Public sectorProblem 0013
Benefits, banking, health records and school places are moving to interfaces that begin by asking you to prove who you are online. Hundreds of millions of people cannot prove who they are at all, and billions more have no digital means of doing it, so each service added to the digital channel quietly removes itself from the people who most need it, while the statistics record improved efficiency.
Who lives with itPeople without foundational or digital ID · agencies moving services online · the frontline staff handling every exception by hand
Why nowWorld Bank ID4D data puts around 800 million people without official proof of identity and about 2.8 billion without an online digital ID, improving from 3.3 billion in 2021, with the steepest barriers still falling on women, rural populations and poorer households.
Why it matters · the JudgeDigitising a service without a route for people who cannot authenticate does not reduce the work, it moves it to an exception queue nobody resourced. Tools that let agencies serve people who cannot authenticate online (assisted verification, trusted intermediaries, alternative credentials) are unglamorous, needed at scale, and a place a focused team can start.
Inspired by reporting from World Bank ID4D