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This article describes in detail the corresponding analysis and answers to the question of how SoLid simplifies the government process by allowing citizens to control their own data, hoping to help more partners who want to solve this problem to find a simpler and easier way.

SoLiD is an exciting new project launched by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World wide Web, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The project aims to fundamentally change the centralization trend of Web applications, which will truly make data ownership belong to users and improve privacy issues.

Suitable readers for this article include:

Developers who are sensitive to new technologies and automation and are aware of technology trends

Officials eager to improve the level of national governance

Practitioners in livelihood industries such as medical care and insurance

Entrepreneurs eager for innovation

Investors who are looking for new directions and dare to take huge risks

Early adopters curious about new trends

0. Summary

In order to provide better public services, the government usually stores a large amount of personal information, such as citizens' names, home addresses, marital status and occupation. At the same time, because the government is composed of various government agencies, there are often multiple copies of data. This puts forward higher requirements for data consistency, privacy and access control, especially after the introduction of similar laws such as GDPR and CCPA. * * to solve this problem, we explored an ecology based on technology called "SoLiD", which allows citizens to maintain their own data in their own data storage cabinets. * * We have used SoLiD in two influential scenarios in which citizens' data is stored in personal database cabinets. Any organization can access citizens' data when authorized by citizens, and citizens can choose which data to authorize to visitors. We find that SoLiD can effectively reshape the relationship between citizens, between citizens and data, and between citizens and applications. We firmly believe that this experiment can accelerate the process of public administration efficiency and citizens' control of their own data.

Keywords: personal data, decentralization, GDPR, Solid, Linked Data.

1. Introduction

With the introduction of the General data Protection regulations (GDPR), the European Commission has provided a law designed to give control over personal data. This law is not necessarily bad for data stores, and if used properly, GDPR can make previously complex data flows easier. It takes a lot of costs and resources for European companies to comply with GDPR regulations, and international companies and multinational corporations must respect the rights that GDPR brings to EU members. This has led to some counter-effects. Companies that follow GDPR in Europe are becoming less and less popular, while non-European companies have a clear advantage in complying with GDPR.

Not all organizations bound by GDPR have suspicious or malicious intentions, and many of them have great difficulties in trying to comply with the law. Local, regional and national governments are bound to encounter such problems. The institutional hierarchy of government is complex, with historically growing data needs and processes at each level. As a result, there are many copies of citizen data, and the security and legal problems caused by these copies already exist in many departments. These governments now require technical compliance with the GDPR specification to simplify their data management costs.

At present, the biggest problem facing the government-level data processing is how to smoothly migrate the data from A to B. This not only poses many technical challenges between different areas, but also becomes a complex legal issue when the government begins "data training" because there are too many servers involved. For example, the data passes through the An and D stations, while B and C are not legally allowed to see all the data that An and D can see. As a result, there is a complex process to verify exactly what access permissions for B and C are, and then reintegrate their results when the data is pushed to D. An obvious example is the low emission zone (LEZ), where LEZ prohibits vehicles from driving in the city center or only under certain conditions because they emit too many harmful substances. In Flanders, when vehicles and natural persons enter the LEZ, federal information checks whether the license plate number and the owner have entered the designated area; the final data are processed to determine whether the vehicle is allowed to pass through the city.

* * the "SoLiD" ecosystem solves these problems through "citizen-owned data storage cabinets (Personl Online Data,Pod)", which has the advantage that all public and private data are stored in one place. * * each organization does not need to move data between An and D, but asks citizens to authorize which data they can view. In this way, the data does not have to move around, and each data request can be automatically evaluated for GDPR compliance. Controlling our personal data online and offline is a trend topic, and there is a lot of research in this field. The key concept is that people can choose where to store their personal data, which is decentralized. Similar to SoLiD technology is blockchain technology, which is also generally regarded as a solution for personal data management. Compared with the block chain, the advantage of SoLiD over the block chain is innate agreement, which can exchange data without communication between the parties, while the block chain does not recognize the agreement reached by each other. Blockchain is very effective for making payments without a central bank or central authority, and Bitcoin is a successful case study. Blockchains can replicate data across multiple nodes, and you can plan to use blockchains if you don't need a trusted third party. If you are a core player, or if the parties trust each other, then you do not need a blockchain. Moreover, the immutability of the blockchain means that data cannot be deleted, which may challenge the right of people to delete their personal data under Article 17 of the GDPR.

