There was a real mix of participants from across Europe (and beyond), including Italy, Finland, Greece, UK, Australia, and Hungary. This richness in nationalities immediately foregrounded what is an often overlooked dimension in discussions around digital identity – namely the impact of cultural difference. Different cultures both create and consume their [digital] identities in different ways. This was most keenly reflected in the shared conversations around where we perceive the boundary between our public and private lives. The mass use of social services such as Facebook can appear to have a homogenising effect, erasing cultural distinctions through normalised ‘social-networking’ practices. Many of our participants felt that this was an area that would benefit from further empirical  research to, at the very least, expand our dominant Westernised perspectives of online identity.

Other key points that came back from the session were, in brief:

• An acceptance that in a connected global space, not only is it difficult to avoid having an online identity but that it is also advantageous to be proactive in managing it. Therefore the importance of teaching what we might call  digital identity literacy skills needs to be on the agenda at all sectoral levels;
• There must be more awareness raising and advocacy around the potential risks associated with the use of social media and the long term impact that digital tracks and traces can have on our online identities, for example in relation to career building and the job market;
• Rather than try to respond to fears around using the Internet by heavily monitoring and containing our online activity we should over time learn to accept the contradictions between the differing roles and perspectives that are presented by ourselves and others;
• Separating personal from professional activity is difficult, if not impossible to achieve. But do we really need to maintain this divide? We could not reach consensus on this issue and the debate circled around the question of aggregation versus compartmentalisation of online activities;
• Towards the end of the session someone asked “How should we interpret other people’s online presence?”. An interesting question suggesting that reading and interpreting online identities is in itself a skill.

It was a valuable session and we are grateful for the input of all those who attended and we hope that the person who at the end of the workshop declared “I do not want to have a digital identity as it makes me too nervous” has now overcome her anxieties.

Next on the agenda: we are looking forward to Online Educa Berlin ’09 where will we take these issues forward into our symposium discussion session on (yes you guessed it)  ‘Digital Identity’.

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.