CLEMENT p. 11
Performing Identities
A proposal submitted to the Standard Research Grants Program
of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
for the period April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2011
Principal Investigator
Andrew Clement
Faculty of Information Studies
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2M8
140 St. George Street
416-978-3111
andrew.clement@utoronto.ca
Collaborators
David J. Phillips
Faculty of Information Studies
University of Toronto
Colin J. Bennett
Department of Political Science
University of Victoria
Information Policy Research Program
http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp/
October 2007
CLEMENT p. 12
1. Summary
The past decade has seen a dramatic rise in attention to matters of personal identification. This has been
driven mainly by the expansion of digital networking into many facets of everyday life and by the raised
security concerns linked to the ‘war on terror’. New technologies, systems and policies are being
actively developed by governments and businesses with the promise of improved forms of identification,
but this is happening largely without an adequate understanding of what this means for the millions of
identity subjects, nor an appreciation for the serious personal and human rights concerns implied.
Academic research in this area can offer little help unless it is informed by empirical studies of identity
and identification practices from the perspective of individuals. This research seeks to fill these
academic and practical gaps in our understanding of how people perform and experience their individual
identities in their everyday encounters with identification based services and technologies.
This research will contribute to a better understanding of 'identity' in the social sciences as well as in
such practical matters as the design of organizational information systems and policies. Further it will
contribute to the articulation of 'identity rights,' as human rights distinct from other informational rights
such as privacy. This will also provide the basis for the development of sound 'human-centred’
identification devices, systems, policies, legislation, agencies and practices.
The central questions that will drive this research are:
 What are people’s attitudes to identity documentation and to the agencies that require it?
 What are their concerns about how their identities are established?
 What do people actually do in response to requirements to acquire and present identification?
 How do they present themselves when filling out forms, having their photo-ID or biometric
samples taken, and obtaining, showing or replacing their ID documents/tokens?
 How do they experience these interactions?
 How do people use identity tokens in ways not intended by their designers?
 How do people resist or appropriate institutional identities?
 What technical and organizational alternatives would better meet legitimate identification needs?
The field research will be qualitative, ethnographically informed and conducted through three broad,
intersecting and complementary approaches:
 Processual: We will follow particular individuals as well as their identity information through
various stages of identity performance (acquiring, presenting, updating, replacing, repairing).
 Person-Centred: We will ask individuals, chosen from among various population groups, to
show us and talk about the various forms of identification documents they possess and how they
use them in their identity performances.
 Constructive: In keeping with Participatory Design precepts and informed by the fieldwork, we
will develop prototypes of identity documentation, policies and systems to be tested in realistic
use scenarios.
In addition, based on the prior field work, we will commission a national survey of attitudes to personal
identity documentation consisting of approximately 8 questions with a national stratified sample size
usual in public opinion polling of about 1000.
While this research is designed to stand on its own, it also will fit well with and contribute to the
proposed SSHRC MCRI project, The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting, headed by
David Lyon of Queen’s University, of which Clement, Bennett and Phillips are research team members.
CLEMENT p. 13
2. Detailed Description
Objectives
We take ‘performing identities’ to mean the various ways in which people prepare and present
themselves and their identity documents to service-providing organizations for the purpose of exercising
a right, accessing information, traveling, communicating with others or receiving a service. The
objectives of this research are to:
 Explore the ways in which people perform and experience their individual identities in their
everyday encounters with identification-based services, both conventional and digital,
 Reveal the tensions between such identity performances and the identification requirements
embedded within technical/bureaucratic identity management systems and practices,
 Examine the implications for both individuals and service-providing organizations arising from
systemic identification mis-matches and other forms of identity impairment,
 Demonstrate what human-centred identity documentation, systems and practices might look like
through in situ prototyping informed by empirical field work,
 Compare privacy protection (informational self-determination) and identity integrity approaches
with a view to developing identity integrity as a principled information right,
 Contribute to contemporary policy debates concerning government and business initiated
identification schemes and their implications for identity integrity and privacy protection
 Train researchers in the concepts, methods and approaches of ethnographic field work,
qualitative analysis, social constructivism and policy oriented, participatory design to make ongoing contributions to the key emerging socio-technical fields of identity policy and systems.
Context - The growing importance of identity performance
The past decade has seen a dramatic rise in attention to matters of personal identification. This has been
driven mainly by the expansion of digital networking into many facets of everyday life and by the raised
security concerns linked to the ‘war on terror’. New technologies, systems and policies are being
actively developed by governments and businesses with the promise of improved forms of identification.