* * in this article, we explored the point of view of controlling personal data and discussed two specific use cases that we implemented using SoLiD. * * SoLiD provides an open standards-based and Web-based ecosystem. According to Harrison,Pardo&Cook, ecosystems are metaphors that are often used to express social systems of interdependence among participants, organizations, physical infrastructure and symbolic resources that must be created in technology-driven, information-intensive social systems. A typical example of a digital ecosystem is an open data ecosystem. Open data refers to the obligation of governments to provide their non-privacy-sensitive and non-confidential data networks on their websites free of charge. Open data reuse depends on the data and metadata provided by data providers, while providers rely on feedback from reusers to increase data quality. Although all participants in the open data ecosystem depend on each other to develop their business effectively, public administration and decision makers are most likely to guide these open government ecosystems. Zuiderwijk,Janssen and Davis point out that the challenges of an open data ecosystem are related to "policy, licensing, technology, financing, organizational, cultural and legal frameworks, and ICT infrastructure". Open data reconnecting "one-way streets" into "two-way communication" ecosystems can be as difficult as the challenge of enabling citizens to control their personal data. By applying SoLiD's approach to two high-impact scenarios, the Flemish government's goal is to build the ability of citizens to control their own data.

The structure of this article is as follows: in the next section, we will introduce the challenges we want to solve. After that, we introduce the basics of SoLiD in Section 3; in Section 4, we discuss how to use SoLiD to solve the challenge, and then discuss our implementation in Section 5. Finally, we draw conclusions and present our lessons in section 6.

two。 Challenges

The federal and local governments of northern Belgium aim to empower citizens to reuse their personal information online in different environments such as public services, banking, health insurance and telecommunications providers. The government is usually the custodian of personal data (such as residence, medical information, etc.), which is stored in various information systems of the public administration. Flanders's government authorities allow the sharing and reuse of data, thus reducing the administrative burden on citizens and reflecting the implementation of the "one-time principle" in Europe. But in fact, public administration is trying to control the data of citizens.

* * the first challenge is the efforts of government authorities to retain personal data, for example, the latest e-mail address, phone number or bank account number. Because some citizens have little contact with the government, personal information is often out of date in various information systems.

The second challenge involves allowing citizens to reuse their data in different environments, such as authorizing their diplomas when applying for a new job. The GDPR Regulation 2016Universe 679 states that:

"in order to ensure free consent, it is not possible to provide an effective legal basis for consent to deal with personal data in specific circumstances on the basis of a clear imbalance between the data subject and the controller, especially when the controller is a public body, it is therefore unlikely that free consent should be taken into account in all circumstances." (European Commission, 2016, art. 43).

In other words, the relationship between the government and citizens is often considered to be unbalanced because the government has more power than citizens. Therefore, the reuse of authoritative data managed in the government information system with the consent of citizens cannot be considered to be provided freely. Data sharing among European government departments is not based on a given consent, but on a specific legal basis.

Therefore, * * our main question is: how can government programs simplify the cost of GDPR compliance by giving citizens control over their personal data? * * there are two views on this research question: on the one hand, how can citizens share data with government departments? On the other hand, how do citizens reuse data stored in government information (which have different uses)?

The project evaluates SoLiD's decentralization principles to address these obstacles. SoLiD is an ecosystem that allows individuals to store data in their Data Pod (data cabinet). This gives users real control over their data because they can choose where to store their data and who can access it. The whole set of technologies are based on semantic Web technology (Linked Data) and decentralization, and are of great value to government departments and private organizations that want users to regain control of their data.

