Online identity is a construct that has evolved both technically and culturally over the past 15 years. It is an elusive concept that has unsurprisingly given rise to a wide terminological spectrum: from ‘an identity’ made up of identifiers and bits of personal information allowing (i.e. authorising and certifying) an individual to participate in identity transactions; to ‘the digital self’, a prosthetic [digital] identity that extends our real persona, often purposefully created by the individual using personal aggregators and content services, and automatically reified by tools such as a simple Google ego-search.

Electronic information about the individual is represented not only by what one says about oneself, but also all that is said by others and also ones activity in electronic exchanges with both human and with intelligent agents. In our contemporary networked society we can trace online identities that reflect two key issues of concern:

• Control: if our existing online tracks and traces can exist as reifications of our digital selves via Google ego-searches or found automatically collated and stored by people search engines and aggregators then it is fair to say that the construction of these identities is slipping from the grasp of individuals who would seek to produce them or who are object of them.

• Ineluctability: today it is virtually impossible to remain at the margins of digital life and the production of online identity. The emergence of social technologies, coupled with lowered barriers to connectivity has driven fundamental changes in our relationship with the Internet resulting in the democratisation of content production and distribution. The effect has been to massively increase the visibility of digital identities and shift their construction outside of the control of any one person. The effect of increasing levels of fragmentation and disaggregation is to destabilise and undermine our sense of agency and importantly our ability to act with intent and awareness.

Online identities span the boundaries of personal, corporate and administrative processes. Their deployment uncovers a series of challenges, some general, others specific to the educational and research spheres:

• Identity transactions should be simple and open – today concurrent standards and approaches to identity management co-exist. Thus personal data exchange and portability across different technological infrastructures and systems remains one of the key challenges for all.

• Privacy and the rights of the individual should be respected – here we identify privacy issues that surround: the relationship between individuals and education stakeholders, efficacy of various methods of authentication and their security implications, scalability of trust, reusability of data, and the establishment of convenient ways of accessing and managing ones identity and the secure and private handling of sensitive or private information.

• We need to improve the baseline literacy levels in the use of socio-technical systems – to discern which technologies are the more appropriate to use and how to deploy them in lifelong learning settings. Techno-literate individuals do have access to a range of tools to help control the seemingly uncontrollable. These include personal identity providers, identity verification tools, identity management systems, self-presentation devices, reputation management systems and reputation defenders. However, the level of understanding necessary to appreciate the new ‘digital identity landscape’ and adopt these existing tools in an effective manner lies outside the ability of most students, teachers and the wider community of Internet users.

• And we need to address digital identity literacy – the above difficulties are compounded when we consider the effort required by individuals to acquire the appropriate digital [identity] literacies and so be able to participate productively in lifelong learning related transactions such as self-presentation, presentation of competences, ego-branding, job searches, reflective learning, cooperation in communities of practice, peer-learning, social networking, self assessment, evaluation and accreditation.

• Help improve individual risk assessment skills in relation to real or imagined security threats – particularly the low level of awareness in the use of social technologies where ‘user centric profiles’ become distributed backbones of social networks. As highlighted in the latest position paper of the European Network and Information Security Agency (Hogben, 2007), we are witnessing uncontrolled digital dossier aggregation and reputation related threats such as ID theft, privacy violations, data mining and control of personal information.

• Provide flexibility for presenting multiple digital selves – there is a lack of flexibility of display of the digital self according to the different contexts where the individual evolves. This is especially so with the increasing use of the Internet for informal learning. With learning now situated in multiple spaces, no longer solely institutionally determined, learners are being expected to evolve across multiple learning spheres: their online identity being the bridge between themselves and the place where meaningful lifelong learning is negotiated.

• Reduce conflict between digital identities that cross the boundary of work and play – the development and visibility of an individual’s online identity may conflict with organisational identities and therefore economic, societal, ethical and political issues need to be addressed in what is becoming a new and generalised used of personal information.