Countries such as US, UK and Australia, that historically have had an aversion to national ID schemes,
are now actively pursuing them (LSE Identity Project, 2005; Bennett & Lyon, 2008), and there is strong
pressure on Canada to follow suit (Boa et al, 2007; Clement et al, 2008). The claimed purposes for these
schemes are varied and in some ways inconsistent, but often include combating terrorism, identity theft
and fraud as well as managing borders, promoting commerce and developing e-government services
(House of Commons, 2003). Biometric capabilities feature prominently in these schemes as a novel but
contested factor. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has adopted facial images,
finger prints and iris scans as the standard biometrics for passports, with many countries including
Canada upgrading their passports to comply. More locally, numerous enterprises are adopting more
stringent identification requirements in both face to face and on-line service encounters.
Altogether these ID initiatives (which actively pursue interoperability) constitute a new and
consequential phase in the on-going development of society-wide identification infrastructures, relying
heavily on classification regimes that reflect and re-enforce pre-existing social categories (Bowker and
Star, 1999). Identification schemes thus contribute to social sorting (Gandy, 1993; Lyon, 2003; Adey,
2004) and as they are increasingly incorporated into everyday life, in effect make border-crossing
regimes ubiquitous (Lyon, 2005). From the perspective of individual identity subjects, these extensive
developments mean that the occasions on which they must establish and present their identities are
growing rapidly, as are the risks that come with ‘getting it wrong.’ Such ‘identity-impairments’ include
the relatively commonplace (forgetting to bring acceptable ID documents, equipment breakdowns) as
well as the more exceptional (being confused with another person of a similar name and birthdate,
CLEMENT p. 14
failure to properly capture a biometric sample, false matches when checked against a no-fly watch list
(Black, 2007), being treated as a ‘terror suspect’ based on risk profiling). The consequences of identity
impairment range from mildly annoying to life-shattering, as in the case of Maher Arar (Webb, 2007;
O’Connor, 2007). Evidently there are practical and human rights issues at stake here (Browne, 2005).
The conventional way in which identities are defined and stabilized in interactions with
organizations is through physical identity documents, usually cards. Increasingly, however, it is not
necessary that this interaction occur in direct face to face encounters. Identities are also defined via
indirect social relations, e.g., internet-mediated interaction with an institution. Moreover, there is
growing recognition in the social sciences in particular, that conventional notions of a stable identity are
inadequate for understanding contemporary societies (Hall, 2000; Bell, 2001). As new digital
technologies become commonplace, and mediate more of our everyday activities, they are contributing
to an unsettling of individual identities while offering new expressive possibilities.
Distinctive focus of the proposed research
The pervasiveness and intimacy of the institutional identity encounters, supported by ID artifacts and
technologies such as ID cards, photos, smartcards, application forms, biometric samples, databases and
interfaces, make them excellent sites to investigate the practices of identity performance. The
increasingly pervasive use of tracking and monitoring technologies makes it urgent to interrogate the
issues that surround the construction and performance of identities
This research will address these issues through as series of case studies that follow individuals
through the range of key activities that characterize social participation in contemporary life as they
enact everyday identifications. These roles, chosen because of their ‘ordinariness’ as well as their
seriousness to the identity-subject if they are unattainable or become impaired in some way, are shown
with their primary ID documents and ID issuing and requiring agencies in Table 1.
Identification
Immigrant
Worker
Student
Welfare recipient
Driver
Air traveler
International traveler
Credit worthy consumer
Health care recipient
Voter
Primary ID Document
Permanent resident card
Primary Agencies
Citizenship and Immigration Canada, refugee
board, immigrant advocacy orgs,…
SIN card
Human Resources Development Canada (HRSD)
Student card
Educational institution
Welfare card
City welfare office
Drivers License
Min of Transport, Service Ontario, police,
insurers, …
Gov photo ID
Air carriers, Canadian Air Transport Security
Authority (CATSA)
Passport, NEXUS
Passport Canada, Canada Border Services
Agency (CBSA)
Credit card
Banks, issuers, retailers
Health insurance card
Ministry of Health
Proof of residence
Various
Table 1
Relation to on-going research program
The studies proposed here extend and deepen the ethnographically informed program of research the
principal investigator (PI) has pursued for the past twenty-five years into privacy, identity and
information infrastructures. Beginning with his doctoral research in the early 1980s, in which he
analyzed the introduction of on-line transaction processing systems into a large corporate head office,
Clement became interested in the practices and technologies of workplace surveillance (Clement, 1984,
1988, 1992). More recently ‘identity’, rather than surveillance and privacy per se, has become a central
CLEMENT p. 15
concept for this work, since it appears better able to reflect the fundamental processes associated with
the computerization of everyday workplace, domestic and civic life. Clement also became directly
involved in public policy discussions around the development of national information infrastructures,
launching the Information Policy Research Program (IPRP) with a SSHRC strategic grant aimed mainly
at developing a national policy for “universal access” to Canada’s “information highway.” (Clement,
1998; Clement, Moll & Shade, 2001) In the late 1990s he began looking at another aspect of information
infrastructures – ‘smart’ (i.e. chip based) cards, such as used by Mondex Canada for electronic cash
transactions (Stalder & Clement, 1999) and the identification card initiated by the Ontario government
(Clement et al, 2001; Boa and Clement, forthcoming). A related paper examined critically the national
identification schemes proposed as a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Clement et al, 2002).
