# guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php (part 1 of 5) > One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [31], part 1 of 5. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages. ## Where this source sits - Source: document (Text), 2006 (from the career record), https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php. Text: document text - On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the start (Hexayurt, 2002), before the money step (Global Village Development Bank, 2009). - How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Design of cheap private identity and notarisation, the identity/accounts layer Harappa assumes. - Career works it belongs to: - Small is Profitable (2002): Co-edited Rocky Mountain Institute book on the hidden benefits of right-sized, distributed power; The... - Hexayurt infrastructure kit (2003): A household kit around the Hexayurt: water-purifying bottles, dry toilets, efficient stoves and solar lights. - CheapID (2006): Design for a sub-$1 identity card, written for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense, that keeps... - The Future We Deserve: "Facebook for the Five Billion?" (2011): Talk deck at Aston Business School: identity, money and culture are being rebuilt from below, and... (suggested by machine) - Taking a crack at a practical system (introducing the ESCROWNYM) (2012): Blog essay proposing the escrownym: an identity lodged with escrow brokers under a legally binding... (suggested by machine) - Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of: - CheapID to Mattereum: One identity pattern, from a person's ID card in 2006 to warranties on physical goods in 2017. - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. - cryptographic applications: Cryptography applied: from 1990s cypherpunk practice to identity cards, Ethereum and Mattereum. - cyber and defense: Security work for defense clients, built on one idea: set rivals to check each other. Resilience and Opportunity in... - environment / green capitalism: Green economics: from oil efficiency to markets for facts about products. - fiction draws on: The work that fed the fiction. - Ideas whose earliest source in this archive is this one: CheapID / identity for everyone; State in a Box - Ideas developed here: Hexayurt - Topics: CheapID, biometrics & identity (85%) - Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: SIAB (25 here; 2 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); CheapID (60 here; 25 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated); SSTR (27 here; 8 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); identity infrastructure (11 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); State In A Box (12 here; 10 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated); e-gold (7 here; 12 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); microfinance (5 here; 7 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 1 undated); digital signatures (10 here; 30 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); citizens (13 here; 63 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated); DNS (6 here; 23 sources in all, earliest dated 2006) - The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): contracts; standards; citizens; supply chains; accounts; human rights; Frontier; digital identity; digital signatures; clean water - Importance: core-text score 0.81 (1.00 is the top), number 15 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation - Related sources: - [66] [My State In A Box – Identity Services Architecture paper... (2007)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/66.md): same career work: CheapID - [266] ["Blockchain: IoT's trust broker?" talk on the fly by... (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/266.md): same career work: Small is Profitable - On the same works, just before: [100] [Hexayurt project (2002)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/100.md); [185] [Hexayurt (2002)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/185.md); [201] [Colophon, Danish Environmental Protection Agency (2003)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/201.md) - On the same works, just after: [108] [User:Vinay Gupta/The Unplugged (2006)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/108.md); [29] [Saving the World on the Cheap (2007)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/29.md); [66] [My State In A Box – Identity Services Architecture paper... (2007)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/66.md) ## Reading it Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it. Cite as: guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php, document, 2006, https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [31], https://guptaoption.com/texts/31.md. ## Passages, part 1 of 5 [passage 1](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) State In A Box - Identity Services Architecture Vinay Gupta [email removed] Abstract State In A Box presents a coherent vision of overhauling the fundamental assumptions made about nation state infrastructure to enable breakthroughs in Security, Stability, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR) functions in states in crisis. The Identity Services Architecture presented enables low cost, high security financial transaction infrastructure to be rolled out using 2D bar codes, public key cryptography, camera phones and biometrics in a novel configuration which both protects civil liberties and provides strong identity information for legal processes. Furthermore, an approach to international control of a single international biometric database is presented, based on the chaordic work of Dee Hock, the architect of VISA. The assessment at the heart of this paper is that the benefits of a correctly-designed rights-respecting cross-jurisdictional chaordic governance structure cannot be forgone if we are to see a realistic implementation of biometrics as an enabling technology for development. We anticipate the cost of issuing an ID using this technology to be less than $1 per head. This paper covers a lot of theoretical ground. For a quick overview of the ID proposal and links to the demonstration code, see the