Insights from Jon Shamah: A Global Perspective on Digital Identity and Transformation

This episode discusses the rapid integration of artificial intelligence within modern business operations, highlighting how automation can enhance efficiency and strategic growth. While small and medium-sized enterprises benefit from lowered costs and streamlined processes, there is a growing over-reliance on unmoderated algorithms. This dependency risks a loss of institutional knowledge and human intuition, occasionally leading to significant real-world errors. Furthermore, it is argued that AI lacks genuine empathy, which remains a vital component of successful customer relations and competitive branding. Ultimately, there is a need for rigorous human oversight and the implementation of non-technical guidelines to mitigate the liabilities of automated decision-making. Managers are encouraged to maintain a "human in the loop" approach to ensure accuracy and preserve personal connections in commerce.

 This webinar outlines the critical necessity of interoperability within digital identity systems to overcome the inefficiencies of fragmented national frameworks. It highlights how the transition to eIDAS 2.0 establishes a unified legal and technical basis for cross-border authentication, ensuring that digital signatures and identity wallets carry equal legal weight across different jurisdictions. By mandating standardised security requirements and certification processes, these reforms eliminate administrative hurdles and strengthen legal certainty for high-stakes sectors like finance and healthcare. This harmonised approach facilitates labour mobility and international trade by allowing citizens to manage their credentials through a secure, portable European Digital Identity Wallet. Ultimately, the document presents universal identity compatibility as a strategic investment that bolsters economic competitiveness, public sector productivity, and modern digital security.

Looking forward to the next generation of digital wallets is always tricky. We have become accustomed to thinking of the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet primarily as a carrier of official credentials and as a mechanism for tightly scoped, bilateral interactions. Beyond these familiar patterns however, the conceptual horizon remains surprisingly constrained. A next generation of digital wallets should aspire to something more ambitious. Conceptually, such wallets should resemble the physical wallet not merely in function, but in universality. At the same time, their inherently digital nature should allow them to move well beyond the limitations of physical artefacts, enabling automation, structured interaction, and assurance at scale. This implies a shift in perspective—away from wallets as passive endpoints for credential presentation, and towards wallets as active participants in digital interactions. Why the kitten? Listen on.......  

Agentic AI—artificial intelligence systems capable of acting on behalf of individuals with a degree of autonomy—holds particularly significant promise for segments of the population that have struggled to benefit from previous waves of digital innovation. For many people, technological progress has not translated into empowerment but into growing complexity, confusion, and exclusion. If agentic AI is designed and governed with inclusion at its core, it offers an opportunity not simply to advance technology, but to rebalance access to capability, reducing the cognitive and technical demands that modern digital life increasingly places on individuals.

The first question any agent must answer is simply “Who are you?” But this is not a trivial inquiry. For an AI‑based agent, establishing identity requires more than a label or a model ID. It requires a resolvable, unique identifier that allows relying parties to cryptographically verify which specific agent instance they are interacting with; it also requires a clear statement of the ultimate beneficial owner—the human user or legal person in whose name the agent acts and who carries legal accountability for its behaviour—together with the operator or provider responsible for safety, security and correct functioning. eIDAS 2.0 supplies the legal and technical primitives for this binding through the concepts of personal identification data, electronic attestations of attributes, and their qualified forms, allowing issuers and relying parties to attach legal effect and assurance levels to digital identities and roles in a harmonised way across the Union.

In the real, non-comic strip world, offering ‘Trust’ does not ensure that matters will not go wrong, it highlights that those who profess as being ‘trustworthy’ have to backup the proposition with risk mitigation and liability acceptance when things do. So, in this digital ecosystem, whether you are a ‘Trustworthy Source’, a ‘Qualified Trust Service Provider’ (QTSP in eIDAS2) or just digitally signing a document, there are multiple layers of trust. With each layer and incident, there possibly consists levels of: content failures, communication failures, and action failures.

