses of siloed and federated approaches to digital identity management from both users' and service providers' perspectives. SSI began as a niche concept in libertarian communities and was initially strongly connected to blockchain technology, but when companies and governments began to invest, it quickly evolved towards a mainstream concept. To investigate this evolution and its effects on SSI, we conduct design science research rooted in theory of technological transition pathways. Our study identifies nine core design principles of SSI as deployed in relevant applications and discusses associated competing political and socio-technical forces. Our results shed light on SSI's key characteristics, its development pathway, and tensions in the transition between regimes of digital identity management.