CheapID Homepage. You may find the the original word document of this page easier to read. The getting started guide (pdf) which has some diagrams that provide a good starting point is essential reading. There is also a 35 minute video which explains some of the basic technical ideas behind CheapID, although its scope is far more limited than this paper. The Civil Liberties Perspective Another way to understand this paper is to look at how the system described in it would be used by ordinary people doing everyday things. People like you and me. This paper shows how we can manage large scale biometrics databases and increase the amount of privacy we have from government snooping while still having a secure society. The basic crux of this paper is that you can separate the biometrics database, which simply identifies your physical body, and isn't necessarily any more intrusive than Flickr or any other online photo sharing site, and the reputation database, which stores things like your credit rating, any criminal record, and the suspicions of various government agencies about your intentions. So when you do something like rent a car, you give them a token which has your face on it. They match your face to the token, and say "ok, this token is valid." But the token doesn't have your name, or your SSN, or anything else on it: it's totally sterile. But if you steal the car, they take the token to court, as well as the proof you gave it to them, and the court uses the token to get your name, SSN and other details. If all that FBI or other government biometrics database stored was tokens, and it required a court order to go from a match in the biometrics database to a name and street address, [passage 2](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) token to court, as well as the proof you gave it to them, and the court uses the token to get your name, SSN and other details. If all that FBI or other government biometrics database stored was tokens, and it required a court order to go from a match in the biometrics database to a name and street address, I think we'd have a fair balance between civil liberties and security. A database of pictures of faces or fingerprints is not the intrusive part: it's the connecting of your face or your fingerprint to your background that is the intrusion, and we can separate the two databases and require a court order (and a crypto key) to reconnect them. Cheap DNA scanners are coming. We've have to fix how we handle biometric data as a society before they arrive. Introduction The Security/Stability/Transition/Reconstruction (SSTR) arena offers an opportunity to re-examine the fundamental "business processes" of the State. State In A Box (SIAB) is a set of interwoven concepts which relate to the idea of rebuilding the State from the ground up, from scratch, on modern technological infrastructure. Much of our thinking about the State derives from historical accidents like monarchy, gold and paper ballots. The structures of our democracy rest on foundations built when travel was slow and before the invention of public key cryptography. Taxation rests on a framework which predates credit cards and electronic bank records. Security rests on organizational structures which are still recognizable from Rome or Babylonia. In the commercial sector, areas which have these kinds of deeply embedded but no longer valid assumptions go through periodic restructuring. These processes of "creative destruction" re-optimize the business processes, frequently by moving the divisions between one business and another through processes like integration and disaggregation. In government, short of the collapse of nation states, the pace of innovation is much, much slower. It is my contention that this fact obscures one or possibly two order of magnitude cost and capital savings in providing State services to citizens. The price paid for stability, in this instance, is inefficiency. However, in countries that do not even have stability, this inefficiency can scarcely be afforded. By thinking about redesigning the structure of the State around modern technology, we may be able to design a robust new technological infrastructure to run a State upon. This effort is called State In A Box because the likely form factor of a deployable solution is actually about 20 trucks, and State in About Twenty Trucks is somewhat unwieldy. The Hacker Lowdown In straight, one-hacker-to-another terms, here's what we've got. Take a piece of paper. Print a digitally signed 2D bar code on the piece of paper. The bar code contains a picture of the person, and an encrypted block of data which identifies that person to a court. To check an ID, you take a picture of a the bar code, and it displays an image of the person on the ID card. A person [passage 3](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) a digitally signed 2D bar code on the piece of paper. The bar code contains a picture of the person, and an encrypted block of data which identifies that person to a court. To check an ID, you take a picture of a the bar code, and it displays an image of the person on the ID card. A person carries a handful of these documents, each one bitwise-unique. They are used a bit like business cards, but for transactions that need hard identity information, like car loans. You leave the ID card behind you with each transaction - but all anybody can read is the image - and they saw that when you walked in the door so no additional information is being revealed. If there's a problem the document gets decrypted by a court, revealing who you are. If there's no problem, it's like a cheque that is never cashed: the information about your identity sits there, inert and unseen. This document is called a CheapID Identity Card. It's just a piece of paper, the brains is in the crypto scheme. To make this work you need to split a person's biometric and identity data apart. Nobody has ever done that as far as I know, so this is a novel idea. We don't just split them between two government bodies, but we split them so that the biometric data goes to the international level, and the identity data stays where it is right now, with governments. To manage these interfaces we need standards