This current proposal builds as well on several major research projects the PI has lead. The
Everyday Internet project studied the experiences of regular internet users in their homes and in public
access sites. It too adopted largely ethnographic approaches and highlighted broad policy implications.
Following this, the Digital Identity Constructions project focused specifically on the ways in which
individuals negotiated multiple forms of identity in intensively monitored workplaces (McPhail and
Clement, 2007). Most recently, CAN-ID Visions for Canada’s Identity Policies: Understanding Identity
Policy and Policy Alternatives, funded by the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner, provided an
extensive analysis of national identity developments currently underway while offering alternative
approaches (Clement et al, forthcoming; Boa et al 2007)
Expected research contributions – empirical, conceptual and constructive
While ‘identity’ has been a prominent topic of research in the social sciences for the past decade
(Turkle, 1995; Bell 2001; du Gay, 2007), there has been remarkably little research into the forms of
identity and identification relevant to encounters between individuals and service providing
organizations, particularly from the point of view of these individuals. Two prominent research
programs in Canada have directly addressed identification issues – the On the Identity Trail project at
Ottawa U and The Surveillance Project at Queens, but most of the research to date has been from policy,
legal, socio-theoretic or philosophical perspectives, leaving a research gap in understanding how
individuals experience identity interactions. The main contributions of the proposed research are:
 Providing empirically-grounded illustrations of identity performance across a range of everyday
situations that reflect individuals acting in their roles as workers, consumers, citizens, etc. This will
enrich our understanding of the variety and contingencies of identity performances, as well as
provide the basis for developing conceptual models that highlight their commonalities.
 Refining the concept of ‘identity performance’ to enhance its utility both in theorizing and in
empirically analyzing a variety of identity transactions characteristic of contemporary, ‘security
conscious’ society - notably digitally mediated service encounters, ‘e-government’ services,
technologically intensive workplaces and domestic settings, and ‘high risk’ travel modes.
 Enlarging the identity technology, systems design and policy repertoire to include a wider range of
identification options, notably anonymity and pseudo-nymity, which are sensitive to the social,
organizational and human implications of identity performance in everyday life.
The wider social benefits of this research will come in contributing to public policy debates concerning
the development of identification schemes and in particular the privacy and identity policies adopted by
government and business organizations. We also aim to contribute to better public understandings of
what is a stake for individuals in identity construction and performance and what some of the viable
alternatives are.
Theoretical approaches – Science and Technology Studies (STS) – SCOT and ANT
This research adopts as its central theoretical perspectives those associated with science and technology
studies (STS), most notably social construction of technology (SCOT) and Actor-Network Theory
CLEMENT p. 16
(ANT) insofar as they enable a focus on the interplay and interrelationships between the social and the
technical. This approach recognizes that use practices are important in shaping technological systems,
even as the nature of individual systems makes them more or less responsive and adaptable to the needs
of their various stakeholders (Bjiker, Hughes & Pinch, 1987; Bjiker & Law, 1992; Mackenzie &
Wajcman, 1999; Oudshoorn and Pinch, 2003). In keeping with ANT perspectives, we view the
acquisition and enactment of identity as a performative ‘becoming’, in which individual identities
become simultaneously hybridized and stabilized through their interactions with a variety of identityrequiring and -providing organizations and technologies. This identity-becoming involves a series of
performative encounters in which individuals enroll their ID documents and a variety of other resources
as needed in a ‘front-stage’ presentation of self as a legitimate identity subject (Goffman, 1959). At the
same time we expect there to be significant ‘backstage’ performances by the individual, as well as by
relevant organizational agents as they access and update databases largely out of view. These
performances are historically, temporally and spatially situated, usually conducted on an institutionally
prescribed stage and typically producing traces recorded in secondary documents and agency databases
that play a part in subsequent encounters. Scripts, both official and informal, guide these encounters,
with improvisational aspects becoming prominent when interactional difficulties or exceptional
conditions arise. These breakdowns are especially important since it is at these times that hitherto
‘black-boxed’ sociotechnical assemblages (Law, 1987) are most likely to reveal their constitutive actors
and contingent translations.
