Digital services increasingly cross organizations, sectors, and borders, but trust rarely follows.
In this conversation, Darrell O’Donnell and Glenn Gore discuss why trust should be shared infrastructure, not a product, and what changes when governance and interoperability come first. The conversation examines the limits of current identity and verification models and what it takes to make digital trust work at scale.
What Would Digital Services Look Like If Trust Had Been Designed In?
Digital services underpin interactions between people, organizations, and governments. Yet trust is still one of the most fragile parts of our digital infrastructure. Identity systems are fragmented. Privacy is difficult to implement consistently. Verification often relies on duplicative processes that don’t translate across organizations or jurisdictions.
These problems continue not because we lack technology, but because trust wasn’t built into the internet from the beginning.
During a recent visit to Singapore to meet with Affinidi and demonstrate the Ayra Card for our members, Darrell O’Donnell spoke with Glenn Gore about why identity, privacy, and verification remain difficult to manage at scale, even as technology improves.
The Challenge Isn’t Technology
Today’s systems offer strong encryption, secure logins, and ways to protect data privacy. Still, organizations keep creating new trust systems from scratch. Every new service, partnership, or region brings more onboarding steps, more checks, and more friction.
The conversation points to a key problem: trust is often built as separate solutions instead of shared infrastructure. If trust is treated like a product or kept on a single platform, it can’t support systems that span multiple organizations or industries.
Start With Governance and Interoperability
Establishing long-term trust takes more than just technology. It needs shared rules, clear roles, and ways for different groups to recognize and trust each other’s commitments.
Without this base, making systems work together is often an afterthought, and trust has to be rebuilt every time they connect. This doesn’t work well, especially for public services, regulated fields, or international situations.
A New Approach to Trust
The Ayra Card story is a new way of thinking. Trust is built as shared infrastructure, with governance handled first. Systems are expected to work together from the start, not negotiate each time.
The goal isn’t to replace existing platforms or solutions, but to show how trust can work across them in a consistent, neutral, and reusable way.
Why This Is Important Now
For public sector leaders, policymakers, CTOs, and architects, these issues are now real and urgent. Digital services more often than not, cross agencies, organizations, and borders. If trust can’t move with them, services slow down, costs go up, and risks increase.
This discussion explains why many current strategies come up short and what needs to change for digital trust to work on a larger scale.