The Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project
The Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project was set up within the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law in 2019, as a stand-alone project following team members' contributions to the work of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights regarding 'digital welfare.' I joined the team in 2019.
A selection of highlights from the team's work is available below, and the full repository of our work is available via the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.
Research
Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights
In 2019, at the inception of the project, team members contributed to the Special Rapporteur’s report on the rise of ‘digital welfare states’ around the world, outlining important trends and parallels globally and setting out key human rights implications.
The World Bank’s support for digital ID
In our work on digital ID systems since the Project's inception, we increasingly saw that similar systems were being deployed in different regions, and that our partners around the world were documenting similar human rights risks. We therefore sought to reframe digital ID as a global matter and began researching international-level dynamics. In June 2022, we published an in-depth report demonstrating that actors such as the World Bank are supporting a particular model of digital ID that is causing human rights harm. The report sets out these global trends and outlines practical suggestions for human rights actors to consider whenever digital ID systems are planned or underway.
Lessons learned from litigation against ‘Digital Public Infrastructure’ initiatives
In the summer of 2023, we worked with the A11 Initiative, the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights, R3D, and the Nubian Rights Forum to publish an explainer outlining the harmful impacts of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiatives around the world. We summarised the lessons emerging from recent legal challenges to DPI projects in Mexico, Uganda, Kenya, and Serbia, and suggested tangible safeguards, mitigations, and remedies that could help avoid risks and exclusions from becoming embedded into these ‘foundational layers’ of digital infrastructure.
The digitalisation of government services in the UK
Following the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty’s report and statement on the UK government’s digitalised welfare system, we published several blog posts about the UK government’s digitalisation efforts, including on the UK’s digital ID system. Together with Professor Joe Tomlinson, we studied how the UK government is contracting for ‘digital design’ specialists from tech consultancies as it builds digital government services. We explored how this practice of contracting-in raises important accountability questions.
The International Finance Corporation’s approach to funding digitalisation projects
In our work teaching NYU Law’s International Organizations Clinic, we researched multilateral development banks’ growing investments in digitalisation projects. We analysed specific projects and asked: do multilateral development banks’ existing policies and processes for evaluating risks adequately capture the potential impacts of their digitalisation projects? In 2024, we analysed the risks arising specifically from the International Finance Corporation’s investments in AI-driven biometric technologies and satellite imaging technologies. Our resulting report, entitled ‘Digitalization as Development: Rethinking the IFC’s Risk Assessment and Remedy Frameworks in the Context of Digital Technologies,’ finds that the IFC’s current frameworks for assessing and remedying the impacts of its development projects are not well-suited to addressing the full spectrum of implications arising from digital technology projects.
Digital ID in Uganda and resulting exclusions
Together with our partners the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights and Unwanted Witness, the team conducted a 7-month empirical research project into Uganda’s national digital ID system. The resulting 2021 report found that over a third of the adult population in Uganda was excluded from the digital ID system. As the ID was required for accessing many government and private services, including healthcare and social protection, this led to severe human rights impacts.
Technical Recommendations
We consistently sought opportunities to contribute our expertise (including on human rights law and comparative research) to policy processes, consultations and technical standard-setting initiatives.
The White House's 'AI Bill of Rights' Initiative
In response to the U.S. White House Request for Information about Biometrics-Enabled Technologies, we contributed a submission prepared in partnership with the Institute for Law, Innovation & Technology (iLIT). We conducted comparative research and held consultations with leading international experts on biometrics and human rights. We produced an overview of harms that have arisen from biometric identification systems around the world and called for a moratorium on the mandatory use of AI-enabled biometrics in critical sectors such as health and welfare.
Tangible recommendations about Uganda’s new digital ID system
Following the Ugandan government’s announcement that registration for a new digital ID system would begin in June 2024, we researched the new system together with our partners ISER and HEAPI. Based on our review of government statements, parliamentary discussions, and media coverage, we produced concrete recommendations, outlining steps that the Ugandan government should immediately take to ensure a more inclusive and rights-compliant approach to the digital ID.
Communication to the Irish government about its Public Services Card
The team supported the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’ preparation and submission of a letter to the government of Ireland about its Public Services Card, which is required to access welfare benefits. In a 40-page communication from April 2020, the Special Rapporteur highlighted major shortcomings in the underlying legal framework, a disproportionate impact on low-income individuals' rights to privacy, and the fact that the PSC has many of the characteristics of a de facto biometric ID system introduced without the necessary safeguards nor public debate.
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Digital Identity Guidelines
In April 2023, we responded to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) request for comments on Version 4 of the Digital Identity Guidelines, in collaboration with iLIT. Our comments called on NIST to clarify and enhance key definitions relied on in the guidance, made practical suggestions for assessing, managing and monitoring equity risks throughout the digital identity cycle, and argued for strengthened guidance on access to redress and appropriate remedies.
Open Letter to the World Bank
In September 2022, together with Access Now and Privacy International, we published an open letter to the World Bank reiterating the findings of our report identifying the World Bank and its Identification for Development Initiative as playing a central role in creating a new development consensus on digital ID. We called on the Bank and others to reconsider their approach to funding decisions in this area. The letter was signed by over 70 organisations.