There is a technological transition in digital identity management, specifically the shift from physical hardware to cloud-based environments. While traditional on-premises systems offered robust security, they were often hindered by high maintenance costs and limited scalability. Modern remote secure element (RSE) technology now allows organisations to maintain high levels of trust and eIDAS 2.0 compliance without the need for physical tokens or local server rooms. This cloud-centric approach facilitates global expansion and remote onboarding while empowering users through verifiable credentials and better data control. Despite these advancements, the source notes that on-premises solutions remain essential for entities facing strict data sovereignty rules or unreliable internet connectivity. Ultimately, the future of digital signing is presented as a flexible choice between cloud agility and the physical oversight of specialized hardware.

The EUDI Wallet revolutionises EU academia by providing a secure, user-controlled platform for digital credentials. It enables seamless cross-border mobility, replaces paper-based diplomas with verified attestations, and streamlines Erasmus applications and university access.

The eIDAS 2.0 regulation introduces the EUDI Wallet to revolutionise EU insurance. It enables secure identity verification, verified attributes, and Qualified Electronic Signatures. This framework streamlines onboarding, ensures cross-border legal certainty, and reduces fraud.

Europe is currently navigating a complex digital transition that extends far beyond simple technological adoption to encompass social and economic integration. While certain nations like Estonia lead the way, significant disparities in digital literacy persist across the continent, with nearly half of the population lacking foundational skills. To address this, the text proposes a strategy built on education, motivation, and inclusive support for those unable to use online systems. The ultimate goal is to move towards a paperless administration without abandoning vulnerable groups who face barriers to entry. Success depends on whether governments can provide tangible incentives and personalised assistance to overcome the "last mile" of total digital inclusion. Ultimately, the author questions whether Europe possesses the collective political will to ensure this evolution benefits every citizen equally.

Establishing a formal, trusted assistance model to ensure that all European Union citizens can participate securely in an increasingly digital society is essential. Despite the convenience of digital transformation, a significant portion of the population faces exclusion due to limited digital skills, device access, or other barriers like disability. One solution is by leveraging the upcoming European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet and the expanded eIDAS 2 framework to create a "Qualified Assistance Provider" model, which would enable trained, audited staff to help citizens perform secure digital transactions on their behalf. This structure aims to address the structural inequity arising from essential services moving online and suggests funding local assistance hubs, such as libraries and NGOs, to offer these auditable and legally equivalent assisted interactions. By explicitly designing for permanent assistance to ensure resilience and universal inclusion in a fully digital EU, the future of each and every EU citizen is recognised equally.

Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research and innovation program, has been instrumental in advancing science and technology across Europe. Its structured approach—organized around predefined missions, thematic clusters, and detailed work programs—has ensured alignment with strategic priorities. However, this rigidity comes at a cost: it limits the ability to respond to emerging challenges, stifles high-risk research, and constrains creativity.

Navigating your social media feed can feel like walking through a maze of conflicting signals. Yet, behind the chaos, there is often a deliberate and surprisingly simple playbook used to engineer and spread false news. This article breaks down that predictable formula for deception, step by step. The Spark: It Begins with a Bad Actor and a Deliberate Falsehood The genesis of any false news campaign is deceptively simple: it begins when a bad actor deliberately engineers a falsehood for a specific, manipulative purpose. This is not a misunderstanding or an accident; it is the calculated construction of a lie designed to exploit biases and provoke a reaction. This initial step is critical, as it frames the entire operation not as organic misinformation, but as a premeditated act of digital sabotage. The Megaphone: How AI and Social Media Amplify the Original Lie Once crafted, the lie is supercharged through a two-pronged attack designed to make it both believable and unavoidable. First comes substantiation, where bad actors create a thin veneer of credibility by producing fake evidence—forged documents, sham news sites, or phony expert accounts—to support their original claim. This gives the falsehood an illusion of legitimacy. Simultaneously, social media platforms become the distribution channel for an aggressive amplification campaign. Using technologies like AI amplification, a single lie can be multiplied into thousands of posts, comments, and shares, creating the false impression of a groundswell of organic consensus. This strategy weaponizes repetition, broadcasting the repeat amplified original message across the network. This exploits a psychological vulnerability known as the "illusory truth effect," where our brains mistake familiarity for accuracy. Seeing the lie over and over makes it feel true. The Impact: An Uninformed Public Makes Influenced Decisions This digital manipulation achieves its final, damaging goal when the amplified falsehood successfully penetrates the awareness of an uninformed public. Bombarded with a seemingly credible and widely repeated message, people are persuaded to accept the lie as fact. The ultimate consequence is that an individual or group makes an influenced bad decision based on lies, turning a digital fabrication into a real-world action with damaging outcomes. Breaking the Cycle This three-step process—calculated creation, dual-pronged amplification, and real-world impact—is a rinse-and-repeat strategy used by bad actors to systematically manipulate public perception. It starts with a deliberate falsehood, uses technology to make it appear credible and ubiquitous, and ends when an uninformed public makes poor decisions. Now that we can see the blueprint for false news, what is our role in stopping its spread?    