bodies rather like those that manage the internet. We rely on a separation of powers to put the specter of unrestrained use of biometric data away, permanently, if we can manage it. Good enough to get you started? This is long... State in a Box and the Spectrum of Infrastructure The Spectrum of Infrastructure (SOFI) reflects a different way of thinking about infrastructure systems on both a nation state and local level. Take electricity demand. You want light. In a conventional infrastructure setting, you buy a bulb, you plug it into a standard fitting (even this standardization is an important utility function) and standard electricity comes down the wire and gives you services. On the other end of the wire is a trillion dollars and more of power plants, fuel supply chains, national grid finance, building and maintenance and other essential systems working together to get you 110V at 60Hz AC. Now consider another example: a tiny LED reading light that is powered by turning a handle for a few minutes every three hours. The problem solved is similar or the same: reading at night. The SOFI is a way of understanding the architectures of service provision. On one axis there are the essential and non-essential services we need, like water to drink and temperature control. On the other axis, there are different styles and scales of infrastructure. In a SSTR / HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) context, it may prove difficult or [passage 4](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) night. The SOFI is a way of understanding the architectures of service provision. On one axis there are the essential and non-essential services we need, like water to drink and temperature control. On the other axis, there are different styles and scales of infrastructure. In a SSTR / HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) context, it may prove difficult or impossible to rebuild service provision architectures towards the left hand (large, complex) side of the SOFI. However, the systems on the right (small, simple) side of the SOFI may prove to be durable even in a war because of their self-contained modularity. The definitive resource for understanding the different scales and styles of infrastructure is Small is Profitable from the Rocky Mountain Institute (http://smallisprofitable.org.) This book focusses on electrical infrastructure but many of the same arguments apply to service architectures of all types. State In A Box extends conventional thinking about infrastructure into an SSTR context. Much of RMI's work on distributed infrastructure and infrastructure resilience applies directly to SSTR, of course, but the RMI model applies mostly to energy and other "traditional infrastructure" service provision models. SIAB considers financial services and a variety of services traditionally provided by government as "infrastructure" largely to group them together with the other large complex systems that must be repaired or have substitutes deployed in an SSTR context to successfully restore essential services to a nation. However, the further we extend into subtle services like "voting" the more we begin to push the boundaries of the conventional use of the word "infrastructure." Can we really put a power station and a ballot box on the same "to do" list? From the perspective of a citizen they may be equally important, but we do not typically thing of grouping the provision of those services together. However, State In A Box does just that because there are synergies between unexpected areas of the service architectures in SIAB that provide for accelerated roll out of normality in an SSTR context. This paper only covers the Identity Services Architecture concepts in any real depth, but we will examine the minimal household infrastructure package associated with the Hexayurt Project (one of our HADR offerings) to give a concrete example of the Spectrum of Infrastructure concept in action. The Hexayurt Project and Whole Systems Thinking In 2003 I redesigned refugee housing and infrastructure systems using a process very similar to the one which I am now applying to the fundamental structures of the State. The product of this process is the Hexayurt Shelter System. Infrastructure often defines what is and is not possible or economically effective. Modern decentralized infrastructure solar panels can provide limited services without the rigidity, vulnerability and costs associated with heavier weight centralized service architectures like power plants and gas terminals. The Hexayurt itself is a cheap, lightweight shelter which is remarkable only because it is held together with tape and is easy to field fabricate. There are a number of similar shelter systems in development [passage 5](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) solar panels can provide limited services without the rigidity, vulnerability and costs associated with heavier weight centralized service architectures like power plants and gas terminals. The Hexayurt itself is a cheap, lightweight shelter which is remarkable only because it is held together with tape and is easy to field fabricate. There are a number of similar shelter systems in development which are broadly speaking as functional. The Infrastructure Package which goes with the Hexayurt, however, is unique and valuable. A conventional home has six kinds of pipes and wires running into it to carry services: electrical lines, gas lines, clean water in, waste water out, communications links over copper wire or fiber optics, and storm drains. To this list can be added roads and wireless data services. The Hexayurt Shelter System provides options for providing all of these basic services on a house by house basis. For example, rather than providing a centralized gas plant and then running gas mains to every $200 shelter, we use a wood gasification stove. This stove is an efficient design that burns wood, dung, coal and many other fuels roughly 10 times more efficiently than an open fire, without producing much smoke because the combustion is so complete. One stove per household effectively substitutes for the centralized gas infrastructure and international gas transport system, as far as cooking and