How Japan's 'trusted web' could improve digital governance

The internet has extended people’s power by increasing their ability to store, share, and search for information. On the downside, however, its advertising-driven revenue model has led to the exploitation of personal data, and a disproportionate share of the wealth it has generated has accrued to a handful of giant tech companies.

A growing movement is seeking to move away from a world in which a small number of businesses shape the web. The movement has its roots in decentralized finance, where supposedly “administrator-less” trading of cryptocurrency assets has grown rapidly, thanks in part to a promise of freedom from traditional financial institutions and state control. However, recent crypto-currency meltdowns have shown that trust in nebulous, unregulated financial platforms players is easily abused.

Some have suggested bringing the online world, including decentralized finance, back firmly under the control of traditional regulation. That might be appropriate in some cases, but the reality is that as digital transactions become commonplace, it is difficult to build systems of trust and governance that rely solely on the rules of states, nations, and large institutions. Instead, a new kind of governance is needed that can empower individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises, and corporations to trust each other independently when they conduct business on the web.

The Japanese government is leading a multi-stakeholder initiative to develop a new system for digital governance, bringing together government, academia and industry. A recent white paper by Cabinet Secretariat Japan outlines the initiative’s vision and its basic technical architecture, which is currently being piloted and improved through real-world use cases and international collaboration. Currently, 13 trusted web test projects are underway.

The trusted web aims to increase the areas where transactions between parties can be verified, using the technology and structure of the existing internet. By overlaying this new trust framework on the current web, we could make exchanging data easier and safer without facilitating its exploitation by a handful of tech-giant winners or relying on the heavy hand of surveillance-minded states.

The trusted web shares elements of Web3, the concept of a new and decentralized internet based on public blockchains, but its developers are specifically concerned with maximizing mechanisms for trust as a basis for data distribution.

One area where the trusted web is being tested is healthcare, an area where information is particularly sensitive and the need to prevent abuse is paramount. A range of mechanisms and standards for data sharing already exists in the healthcare field, but ensuring the authenticity of data through trusted verification remains a major challenge.

In one trusted web test project in Japan, developers have built a platform to allow medical institutions to obtain daily health data, mainly on walking, from people wearing shoe sensors. Another project is facilitating the exchange of research data related to conducting clinical trials among medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies and regulators.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is another potential arena for the trusted web. The growing prevalence of internet-connected devices raises a range of cyber security concerns. IoT devices need to verify the data they exchange with each other. Even if strong software protocols are in place to govern the exchange, they could be rendered useless if spyware is installed on the hardware though which the data passes. Every component of a networked device is, on some level, a potential security threat.

Given complex supply chains that span multiple countries, there is a limit to the ability of traditional regulators to ensure the security of every IoT component. So a trusted web project team is prototyping a mechanism to allow concerned parties to check the trustworthiness of network hardware down to the component level.

The system works by having hardware manufacturers record and share their assessment processes using new technologies such as distributed digital ledgers, so that it can be checked by multiple parties. One goal of the project is to define the roles of the parties involved, the data model, and the functions that need to be implemented and enhanced as web.

Whether it is personal health data or data from networks machines, the key to trusted data exchanges lies in verifying the original source of the data the use for which it is intended. Until now that job has mostly been in the hands of big tech companies or powerful states. The trusted web offers an attractive third way; a way to govern the internet transparently and safely, without the downsides associated with over-concentration of power.