A methodological implication of this approach is that we will follow specific individuals in specific
contexts through a series of encounters as they perform the identities enumerated above. This will
involve highlighting the local conditions and factors that contribute to the generation, use, recognition
(or non-recognition), and implications of identity performance in situ. At the same time, a synthetic
conceptual model of ‘identity performance in context’ will be prototyped and refined within the research
team over the three-year course of this research. Inspired by ANT, this model will centrally figure
‘performed identity,’ but in relation to the other various recurring actors (human and non-human) that
are relevant to its development and maintenance. The preliminary version of the model will serve as an
integrating framework for the individual case studies, and through empirical testing and successive
refinement, emerge as one of the main research contributions.
Methodology – coordinated qualitative case studies – both analytic and constructive
For this research we have chosen a case study approach, in which we will examine a variety of identity
performances in practice at close range, with careful attention to locally contingent factors. Case studies
are particularly appropriate since we want to acquire an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of the
environment and the negotiations in which the actors are involved. The specific qualitative methods will
be adapted to the particular sites and include a mix of: gathering data through directly observing sites of
intensive identity-mediated interactions; interviewing the main participants; examining the documents
used in developing the identification technologies and practices, and recording interactions, interviews
and documents (via audio, photographic or videographic means as appropriate):
The field research will be ethnographically informed and conducted through three broad, intersecting
and complementary approaches:
 Processual: We will follow particular individuals as well as their identity information through
various stages of identity performances related to a specific process. As participant observers, we
will interview these individuals and engage with them as they perform their identities through the
sequence of steps involved in exercising a claimed right or service (immigrating, obtaining
welfare, driving a car, traveling by air, etc.) This will involve observing them as they fill out
paper as well as on-line forms, provide biometric samples, and interact with agency staff. Where
possible we will document interactions at various sites or moments along the way (e.g. at photo
ID studios and kiosks; departure lounges, immigrant counseling offices, passport offices, motor
CLEMENT p. 17
vehicle licensing offices, border crossing points; public access internet sites for welfare and other
services). Where the informants are willing, we will assist them in tracking their identity
information trails into the organization, through the databases and possibly beyond, invoking
when necessary the Openness, Access and Challenging Compliance provisions of Canadian
privacy regulations (e.g. Principles 8, 9 and 10 of the CSA model code in PIPEDA (2001)).
 Person-Centred: We will ask individuals to show us and talk about all the various forms of
identification documents they possess and how they use them in their identity performances. In
the spirit of a ‘wallet- or purse-ethnography’ (Wyatt, 2007), we will employ a think-aloud
protocol as they give a 'guided tour' of the identity documents or tokens they carry in their purses
and wallets or store on their laptop, PDA or mobile phone. We will be interested to learn about
the number and range of these ID tokens, which are most important to our research subjects,
what happens when they lose their ID, and generally what meanings these tokens hold for them.
 Constructive: In keeping with the precepts of participatory design (PD) and informed by the
fieldwork, we will develop prototypes of identity documentation, policies and systems to be
tested by our informants in realistic use scenarios. The aim will be to co-develop identification
requirements that meet the needs of identity subjects in terms of convenience, respect, identity
integrity and other civil rights while providing the service-providing organizations with the
information they require to conduct the transactions effectively, efficiently and accountably.
Our strategy for recruiting informants with will be opportunistic and iterative. A primary place for
making initial contact will be the areas where people wait to take some step in acquiring their ID or to
presenting it (e.g. welfare, employment, immigrant and motor vehicle licensing offices, departure
lounges, ID photo booths and studios, Service Ontario self-serve kiosks and the like). In these settings
people will be oriented to their ID concerns and often have some time on their hands to talk with us. We
will approach people with an account of our research project and assess their willingness to participate.
In the case of a positive response we will conduct an informal interview aimed at exploring the
feasibility of accompanying the individual through the process. In addition we will follow up selectively
with research subjects to probe their experiences further through the ‘wallet ethnography’ and in-depth
interviewing. Given the potentially sensitive character of the information requested, we will be
especially careful to assure informants of the voluntary nature of their participation, the confidentiality
of information collected, and anonymity in research reporting.