heating needs goes. Similar approaches provide electrical light and power for small appliances, clean drinking water, working toilets and perhaps even communications. The bundle, in mass production quantities, including the house is likely to cost less than $500 per household and may cost as little as $150 per household using local labor and vast economies of scale. In an HADR scenario, the hexayurt-style settlements have some unique properties. Firstly, the quality of life is likely to be much higher because all basic amenities are provided. Secondly, because these amenities are provided at an individual household level rather than from large centralized resources like a central power generator, and the homes themselves are designed to be easily transported, a large settlement can be resettled, family by family, back to their original villages when stable conditions are restored. This new capability may help ease relationships between refugees and host nations by ensuring that hosts are not stuck with large fixed settlements for years or decades after peace is restored because the refugees have become dependent on the centralized infrastructure provided to them by HADR services. Much of the redefinition of shelter and services which lead to the design of the Hexayurt Shelter System was done by the Rocky Mountain Institute, particularly at the Sustainable Settlements Charrette. Integrating various disparate aspects of a system to provide breakthrough performance or new capabilities, like transportable infrastructure, is a design approach called whole systems thinking. SIAB is an attempt to apply whole systems thinking to the nation state, in the hope of providing an accelerated path to restoring nation state services during and after a crisis. The Leapfrogged State Leapfrogging is [passage 6](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) various disparate aspects of a system to provide breakthrough performance or new capabilities, like transportable infrastructure, is a design approach called whole systems thinking. SIAB is an attempt to apply whole systems thinking to the nation state, in the hope of providing an accelerated path to restoring nation state services during and after a crisis. The Leapfrogged State Leapfrogging is a term used in sustainable development circles to refer to phenomena like Chinese or Indian villages getting their first telephone services in the form of cell phones instead of land lines. Rather than going through the slow evolution of telephone services, from telegraph to manually-switched copper and up through analog, digital and 3G services, these new generations of telephone users simply get the modern systems without the precursors. Leapfrogging is often efficient for sustainable development because the enormous capital costs of developing these advanced technologies are disproportionately paid for by the competition to provide new generations of services to the highly paying customers of the developed world. The benefits of innovation are global, but the costs are mainly borne in the developed world. A side effect of this phenomena is that frequently late adopters wind up with much better services than early adopters. In television, the European PAL standard reproduced color considerably better than the earlier NTSC standard adopted in America. In broadband internet, the US customer has speeds around 5% of the average speeds found in countries like South Korea that came to the game late and invested heavily. The one area where leapfrogging encounters serious issues is traditional infrastructure like water supply and electrical power provision. This is because little developed world money currently goes into refining our solutions to these problems because the existing service provision architectures are perfectly functional, albeit deeply influenced by the Victorian model of infrastructure. The Victorian model is that large factories that produce services, and pipes and wires carry the services to homes and businesses. This is the model we use for drinking water, sewage, gas and electricity supply in the developed world. Because solar panels or composting toilets did not exist, the Victorian model relies on complex centralized facilities to provide the services which we can now provide at or close to point of use. Backporting to the Developed World Backporting is a term used in software, and it has been re-applied to "reverse leapfrogging," where leapfrogged technologies are re-imported from the late adopting nations back to the early adopters. The hope of the State In A Box project is to produce a template for a new approach to statebuilding based on leapfrogging and whole systems thinking. Together, these approaches may reveal a way to run a functional State with new and unusual properties, including an unexpectedly high degree of stability and resilience, for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional approaches. SSTR provides a rare opportunity to re-examine the foundational concepts on which the state is built, and re-examination of these fundamental processes reveals the same things seen when one [passage 7](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) reveal a way to run a functional State with new and unusual properties, including an unexpectedly high degree of stability and resilience, for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional approaches. SSTR provides a rare opportunity to re-examine the foundational concepts on which the state is built, and re-examination of these fundamental processes reveals the same things seen when one re-examines the electrical services provision architectures we use in the developed world: the are inefficient because they are stepwise refinements of architectures that were created when science and technology were dramatically less capable. A fresh start allows us to design a new architecture based on full application of modern understandings and capabilities. The leapfrogged state may be as different from conventional state architectures as the jet plane was from horseless carriages. It is my sincere hope that if the State In A Box model turns out to be useful, any aspects of it which are suitable for backporting can be brought into service