Making digital identity work across the web: GDC 2026

A global digital infrastructure

Interoperability becomes a reality when different communities need to communicate with one another and make their systems work together. In the case of digital identity, governments, standards organizations, open-source communities, the private sector, and civil society often start from different needs, but the technologies they develop must ultimately be able to interact with one another. 

Global Digital Collaboration Conference (GDC 26) brings these diverse communities together in one place, with a focus on digital identity and digital wallets. It is an opportunity to compare standards, architectures, implementations, and policy requirements.

Simone Onofri and Amir Sharif at GDC 25, credit: GDC

W3C is a co-organizer of GDC 26. What we bring to this discussion is our experience with the Web as an open and interoperable platform: a shared space where different technologies, services, and communities must be able to interact. 

But interoperability alone is not enough. W3C work is based on principles that put users at the center of technology and include security, privacy, accessibility, internationalization, and user agency. These principles also guide the way we think about and develop Web standards.

Making digital identity work across the Web

Digital identity makes these principles particularly tangible. When a digital wallet or credential interacts with the Web, we must ask not only whether two systems can communicate. We must also view them as a socio-technical system that affects people and society, and therefore consider what information is shared, who mediates the interaction, what choices the user has, and what consequences there may be for security, privacy, and user agency.