For numerous organizations, including government authorities and private entities, to achieve Qualified Trust Service Provider (QTSP) status necessary for issuing Verifiable Credentials (VCs) under the EU’s eIDAS regulation is a difficult. Becoming a QTSP internally presents significant operational challenges, requiring complex compliance with mandatory standards for advanced cryptographic systems, interoperability schemas, and strict GDPR mandates concerning selective disclosure and real-time revocation. To bypass this resource-intensive internal burden, We identify four strategic alternatives, ranging from expensive, slow consultancy engagement to highly capital-intensive business acquisition. The analysis consistently favours the cloud services integration model, which offers inherent scalability, cost efficiency, and simplified regulatory compliance by utilizing specialised third-party components. Choosing the correct strategy depends on an organization’s internal resources, tolerance for third-party dependency, and the importance of rapid market deployment within the emerging EUDI Wallet ecosystem. (PS. I do use my AI friends to explain this in audio format.)

The pursuit of autonomous, conscious robotics remains one of the most ambitious goals in modern engineering. Popular culture, epitomized by Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, envisions machines with limitless computational capacity and self-awareness. However, this vision is fundamentally constrained by three interlocking barriers: the immutable laws of physics, the systemic reliance on centralized architectures, and the unresolved ethical dilemmas of codifying morality into non-human agents.

The increasing complexity of Artificial Intelligence Agents present major challenges within digital identity and signing systems. As AI agents evolve from simple programmed interactions to those involving complex, self-determining processes, issues of liability and risk will become paramount, especially when agents interact with counterparts, delegate tasks, or pursue open-ended missions. To resolve this increasing complexity and prevent the abandonment of advanced agents, a framework is proposed that mandates Terms and Conditions (Ts and Cs) for transactions, clearly defining liability boundaries and incorporating strict controlling algorithms.

As our world accelerates its transition towards a digital-first society, trust has emerged as the most critical component for stability, progress, and widespread adoption. True, sustainable trust is not a default state; it must be consciously built upon a deep foundation of mutual understanding. In Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the miraculous Babel fish, when placed in the ear, allows its user to instantly understand any language. It promises a world of perfect clarity and seamless comprehension. Yet, Adams offers a crucial warning: by removing all barriers, the fish inadvertently caused more conflict than ever before. This paradox serves as our central cautionary tale: creating a seamless digital identity infrastructure without a robust architecture of trust could amplify existing societal fractures rather than heal them.

Digital Wallets are a transformative technology for managing identity and transactions, highlighting their role in creating a more secure and efficient digital society. These wallets are presented as versatile tools capable of securely storing diverse credentials beyond payment information, offering users control over information disclosure. The European Union is leading this digital transformation, with plans to introduce Digital Wallets by 2026, supported by regulatory frameworks such as eIDAS 2.0 and the Digital Services Act.

Resilience is a topic that never seems to be solved. When one aspect of our lives has just been made more robust, yet another crops up that takes that feeling of security away again.

We all wish that life would be easy, and effort that is once expended does not recur over and over again. This utopia is a dream that rarely happens. Even more so if you are one of those organisations that do not see IT as your core functions but have decided that it is your decision that you need to be a Qualified Trust Service Provider (QTSP). There are hard ways to do it and there are easier ways......