in the developed world. Identity Services Architecture Identity services architectures are commonly discussed in the context of providing single sign on (SSO) services on the internet, and other identity management services. In the context of the State, there is usually a duplication (or worse) of effort between private identity credentialing services and the State's own systems. State services like taxation, criminal justice and voting revolve around the idea of a person being clearly identified. Indeed, the very boundary of the State is partially defined by a list of persons who are members of that State. Identity fraud at the State level is most typically seen by illegal immigrants and criminals who use multiple State-issued identities to evade the controls at the borders of a State to prevent unauthorized entry. Identity theft indicates that our old approaches to providing identity backbone services is encountering problems and is probably due for an upgrade. RealID, a proposed US Govt. standard for identity cards, is one model for that upgrade. In voter fraud, inaccuracies in the match between who is meant to be able to vote, and who actually votes, can contribute to the perception of corruption and resultant loss of faith in an electoral process � a major issue in fledgling democracies. At a fundamental level all these services hang off an identity backbone � a centralized facility which allows the State to identify internally which one of their citizens a specific fact or credential pertains. In the USA, this is the Social Security Number plus the associated authentication services infrastructure, like driver's testing and licensing facilities. The SIAB Identity Services Architecture is designed to be an expedient way of rebuilding this identity backbone and enabling a troubled state to regain the ability to provide its citizens with identity services in all their forms. By extending the scope of the traditional state identity services architecture, we hope to also offer some additional leverage against international terrorism, civil unrest and foment economic growth by providing identity credentials that are reliable enough [passage 8](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) rebuilding this identity backbone and enabling a troubled state to regain the ability to provide its citizens with identity services in all their forms. By extending the scope of the traditional state identity services architecture, we hope to also offer some additional leverage against international terrorism, civil unrest and foment economic growth by providing identity credentials that are reliable enough to give confidence to financial institutions. Locality, Scope and Architecture Business process re-engineering and software architecture often make a big deal out of locating systems, processes and services at the right level in an architecture. A software architecture that locates a critical process at the wrong architectural level can wind up with serious performance or reliability issues. A business process can wind up uneconomic or unworkable if processes and especially decision making are carried out at the wrong level, either too slow at the top, or without authority at the bottom. The SIAB design gains much of its leverage from moving various aspects of the system either up to higher, transnational levels, or down to extremely local levels. SIAB often pushes municipal services down to the household or the individual, and national services up to transnational levels where the international community can stabilize them. Because we operate in an increasingly globalized world, bodies like international standards committees exert an increasingly large degree of international influence on the activities individual nation states. At a technical level, standards like the internet protocol are default realities for every government on the earth, and they have no direct control of those standards. Access to the international services requires conformity international standards. This has massive advantages for all parties. A close parallel is the VISA system, which was formed after years of failure to get banks to agree on how to allow customers to make electronic payments across bank boundaries. VISA relocated the problem from being a massively interconnected mass of agreements between individual banks to creating a new body, in which all participants had some influence, but which was immune to capture by any individual group. This new body set the standards, operated the agreements and did the branding of what became VISA. This was in essence an architectural solution. The problem which was insoluble at one architectural level, that of bank-to-bank agreements, became profitably soluble when it became bank-to-VISA agreements. Likewise, SIAB and particularly the Identity Services Architecture relies on locating problems at the right architectural level to provide clean solutions. Some aspects of the problem are best handled by as-yet-non-existent international bodies. Others are handled by commercial infrastructure, particularly those parts of the system which exist to absorb risk. The ISA, like the hexayurt, relies on a few small enabling technologies. In the case of the hexayurt, the enabling technologies are industrial box closure tape and individual systems in the infrastructure pack, most of which rely on small scientific insights and basic engineering. The performance of the whole system greatly exceeds the sum of its individual parts because it fulfills all the [passage 9](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) the hexayurt, relies on a few small enabling technologies. In the case of the hexayurt, the enabling technologies are industrial box closure tape and individual systems in the infrastructure pack, most of which rely on small scientific insights and basic engineering. The performance of the whole system greatly exceeds the sum of its individual parts because it fulfills all the basic requirements for infrastructure, and therefore gives the solution new attributes � transportability and scalability. If the Hexayurt Infrastructure Package did everything except one critical piece that required centralized infrastructure, we would not