3. SoLiD

SoLiD is an Web-based ecosystem that separates data from applications by providing personal data cabinets. Personal data cabinets allow them to store arbitrary data while authorizing who and which applications have access to and write to their personal data cabinets.

Figure 1 shows a comparison between SoLiD and the current application architecture. Its characteristic is that citizens can control their personal data without having to rely on some applications. Applications need to request access from citizens in order to be able to manipulate their data.

Importantly, SoLiD is not an application or platform, but a protocol: open standards and conventions. It is based on existing Web standards, including the Linked Data technology stack, and anyone can implement them.

Picture 1. Current applications are a combination of app and data. Thereby, the app becomes a centralisation point, as all interactions with that data have to go through the app. By introducing the concept of a personal data pod, Solid pushes data out of applications, such that the same data can be managed with different applications. This removes the dependency on a centralised application, as data can be stored independently in a location of the citizen's choice.

Data Pod is a personal storage cabinet that can exist anywhere on the Web, such as a server built by yourself, a free server built by the community, or storage space provided by the government. In Pod, owners have permissions to create, edit, and control management of data. The owner can decide who is granted permission, such as allowing family members to see their holiday photos or allowing colleagues to read meeting notes. Furthermore, people, organizations, and applications can issue requests to Pod's public inbox to gain access to personal data. People have at least one data cabinet, but they can also have multiple other Pod, such as home data, work data, and medical data.

While * * typical centralized applications require users to store data in applications, SoLiD reverses this by personalizing data and allows users to authorize which applications can use my data. * * although a simple application requires only one Pod, the real function of SoLiD is to allow applications to combine data from multiple Pod, which reduces the cost of a lot of data alignment. For example, social networking applications on SoLiD can store personal information (such as posts, friends, comments, and favorite information) in a personal data cabinet, and their visualization requires combining data from different data Pod. This solves two basic problems. First, the data no longer needs to be replicated in different applications, because the application will point to a single copy. Second, there is no synchronization problem: because there is only one copy of the data, the application will no longer have out-of-sync data.

The great advantages of SoLiD are mainly reflected in the following characteristics: 1. Independent identity:

Users choose their identity and where they are located. In SoLiD, the personal identifier (WebID) is a unique address like URL

two。 Control data:

Users can grant and revoke fine-grained access to anyone and applications

3. Switch applications at will:

Because the data can be flexibly accessed by different applications, avoiding the danger of supplier locking, users can choose the products launched by their favorite companies.

For our purposes, * * SoLiD accurately solves the above "data transfer" problem. Data is no longer moved between different government agencies, and each government agency directly uses the original data source, the citizen's data cabinet. This solves the problem of multiple copies and synchronization, as well as the problem of GDPR, that is, which organization has access to which citizens' data. * * because each organization makes a separate request for Pod, reading and writing to Pod is an important topic, which we will discuss next.

4. Solution: use SoLiD to exchange citizens' personal information

In this section, we explain how to use SoLiD to share data between citizens and governments. We will first explain the requirements, and then we will discuss two scenarios: (1) citizens' data (for example, e-mail addresses, phone numbers) are stored in Pod; and (2) authoritative government data, such as diplomas, are reused.

4.1 demand

For our use case, we assume that all citizens can be uniquely identified using a globally unique uniform Resource Identifier (URI), called WebID. The WebID points to more detailed information about citizens, especially to personal data cabinets (Pod). In addition, we assume that all government departments and organizations have WebID and Pod. The required components are shown in Fig2. Typically, SoLiD Pod has a public inbox in which anyone can post messages. Messages can then only be read, modified, and deleted by the owner. We assume that all Pod satisfy this convention because we use it to ensure communication between users.

