Citizen App

Citizen App
Know Your Customer
Team Organizations	Dataswift Urban Systems
Point of Contact	Tyler Weir Irene Ng
Participating Municipalities	Cambridge England
Sectors	Cybersecurity and Privacy Data Smart Region
Status	Implemented
Last Updated	December 4, 2024

Summary

Citizen App, the first of its kind, empower individuals to claim and legally own their data from across multiple sources, then use it securely and seamlessly in everyday life.

Details

Pioneered through UK government-funded research on the Hub-of-All-Things (HAT) together with Smart Me vs. Smart Things, and further developed by Dataswift, the app is integrated with an individual’s Personal Data Server, giving an individual a 360° view of their digital lives with the ability to share the data onwards through Dataswift’s Data Passport System, or for the App owner to create APIs to enable individuals to share their data on to others.

Data Connectors in the app allow individuals to instantly claim their data into their servers from sources such as Facebook, Spotify, Google Calendar, Twitter and Fitbit. Once claimed, individuals can view insights on their digital behaviours and safely share relevant snippets of data with other applications to begin experiencing personalised services.

Algorithms, created by third parties, can be deployed and executed by the PDS Serverless functions, and be called upon by the app to bring unique ‘super-powers’ to both individuals and their cities through the safe and secure processing and sharing of data.

For example, a person's Google Maps data could be used to calculate a mobility score within the app. The score could then be shared with Metro services, providing the citizen with a relevant travel discount and the Metro services with a non-identifying picture of service usage in specific areas of the city to optimise transportation for its users.

History

Originally developed as part of a £385K grant project “Smart Me vs Smart Things”, funded by U.K. Government, this project was codenamed “Rumpel” and was developed into being a PDA Dashboard by Dataswift to enable individuals to view the contents of their personal data server and enable access and control of their server connections with applications and websites. The code name “Rumpel” was chosen as a challenge to UX/UI designers and data visualisation designers to craft a user experience for the individual since multiple data accounts will hold different data within an individual’s personal data server. The current Rumpel has a basic universal data viewer of all the data within the personal data accounts. The challenge is to visualise the data with a 360 view of his/her digital life such that, if crafted well, will enable individuals to understand the value of their data and therefore “turn straw to gold”.

Challenges

• Launch an entirely new “bring-your-own” KYC model
• Enable any individual globally to self-credentialise with their National Passport, with government approval, and use those credentials across businesses, dramatically cutting costs and approval time for sharing data
• Provide an app-agnostic decentralised Universal Identity, with Credentials and Asset Ownership that ensure immutable integrity of assets and transactions
• Enable credentials stored on individuals’ Personal Data Servers to render citizens the legal owners and sole purveyors of their own sensitive information

Solutions from this app

• A citizen app to showcase self credentialisation and KYC (Dataswift)
• A PDA Dashboard for Personal Data Servers (Dataswift)

Governance

Commercial version of Citizen App would require submission of the app to Dataswift’s Developer’s Dashboard so that the contracts for the use of the PDAs can be set up on demand between App owners and Server owners, subject to Dataswift’s governance rules.

Events

5th Annual Symposium of the Digital Person

Activity timeline

• 1 Feb: Citizen App code open sourced by Dataswift for initial collaboration
• 1 Feb: Urban Systems join Citizen App project to assist with documentation
• 1 Feb: XLab/Case Western Reserve University students join the project group
• 10 Feb: Basic documentation ready for Citizen App project by Urban Systems.
• 10 Feb: Information to developers community that the project is now open for collaboration
• 16 Feb: Urban Systems CEO, Wilfred Pinfold, Dataswift CEO Irene Ng have a pre-Symposium fireside chat on the Citizen App, its importance, its purpose and how to get involved.
• 21 Feb: Blogpost on citizen app with video of fireside chat and the Citizen app manifesto is out
• 1 Mar: Citizen app project official launch at the 5th Symposium of the Digital Person