A high-level workshop hosted in Ottawa, Canada, on October 6, 2025 took place, focusing on advancing digital collaboration, specifically regarding digital credentials and trust services, between the European Union (EU) and Canada. This event, which included policymakers and digital leaders, marked a significant step under the EU-Canada Digital Partnership and was informed by a new study comparing the EU and Canadian digital frameworks to identify areas for mutual recognition and interoperability. A reflection from Jon Shamah a co-author along with Keith Jansa, explains that while digital identity systems vary significantly across jurisdictions—notably due to differing legal traditions like the EU's Napoleonic law versus Canada's Common law—the foundational principles are aligned, creating a basis for cross-border interoperability. A key recommendation highlighted in the second source is using the UNCITRAL model as a flexible "middleware methodology" for regulatory alignment to bridge these differences and facilitate technical collaboration, though success ultimately depends on sustained political will.

The integration of Artificial Intelligence into dispute resolution systems marks a pivotal shift in how justice is accessed and delivered. With the rise of On-Line Digital Resolution (ODR) platforms, AI technologies are increasingly used to facilitate intake, guide users, and predict outcomes. These innovations promise to streamline processes and reduce costs, but they also raise critical ethical questions. Mediators, as custodians of fairness and impartiality, must adapt to this evolving landscape while safeguarding the core values of justice.

The issue of sovereignty is raising its head across the globe, but more so in the Western Hemisphere. As nations show a growing distrust of others, there is a realisation that their respective national interests must be resilient to outside threats and geopolitics. This extends to national and national-critical data and the processing of that data.

A critical dimension of this evolving Wallet landscape is the emergence of agentic workflows—processes driven by autonomous or semi-autonomous agents. These workflows can be broadly categorized into closed and open models, each presenting distinct challenges and implications for responsibility and liability.

Think of trust on a unimaginable scale. Think about it. How does a massive organization like a huge bank or even an entire city handle the job of digitally signing thousands or even millions of documents. It's a huge challenge and it's forcing a major rethink of how we prove who we are online. Examples such as a city government, a multinational corporation, or a big healthcare system. They're constantly issuing official documents, you know, contracts, permits, credentials. So how on earth do they keep that process secure and trustworthy? Especially now when the people who need to sign off on things could be working from home, from an airport, from literally anywhere?

This is a really great article that I came across in 'The Strategist'   Australia’s Deepfake Dilemma and the Danish Solution By Andrew Horton and Elizabeth Lawler Countries need to move beyond simply pleading with internet platforms for better content moderation and instead implement new legal frameworks that empower citizens directly. For a model of how to achieve this, policymakers should look to the innovative legal thinking emerging from Denmark. Andrew Horton is the Australian Strategic Policy Institutes chief operating officer. Elizabeth Lawler is a subeditor for The Strategist.   This article is published courtesy of the The Strategist and the original article can be found here.  

The image of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car comes to mind whenever I remember the eIDAS deadlines for verifiable credentials to be made available by the end of 2027 for all regulated bodies in the EU, the end of 2026 for public administrations.

This podcast outlines the transformative potential of Digital Wallets, detailing their functionality, benefits, and the different models emerging, particularly within the EU. Digital Wallets are presented as a secure, efficient, and private means for managing various credentials and facilitating complex transactions. The EU's proactive approach, coupled with regulations like eIDAS 2.0 and the Digital Services Act, positions Digital Wallets to become a cornerstone of digital interaction across the single market by 2026.

Governments are increasingly turning to digital platforms to deliver smarter public services, driven by the promise of significant efficiency gains and time savings for citizens. Yet, this transformation presents a critical challenge: how to ensure that these services remain accessible to everyone, regardless of their digital capabilities or circumstances.

There needs to be a comprehensive list of fundamental non-technical specifications to ensure a solid future Digital Wallet based society: 1) Function 2) Trust 3) Use 4) Automation 5) Confidentiality 6) Cost 7) Accessibility 8) Universality 9) Transferability 10) Resilience

This podcast explores the evolution of digital signing solutions for organisations, contrasting traditional non-cloud methods with cloud-based Remote Secure Element (RSE) technology. While older systems, often relying on on-premises hardware, offer strong physical security, they typically present challenges in scalability and operational costs. Conversely, RSE solutions centralise cryptographic elements in the cloud, enabling remote access via mobile devices, streamlining management, and offering features like real-time updates and interoperability for verifiable credentials. 