4.2 use case: citizens share personal information

The Flemish government has developed a digital assistant that provides citizens with interaction with different government departments. A useful example is the provision of notification to citizens about the status of public services. Since most citizens have little interaction with the government, contact information and information about their preferences are often outdated compared to interaction with the private sector. With SoLiD, roles are switched, and citizens' Pod becomes the main source of contact information and preferences. This use case addresses the first challenge and avoids the need for users to keep their data up-to-date in various public and portal sites.

We use an e-mail address to illustrate this use case, which applies to any personal information.

* * prerequisites: * * Citizen Alice (A) can be uniquely identified by her WebID, while A hosts a personal online data store (Pod) on SoLiD Server (S). Similarly, the organization (O) has a WebID and a Pod.

* * use case 1.1 VRV shared personal data. A requests authentication from O using secure token access. After successful authentication, A can grant O access to its e-mail address in the form of web button authorization. After success, O can read the e-mail address from A's Pod. Extension: if A no longer trusts OMagi A, she can revoke O's access to her email address.

* * use case 1.2 VRX manages personal data. A requests authentication using secure additional access O, and after successful authentication, A can add its e-mail address to its own Pod in the user interface provided by O. Extension: a can modify or delete her email address.

* * use case 1.3GRV requests access to personal data. O post the "access to A's email address" request to A's public inbox. After seeing this request, A grants O access to read her email address and sends the notification to O's public inbox. After receiving the notification, O can check A's email address.

4.2 use case: personal information of citizen authorization authority

The goal of the government is to enable citizens to reuse personal information stored in authoritative data sources at different levels of government. For example, share a diploma issued by a university when applying for a new job. Or get information about their income when applying for a loan (as shown in Fig3). This use case addresses the second challenge mentioned above. First of all, citizens do not agree with the government to share their data with others, so we store citizens' degree information in their own Pod. In other words, in the context of GDPR, the data subject is the controller of the data. This shows that SoLiD has reshaped the relationship between citizens, their authoritative data, and applications. If a citizen refuses to authorize it, the government can exercise this right as it does in the field of taxation today.

* * prerequisites: * * Citizen Alice (A) has a WebID and a Pod, hosted on SoLiD Server (S). Similarly, the university (U) has a WebID and a Pod. The employer (E) of An also has WebID.

* * use case 2.1 An is registered as a U student and must provide her WebID, which will enable A to receive a certificate after graduation from university.

* * use case 2.2. Use case 2.2 keep the authorization of U until graduation. U maintains all information about A until A graduates. This information includes courses, grades, teachers, etc. This kind of information cannot be accessed publicly, and only A has read and write access to it.

* * use case 2.3 ask for a certificate from U after graduating from university. An asked for a copy of the certificate (summary) so that she could share it with a third party. U generates a summary of this certificate and sends it to the inbox in A Pod. The certificate is digitally signed by U using asymmetric encryption.

* * use case 2.4GRV shared Diploma. Now A has a copy of her diploma in her inbox, which she can share with anyone. For example, she can publish it to her data Pod and then grant her employer read access to E's WebID.

* * use case 2.5 virtual * check the validity of the diploma. If E wants to check the validity of Diploma A, E must check U's signature on the diploma. E does this by extracting the signature from the diploma and determining the authority (U). This could be

This is done using an existing document signing mechanism such as XAdES.

5. Personal Assistant to Flemish Citizen

In this section, we will discuss the implementation of the combination of "Mijn Burgerprofiel". Mijn Burgerprofiel means "my Citizen profile" * *, he is the intelligent digital assistant of Flemish citizens, through which citizens can see all their authorization status and data. In addition, there is a standard electronic authentication specification in Europe, called eIDAS. The specification reduces the risk of identity abuse or change. Users can access personal data through my Citizen profile in the following ways:

1) obtain the Belgian electronic ID card through the smart card reader or through the mobile phone; 2) install the application on the mobile phone.

