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Ownership and Flow Primitives for Scalable Consent Management in Digital Public Infrastructures

Rohith Vaidyanathan, Srinath Srinivasa, Praseeda, Dev Shinde

TL;DR

This paper tackles scalable consent management in Digital Public Infrastructures by modeling data ownership as morphable constructs that affect consent. It introduces X-nodes as dual-role artifacts and a connection-based flow architecture to represent ownership, consent, and post-conditions across data sharing. Key contributions include formal data-flow modeling (A, W, F), four data-exchange operators (SHARE, CONFER, TRANSFER, COLLATERAL) with precise post-conditions, and adversarial scenarios to test resilience. The design enables end-to-end traceability, regulatory alignment, and practical deployment paths (e.g., DigiLocker, India Stack), advancing user-centric, compliant data exchange at DPI scale.

Abstract

Digital public infrastructures (DPIs) represent networks of open technology standards, applications, services, and digital assets made available for the public good. One of the key challenges in DPI design is to resolve complex issues of consent, scaled over large populations. While the primary objective of consent management is to empower the data owner, ownership itself can come with variegated morphological forms with different implications over consent. Questions of ownership in a public space also have several nuances where individual autonomy needs to be balanced with public well-being and national sovereignty. This requires consent management to be compliant with applicable regulations for data sharing. This paper addresses the question of representing modes of ownership of digital assets and their corresponding implications for consensual data flows in a DPI. It proposes a set of foundational abstractions to represent them. Our proposed architecture responds to the growing need for transparent, secure, and user-centric consent management within Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Incorporating a formalised data ownership model enables end-to-end traceability of consent, fine-grained control over data sharing, and alignment with evolving legal and regulatory frameworks.

Ownership and Flow Primitives for Scalable Consent Management in Digital Public Infrastructures

TL;DR

This paper tackles scalable consent management in Digital Public Infrastructures by modeling data ownership as morphable constructs that affect consent. It introduces X-nodes as dual-role artifacts and a connection-based flow architecture to represent ownership, consent, and post-conditions across data sharing. Key contributions include formal data-flow modeling (A, W, F), four data-exchange operators (SHARE, CONFER, TRANSFER, COLLATERAL) with precise post-conditions, and adversarial scenarios to test resilience. The design enables end-to-end traceability, regulatory alignment, and practical deployment paths (e.g., DigiLocker, India Stack), advancing user-centric, compliant data exchange at DPI scale.

Abstract

Digital public infrastructures (DPIs) represent networks of open technology standards, applications, services, and digital assets made available for the public good. One of the key challenges in DPI design is to resolve complex issues of consent, scaled over large populations. While the primary objective of consent management is to empower the data owner, ownership itself can come with variegated morphological forms with different implications over consent. Questions of ownership in a public space also have several nuances where individual autonomy needs to be balanced with public well-being and national sovereignty. This requires consent management to be compliant with applicable regulations for data sharing. This paper addresses the question of representing modes of ownership of digital assets and their corresponding implications for consensual data flows in a DPI. It proposes a set of foundational abstractions to represent them. Our proposed architecture responds to the growing need for transparent, secure, and user-centric consent management within Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Incorporating a formalised data ownership model enables end-to-end traceability of consent, fine-grained control over data sharing, and alignment with evolving legal and regulatory frameworks.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 17 sections, 1 equation, 4 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Literature
  3. Modeling Public Data Flows
  4. Consent Flow Architecture
  5. Connection between Lockers
  6. X-nodes
  7. Representation of X-NODES
  8. Explanation of Essential Post-Conditions:
  9. Data Exchange and Consent Operations
  10. CONFER:
  11. TRANSFER:
  12. COLLATERAL:
  13. Compositions of Data Exchange Operations:
  14. CLOSE, REVOKE and REVERT:
  15. Adversarial Scenarios
  16. ...and 2 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Establishing a consensual pathway governed by four layer architecture of consent balambiga2024cods
  • Figure 2: Connection lifecycle illustrating Agent B establishing a connection of type C1 published by Agent A
  • Figure 3: Sharing Operators for Transition of Ownership (i) TRANSFER (ii) SHARE (iii) CONFER (iv) COLLATERAL
  • Figure 4: (i) An access tunnel established for origin of request ($dr_2$) to the ground of the request ($do$) after performing SHARE of a SHARE (ii) A v-node ($dr_1.v)$ subject to TRANSFER from $dr_1$ to $dr_2$