get those new capabilities. Everything has to work together to get breakthroughs in capability. The ISA is a whole systems thinking solution to providing an identity backbone just as the Hexayurt is a whole systems thinking solution to shelter and household infrastructure. State In A Box as a whole requires a myriad of other components, each designed as a whole system, and also designed as a component of a larger whole system, the State itself. The ISA also draws inspiration from the structures of VISA and the Internet in terms of how operational processes cross organizational and jurisdictional boundaries, and also various architectural levels of the system to effect jurisdictional arbitrage. Processes which are impossible in one jurisdiction are easy in another, and control of the system and division of power within it is carefully balanced between architectural levels and stakeholders. The design of systems like this is known as chaordics and is a field pioneered by Dee Hock, the architect of VISA. ("The Birth of the Chaoridic Age" gives more details.) Fusing Technology, Politics and Law One of the historical accidents which contributes to our current muddles over identity is the historical separations between technology, politics and law. In prior ages technological progress happened at a pace which broadly speaking matched the ability of governments and courts to keep up. Technology was largely contained and managed by political and legal concerns. Law and policy acted as brakes on change. Now the situation is different. Technological progress is outstripping the ability of governments to make accurate policy on all fronts, and the courts are repeatedly mishandling cases with a technological component so badly that they look ridiculous. The entire arena of software patents is a quagmire caused by using 200 and more year old conceptions of the role of law in an arena with entirely different dynamics. The future is a foreign country. If the social values which we respect are to live in that country there needs to be an almost diplomatic process by which relationships with the ways of the future are established in the present and emigration to the future done with as few losses as possible. This sounds abstract but it has acute practical implications. The market is inevitably bringing improvements to our current basic systems. Some improvements are, linear and others, discontinuous. Computing power gets cheaper, disks get larger, and once in a while radical new technologies like cheap video projectors come [passage 10](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) present and emigration to the future done with as few losses as possible. This sounds abstract but it has acute practical implications. The market is inevitably bringing improvements to our current basic systems. Some improvements are, linear and others, discontinuous. Computing power gets cheaper, disks get larger, and once in a while radical new technologies like cheap video projectors come along. We assume that the slowest part of the systems is the State's ability to use the available technologies effectively, and to plan and respond. Technology marches forward, and the State plays catch-up, trying to effectively port concepts about society forwards on to the new substrate, layer by layer. This embrace of constant change, of constant progress in technological capability, against the apparently relatively static background of natural laws and human nature is a radical new condition against which all national governments must function. Being 5% faster than the Soviets was enough for the USA to win the Cold War. It is not fast enough to maintain the integrity of American society as we move ever faster into the future. Development is usually thought of as being about how we export the present (cell phones) and the past (plumbing.) But SIAB is about exporting the future � a set of systems that our own bureaucratic incapacity is likely to make impossible to adopt domestically may still turn out to be the best match between available technologies and human welfare. SIAB is "exported leapfrogging." Perhaps we can learn to learn better from smaller and less stable societies as they leapfrog their basic infrastructure, and step firmly away from governmental protectionism of social constructs which are now untenable due to technological change. We have to face the probable reality that the most technologically advanced societies on the planet will soon be the societies that came last to the table, spent their scarce capital on the most effective technologies yet produced, and reap the benefits in increased leverage for their dollars of capital invested. By strategic trail blazing through this new technological landscape, we can affect the course that these societies will travel, simply by making our preferred options available more reliable, cheaply and easily than other, less preferable options. The developed countries of the world would rather that the Global Poor did not all drive cars as soon as the option becomes available, for three reasons: fuel availability, environmental concerns, and land use problems due to urban sprawl. Yet how much work do we do on making sure that the most advanced engineering goes into making better bicycle designs for the developing world? Our policy objectives and our technological development pipelines are currently at two different architectural levels in government. Is that an accurate and effective model any more? We attempt to police proliferation of some technologies, like cryptography, super computers and weapons technologies. On the other hand, do we attempt to consciously foster adoption of technologies which are supportive to goals like reducing global environmental impact? We have restriction of what [passage 11](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) currently at two different architectural levels in government. Is that an accurate and effective model any more? We attempt to police proliferation of some technologies, like cryptography, super computers and weapons technologies. On the other hand, do we attempt to consciously foster adoption of technologies which are supportive to goals like reducing global environmental impact? We