In our data-driven society, both public and private organisations are struggling with issues regarding privacy and personal data. On the one hand, consumers are required to hand over more and more personal data in return for (free) online services. On the other hand, regulations increasingly demand data minimisation and informed consent. Personal data management is often proposed as a human centric design philosophy that should ultimately allow consumers to gain back control over, and insight in, the processing of personal data. This signals a transition from provider centric to human centric e-societies. The goal of this panel is to explore which roles government, business and knowledge institutes can play in order to enable personal data management. What can and should these parties do? And what should consumers-the users of online services-do?.

As a frequent participant in eSociety, Willeke is often preoccupied with paperwork because there is no easy to use, affordable way to act as a qualified person in the digital world. Confidential interactions take place over insecure channels like e-mail and post. This situation poses risks and costs for service providers, civilians and governments, while goals regarding confidentiality and privacy are not always met. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate an alternative architecture in which identifying persons, exchanging information, authorizing external parties and signing documents will become more user-friendly and secure. As a starting point, each person has their personal data space, provided by a qualified trust service provider that also issues a high level of assurance electronic ID. Three main building blocks are required: (1) secure exchange between the personal data space of each person, (2) coordination functionalities provided by a token based infrastructure, and (3) governance over this infrastructure. Following the design science research approach, we developed prototypes of the building blocks that we will pilot in practice. Policy makers and practitioners that want to enable Willeke to get rid of her paperwork can find guidance throughout this paper and are welcome to join the pilots in the Netherlands.