In the previous section, we described in detail the first use case, where citizens share personal information (for example, e-mail addresses). As described in Section 3, our application and data are separate. Therefore, the implementation of our method requires two more components: (1) data Pod, and (2) the application interface for viewing and using data.

Next, we will discuss these two components.

5.1 Data Pod applications

In our implementation, we used Node Solid Server 5.0.1 (NSS) to create and host data Pod. If the user already has a Pod, it can be used to share personal information. NSS allows us to create secure data cabinets for any citizen or government organization. By default, the government provides data Pod for all citizens. However, if citizens want more control over Pod, they can choose to host their own data Pod, such as running NSS on their own servers.

5.2 personal Information Management Infrastructure

In order to allow the government to easily access specific information about citizens, we have expanded the "my Citizen profile", which is owned by all Flemish citizens. Currently, this information is centrally stored in the "my Citizen profile" database. In order to work in harmony with SoLiD, we have modified my Citizen profile, which stores the information not in each citizen's data Pod, but in the Flemish government server. My Citizen profile, like a citizen, also has a WebID.

For our use cases, we focus on storing and obtaining citizens'e-mail addresses. To achieve this, we implemented three components: SoLid Linker (connecting the original citizen to the SoLiD), an e-mail extractor, and an e-mail visualization tool. These components are described later.

5.3 SoLiD Linker

In the profile settings for my Citizen profile, we have added a field where people can associate their account with any SoLiD WebID, as shown in Fig4. By default, citizens use the default WebID provided by the government.

5.4 Email Extractor

If a citizen has a valid SoLid WebID link to his my Citizen profile account, the application can try to extract its e-mail address by tracking the link in the file. The citizen's data Pod contains an email address. Based on WebID, the e-mail extractor component can determine the user's Pod. Using this URL, the extractor will send an HTTP GET request to the SoLiD Pod using the authentication token of the my Citizen profile WebID. If the citizen has granted my Citizen profile access to the file, the contents of the file will be returned; otherwise, an authorization error will be returned. If no error is encountered, the e-mail extractor component returns the citizen's e-mail address.

5.5 Email Visualization tools

On the my Citizen profile overview page, we added a field that displays the user's e-mail address (only if the user has or is authorized by the user). This information is read from the WebID that the user links to, and it is always extracted instantly and will not be stored anywhere else. This means that when the citizen changes the value, the page can immediately display the updated value. The visualization tool can be used to automate processes, such as sending reminders during the upcoming election.

The Flemish government has accepted our changes to my Citizen profile so that we can interoperate with the SoLiD ecosystem so that citizens can control their data. We have addressed two high-profile challenges: first, government efforts to keep personal data up-to-date, and second, allowing citizens to reuse data stored in government information systems in different contexts. This case proves that SoLiD can solve the problem of citizens' control over data.

New approaches to future research include how to maintain the maximum use of user authority data, such as residence. This should ensure that the relationship between the information shared by citizens and the private sector is always up to date. Another obvious point is that the study aims to inform users that it is their natural right to agree to reuse data. This concept is called "informed consent". In addition, all actions should be transparently recorded in SoLiD Pod, including access to data, modification of data, authorization of consent and revocation of rights, which is equivalent to the property in our bank account. This fine-grained and structured log can also detect anomalies and data leaks by using machine learning algorithms. To be more complete, future research should focus on different challenges, such as how to build sustainable business models.

SoLiD builds on existing Web standards and methods (such as associated data and decentralization, so SoLiD can be seen as process innovation rather than technological innovation), so integration with SoLiD Pod is simple. We have used email addresses to illustrate this simplicity, but the aim is to extend it to all personal data.

We hope that this SoLiD experiment in the Flemish region will accelerate the resolution of the same complexity problems that governments face in public administration and private organizations, while giving users back control of their data.

This is the answer to the question about how SoLid simplifies the government process by allowing citizens to control their own data. I hope the above content can be of some help to you. If you still have a lot of doubts to be solved, you can follow the industry information channel for more related knowledge.

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