have restriction of what is bad, but no political capital invested in active promotion of what is good, as far as technology goes. This is irrational in a technological age. Bridging Technological Activism, International Relations and Business Process Re-engineering to Create the Just Future The set of technologies which are outlined in this paper are relatively simple combinations of existing off-the-shelf systems to create an Identity Services Architecture with radical new properties. It is a whole system. The individual system components are vastly more complex and sophisticated than, say, a wood gasification stove. But these individual software or hardware systems are, to those skilled in the relevant arts, off the shelf items or will be in the two or three years it is likely to take to begin serious work on the global build out if the scheme is adopted. You only get whole systems performance if every component is right. Omit the water purification technology with the hexayurt, and refugees remain tied to their new clean wells and cannot return home without losing access to clean drinking water. Similarly, a single broken subsystem within the ISA will produce a working system, but it will not achieve the breakthroughs in privacy and security that will allow the system to compete in the free market, and thereby get the leverage required to effect a global transformation in how identity services are provided by government. In the hexayurt, all of the pieces of the whole system are at the same architectural level � they are all bits and pieces of equipment which can be thrown in a truck and unpacked to form a whole. This is a convenient and easy situation. Everybody involved in the design is basically an engineer. The Identity Services Architecture is not like this. It is a whole system comprised of parts which are radically unlike each other, as different as international agencies and strange little bits of software which run on camera phones. A whole system with parts from different architectural levels is an extremely hard case because it requires such a wide variety of different people to work together to make the entirety function as intended. Compound this by the internationalism required to get the global solution that is the payoff at the end of this process, and it is unlikely to be possible to implement this system successfully in any kind of coordinated fashion. This is not to say the system is unimplementable, however. It just means that the traditional approach to development is unlikely to be effective. How, then, to build the Identity Services Architecture? VISA and the Internet are two global systems which function as whole systems, [passage 12](https://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php) unlikely to be possible to implement this system successfully in any kind of coordinated fashion. This is not to say the system is unimplementable, however. It just means that the traditional approach to development is unlikely to be effective. How, then, to build the Identity Services Architecture? VISA and the Internet are two global systems which function as whole systems, and are comprised of diverse actors united through standards organizations, supported by private companies out of intelligent self-interest. These commons are incredibly important because the value of the network increases rapidly with the size of the network. This network effect enables multi-party, cross-level cooperation because it is in the interests of all parties for the system to work and any steps against that goal are suppressed by all other parties, and by the marketplace (i.e. collective free will) itself. This likely means that only a commercial implementation of these systems has any realistic chance of success. It is extremely notable that large international network-based service architectures like VISA and the Internet are watched over by states, but not operated by them. Because of the security aspects of the ISA, governments must be involved. Because of the financial services aspects, private companies must be involved. Think of it as a system that compliments and extends the VISA payment architecture (and its rivals and descendants) and the Internet � a third leg in the tripod of global interconnectedness technologies: communication, trade and identity are natural partners. The hope is that the SIAB-ISA can be incubated within the SSTR arena while the technological substrate is built. Once the basic tools are available (and, as stated before, they are COTS technologies for the most part,) it may be possible to begin to build the framework of alliances necessary to take this simple and direct approach to solving the liberty / security / privacy equation and turn it into a global solution to the dangerous mismatch between technology and policy in the arena of personal and government identity management. Technology is policy. Biometrics is far to dangerous a technology to be allowed to develop in directions that thwart broader policy goals like civil rights and personal freedoms. Enumerating the Stakeholders Earlier presentations of this system marched directly on to the technology and tended to leave people somewhat lost. I apologize for further preamble, but it is necessary to correctly contextualize the relatively simple technological core. Like VISA and the internet, the SIAB-ISA is relatively simple at a technological level. However, the genius of VISA and the internet lies in the governance structures that allow disparate parties to work together. The same technologies with a rigid hierarchical control structure would likely never have been adopted. The governance framework is inseparable from the technology. These are whole systems. The stakeholders who must be represented at the governance level of the ISA are: Private Individuals Transaction Coparties (those who sign contracts, like utilities) Infrastructure Providers Banks and other Conventional Financial Service Institutions Microfinance Institutions Global Powers Small Nation --- Continues in https://guptaoption.com/texts/31-2.md (part 2 of 5). End of [31] guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php, part 1 of 5. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.