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

How is a Small Yellow Fish linked to European Digital Trust?

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: A Secure Transaction Future in the EU

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: Now, more than ever!

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.

Qualified Trust Service Providers and the ‘Circle of Life’

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......

The Blueprint for Global Digital Trust: Bridging the EU and Canada's Legal Divide on Digital IDs and Credentials

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.

AI in Dispute Resolution - Ethical Roadblocks

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 Thorny Issue of Digital Sovereignty

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.

Agentic Risk Mitigation in the Era of the EU Digital Identity Wallet

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.

From Locked Box to a Virtual Fort Knox

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?

Australia’s Deepfake Dilemma and the Danish Solution

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.