Knowledge-Sharing
We built a repository of information on the human rights implications of the digitalisation of government, and the ways in which different constituencies have responded, which we hope will continue to be of interest and use to civil society, scholars, and policymakers.
‘Transformer States’ Webinar Series on Digital Government and Human Rights
In 2020, we launched a series of webinars on the digitalisation of government. The series drew attention to varied and indicative cases of the problems that can arise when governments’ digitalisation efforts follow certain logics and move in certain directions. We recorded fifteen in-depth interviews with scholars, technologists, and human rights practitioners about diverse government digitalisation initiatives from around the world—including the automation of welfare eligibility decisions in Jordan, the impacts of cashlessness in Sweden, racially-biased algorithmic decision systems in the Dutch welfare state, predictive ‘risk scoring’ technologies in Chile, the EU’s use of digital technologies in border control, smart cities in Singapore, and Australia’s Cashless Debit Card. For each episode, we published an event summary, a transcript, and additional resources.
Guidance on Shaping Technical Standards
Though the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology had sought to make its contributions process inclusive (including by hosting public events), submitting a contribution to its Digital Identity Guidelines required technical expertise as the Guidelines are written for a specialist audience. We wanted to help others to participate in technical standards processes such as these in future. In partnership with iLIT, we therefore published an explainer to empower civil society organisations to engage with technical standard-setting bodies to raise human rights concerns. The explainer also includes a summary of the recommendations we made to NIST, which we believe are applicable to many different technical standards and guidelines.
Op-eds & blogs
Following the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s announcement – and immediate climb-down – about requiring users to authenticate their identity via facial recognition-based technologies before being able to access some of its online services, we published an op-ed in Slate about mandatory biometric verification for accessing public services. Team members published blogs about litigation against the national digital ID system in Uganda, raising awareness of this lawsuit among an international audience, and collaborated with our partners ISER and Unwanted Witness to publish an op-ed in African Arguments about the Ugandan government’s use of national ID data to find those in need of Covid relief, despite millions of the most marginalised not being included in the system.
Guest blog series
From 2020, we curated and produced a series of guest blogs about governments’ uses of digital technologies, written by scholars and civil society practitioners from around the world. These blogs cover topics ranging from India's national Digital Health ID, the deployment of risk scoring and sorting technologies on homeless populations across California, Brazil's 'Bolsa Familia’ welfare program, and cashless Covid welfare payments in South Korea, among many other topics.
Recorded panels and webinars
We shared insights from our work at conferences such as the Internet Governance Forum, RightsCon, and the Civil Society Policy Forum at the World Bank’s Annual Meeting. We co-hosted events with partners including Privacy International, ESCR-Net, the Centre for Internet & Society, R3D, the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights, and Amnesty Tech.
Convening & Coalition-Building
Interdisciplinary Workshop on Digital Welfare
In 2021, we ran a two-day academic workshop together with Edinburgh University on Universal Credit, the UK’s digitalised welfare system. We brought together around 50 participants, including civil servants, legal scholars, computer scientists, digital designers, philosophers, welfare rights practitioners, and human rights lawyers from multiple countries.
Collaborative Human Rights Agenda for AI Regulation
In partnership with Amnesty Tech’s Algorithmic Accountability Lab, we ran a collaborative project to elevate more voices from across the human rights ecosystem into ongoing discussions about AI regulation. We hosted a drop-in session at RightsCon, and in September 2023, we ran a strategy session with 50 participants from civil society organisations from every continent, entitled ‘Co-Creating a Shared Human Rights Agenda for AI and the Digital Welfare State.’ Participants discussed how human rights concerns about governments’ AI deployment can be prioritised in spaces where new rules are formed about AI systems. A key take-away was that there was a need for infrastructure enabling information-sharing and compiling documentation on the effects of public sector usage of AI. We therefore established a new community of practice comprised of civil society actors and scholars, to allow for sharing of work and to facilitate potential tangible collaborations.
HR4ID Coalition
Following the inaugural meeting of the Human Rights for Digital ID Coalition (HR4ID) in Addis Ababa on the sidelines of the 2022 Internet Governance Forum, our team was a part of the volunteer coordinating group responsible for determining the vision and mission, as well as formulating plans for the emerging coalition. Team members contributed to working groups on multilateral advocacy (including attendance at UNGA side events), a national legislation mapping project to create a shared resource on digital ID around the world, and the development of a common position on mandatory digital ID systems that argues for more voluntary, human rights centric approaches to digital ID registration and use requirements.
Digital social protection in Africa
Our team hosted consultations with key stakeholders across civil society, multilateral development banks, and international organisations to discuss key trends and concerns with the digitalisation of social protection programs in Africa – including digital payments, digital identification systems, and social registries. The team then hosted collaborative workshops and knowledge-sharing sessions among civil society organisations, to help bring together civil society organisations confronting the challenges of increasingly digitised welfare states.