It is holiday-time and systems that rely on human-beings are under stress, with the deficiencies of those systems designed to supplement human-beings also being exposed.  Two issues, alike to an extent but in different academic organisations, have occurred during this holiday season and these have revolved around passwords. With a lack of IT Support during this period, comes chaos. I am sure that the issues experienced are SYSTEMATIC and are no doubt affecting many users at these institutions. Bu what is the real problem?

I received ethical criticism from am unlikely source recently, and one very close to home. Actually, that criticism hit a very strong ethical point and it should be noted and also discussed further. There have been many discussions online regarding the thorny topic of AI and its ethical impact on society. Most have taken place around Agentic AI and Generative AI. However, this is neither and a lot more basic.

Verifiable credentials (VCs) are digital attestations designed for secure and decentralized identity management within the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet). They use cryptographic signatures, and decentralized identifiers (DIDs) for authentication, privacy, and interoperability. The EUDI Wallet integrates VCs for secure storage, presentation, and real-time revocation checks, supporting various applications such as cross-border identity verification, academic credential recognition, and healthcare access. There are in fact, a myriad of use cases for verifiable credentials, both in the private and public sectors and many thousands of organisations across the EU who will need to issue VCs under the eIDAS regulation. The question is how those VCs will be issued and who will issue them.

In today's interconnected world, the concept of trust has taken on new dimensions. With the advent of technology and the proliferation of online interactions, trusting people in the digital age has become both a necessity and a challenge. As we navigate this complex landscape, it is essential to understand the nuances of trust and the strategies that can help us build and maintain it. As technology continues to evolve, the concept of trust will also adapt. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence offer new challenges.

The important thing is not to panic! There appears to be no real rush. The 2026 deadline is a year away, and all potential QTSPs are pushing off the decision do to take the plunge and invest in their future. However, this appearance of plenty of time is an illusion! Deadlines do have a real habit of rushing towards you. So maybe just a mild panic might be appropriate…….

This is a common English phrase, used in other languages too, and means that whatever I say or consent to, can be trusted. So, what is the history and how relevant is it in today’s digital age? We must not confuse this phrase with identity verification ‘per se’. Whilst the two are closely related, the verification of an identity does not imply consent or a signature. However, a signature must be linked to the person that signs, for it to be meaningful or legally valid to any degree. So how did “My Word is My Bond” first be a valid phrase?

Money, Money, Money, must be funny....... I’ve begun to question whether this assertion remains entirely true. Traditionally, money has been divided into two distinct forms: •Anonymized money—banknotes, cash, micropayments, coins. •Larger identifiable sums, typically transferred via bank transactions, drafts, PSD2 mechanisms, etc. While considerable effort has been invested into securing physical assets, the same level of diligence has not been applied to digital assets in their entirety.

The Global Digital Conference in Geneva – Some Thoughts We have a vast dependence of Digital Signatures and resilience is everything. More and more processes are needing to become Qualified Trusted Service Providers, and implicit in that is becoming reliant on qualified digital signatures to sign attestations, documents, and almost every important communication with probative value.  Resilience is everything    

This is a tongue-in-cheek approach to thinking about cyber-security for SMEs, using the analogy of the three little pigs and their houses of straw, sticks, and bricks. Its a simple introduction for non-professionals. 

The European Business Wallet In the Euro area alone, there were over 66 billion non-cash transactions last year, equating to approximately 21 transactions per capita annually. Additionally, the value of online B2B transactions exceeded 1.5 trillion euros, so it is no surprise that attention is now turning to the European Business Wallet.

The increasing convergence of new technologies is reshaping the digital landscape in ways that often go unnoticed. A key development within this transformation is Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI)—systems designed to operate autonomously, make decisions, and achieve predefined objectives without constant human intervention. g tasks, making decisions, and adapting to changing environments.

☀️ Summer might suggest relaxation, but it's a critical time for digital vigilance. With rising cyber threats and the push for secure digital identity solutions across Europe, strategizing and safeguarding infrastructures can't take a holiday. As competition and regulatory pressures grow, consistency and trust must be prioritized—even when the sun’s out. There's no rest when digital resilience is at stake.