As countries aim to digitalise vital services, digital identities emerge as an efficient mechanism to connect citizens to their state. Acting as the base layer of connection, countries continue to explore digital pathways to integrate citizens with access to various government services, including social welfare programs. Interacting with the various touch points within a digital ID journey could prove challenging, especially for women and other underserved groups. Research suggests that accessibility, connectivity, and capacity are areas of key concerns and have the potential to exclude such groups from engaging with their digital and physical communities. As the boundaries between the online-offline relationship become more interlinked, it is crucial to address the digital gender divide and strengthen the various levers through which gender inclusion can really be achieved. To open the layers to the above discussion, we propose a focused presentation to highlight the technological and non-technological aspects that bolster gender inclusion around digital identity solutions. The first part of the presentation would highlight the design principles used when designing an inclusive digital identity platform, with the second half of the presentation unwrapping peoples, primarily women’s, interaction with such digital systems with an offline lens and highlight approaches to improve such interactions. The first part of the presentation would focus on highlighting practices that address gender inclusion while developing technological solutions and would be led by the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP). The presentation would articulate the rationale and execution of key design principles that help bolster inclusion through the digital ID solution. The presentation would also elucidate the impact of incorporating enabling frameworks to improve technological design. For example, frameworks like the the GenderMag conceptualised by the Oregon State University, that assess gender inclusivity in the source code of such systems and provide suggestions to strengthen inclusive design. Through its ongoing work on gender inclusion in digital identies, the second half of the presentation would highlight the various touch points where women interact with digital ID systems and share current practices observed. This part of the presentation would also suggest possible pathways that are being developed to overcome exclusion from the non-technical and implementation layers. This segment would also explore questions around socio-normative barriers faced by women, accessibility when engaging with IDs, and any challenges faced when accessing government services. The session aims to highlight key findings and approaches taken up by both organisations, and seek insight from the participants using interactive tools. We also hope to understand how policy and law could help complement robust platform design and the priorities of various stakeholders participating in the session. In conclusion, the session hopes to create a common understanding of the challenges that exist on a global scale when designing and implementing such ID systems, highlight existing approaches to address these challenges, and invite participants to continuously engage in an open and global 'Community of Practice'. This community hopes to convene players with diverse backgrounds and contexts to shed light on important insights brought forth by community level actors. These will be condensed into consumable outputs that strategically inform key stakeholders such as technology developers, national governments and other organisations around how to address gender inclusion. *Relevant documents have been finalised. We hope to share these documents with the IGF community once the documents have been housed in the public domain.

The session will be divided accordingly to increase effectiveness of messages with both offline and online participants. While the session aims to present findings from the existing approaches, some key questions will be put forward to the audience to inform better design of both streams of work. The session is structured as below: 1. MOSIP presentation (10 minutes): a) Presenting the inclusive design principles that MOSIP is built on b) Incorporation of frameworks like GenderMag to reduce technological biases and improve women's online experience when designing such systems 2. Aapti presentation (10 minutes): a) Insights about how to incorporate gender inclusive practices in the offline practices from global digital ID systems such as Ethiopia and Philippines b) Articulating convergences and unique experiences based on country explorations c) Presenting the draft toolkit framework that aims to address gender inclusion d) Introducing the 'Community of Practice' initiative that tackles gender inclusion and accessibility related questions for digital ID systems 3. 1. Inputs and comments from participants on key questions (5 minutes): a) Any suggestions to strengthen the approaches taken by the organisations? b) What are the key areas that should be addressed when designing online and offline systems for women when interacting with ID systems? c) What are the gaps that policy and legal frameworks can complement such systems to make gender inclusive approaches more robust? 3. 2. Interactive session + question and answers session (4 minutes): a) Word cloud to understand the practices implemented by participants when addressing gender inclusion in technology through their work b) Live analysis of inputs put forth by participants on priority areas to tackle challenges faced by women when interacting with digital IDs c) Open questions about presentations: Questions will tried to be addressed during the session, for any questions that remain unaddressed, answers will be documented in the session document and shared with the attendants and the larger community as per IGF's approval and facilitation 4. Call to action (1 minute): a) Displaying to participants an online repository (microsite) created to house relevant information and research on the topic b) Inviting participants to become members of a free, global and interactive learning community to address questions around gender inclusion The session would have moderators present both onsite and offline. The speakers/presenters from MOSIP and Aapti presenting offline would ensure smooth running of the event on ground and facilitate all offline questions. An online moderator will manage the logistics and moderation as well as facilitate the interactive session with online participants. We would be using online platforms such as Mentimeter for interactive presentation and tools. Presentations would be used during the lightning talk and would also be shown online to improve understanding. The community of practice would be an open invite to the participants to keep engaged post the event by either becoming a member of the COP, contributing to it or by joining a mailing list to stay updated on the ongoing research on digital inclusion and digital identity.