We aim to include informants who reflect a range of possible identity performances – i.e. ‘normal’
encounters, in which things go relatively smoothly, as well as a variety of problematic ones, where
identities are difficult to acquire, enact, maintain, repair, etc. In particular, we will focus on difficulties
that individuals experience when providing the common, and typically taken-for-granted elements of
identification such as their name, date and place of birth, place of residence, and gender (i.e. the
‘biographical core’) as well as the conventional indicators of uniqueness which increasingly are treated
biometrically (signature, facial image, finger print, iris scan). While these key components are assumed
to be readily available, people may have quite legitimate reasons for not being able to provide them
easily and so risk not being able to authenticate relevant identities.
We will focus initially on those roles listed in Table 1 that are most commonly and
unproblematically enacted, such as becoming a student, a car driver, an health care recipient and a
credit-worthy consumer and then with experience pursue those that are more challenging (e.g. an
international air traveler, welfare recipient, trusted traveler, immigrant). To find people with the more
exceptional experiences of identity impairment, we will follow up media stories about identity thefts,
no-fly list refusals etc., by contacting individuals mentioned in them. Altogether we expect to engage
about 40 individuals in total in the in-depth processual case studies. This will be supplemented by
information obtained through interviewing and ‘wallet ethnographies’.
The case studies will be integrated in several ways. We will develop a conceptual model of identity
performance that will both inform and draw on the empirical work. We will use this model and the
CLEMENT p. 18
materials collected in the research to prototype alternative identity documents and practices. Annual
two-day research workshops will provide the main occasions for presenting research findings,
highlighting the connections and discrepancies between the individual case studies, obtaining feedback,
refining the conceptual model and prototypes, and setting the direction for further research. All the field
researchers and collaborators will be invited to participate. Regular local project meetings as well as
email and the project web site will enable more informal collaborations between the annual meetings.
In addition, based on the field work, conceptual modeling and prototyping, we will in the final year
of the project commission a national survey of attitudes to personal identity documentation consisting of
approximately 8 semi-open ended questions with a national stratified sample size usual in public opinion
polling of about 1000.
While this research is designed to stand on its own, it also will fit well with and contribute to the
proposed SSHRC MCRI project, The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting, headed by
David Lyon of Queen’s University, of which Clement, Bennett and Phillips are research team members.
Communication of Results
We will disseminate the research findings in a multi-disciplinary mix of relevant national and
international academic conferences (e.g., the American Anthropological Association (AAA);
Participatory Design (PDC); Society for Social Studies of Science (4S); Association of Internet
Researchers (AOIR), Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP), European Association for the Study of
Science and Technology (EASST), all of which the research team members have presented papers in.
We will target the following refereed academic journals: Information Society; Ethics &
Information Technology; Information Communication & Society; Media Culture and Society; Science,
Technology, and Human Values; Surveillance and Society, Computer Supported Cooperative Work;
Canadian Journal of Communications; Journal of the American Society of Information Science;
Information Technology and People; Social Studies of Science; Communications of the ACM,
Government Information Quarterly, (again most of which we have published in previously).
The research workshop in the final year of the project will be enlarged by inviting other researchers
active in the identity field to participate by presenting their recent work and commenting on the work of
others. The results will be an edited collection to be published by a university press (e.g. Toronto,
McGill-Queens, UBC or Athabasca – Canada’s first open access academic publisher).
For the non-academic community, the prime policy venue will be the relevant conferences and
publications of the federal Policy Research Initiative. Our personal policy contacts in the federal
Treasury Board Secretariat, Departments of Industry and Public Safety, the provincial Service Ontario,
as well as in the Federal and Ontario Privacy Commissions will also be interested in learning the results
of this project and further disseminating them within their respective institutions.
For more popular audiences, a series of short videos derived from the interviews, ‘wallet
ethnographies’ and prototyping sessions will be posted to YouTube.
Also, the principal investigator and collaborators are frequently approached by print and electronic
media for comment on ICT and identity-related events. This research will provide useful materials for
such interviews and will likely be of media interest in its own right.
The description, reported findings, YouTube videos of this project will become a prominent part of
the existing Information Policy Research Program (IPRP) website, which has become an internationally
recognized repository of materials in several aspects of information policy, notably universal access,
community networking and identity issues. (See: http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp)
If the ‘New Transparency’ MCRI project mentioned above is funded, this will also provide a good
mechanism for further disseminating research findings to these various audiences.
CLEMENT p. 19
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CLEMENT p. 24
4A. Research Team
Andrew Clement (Principal Investigator) Professor, Faculty of Information Studies,
University of Toronto.
I have been conducting qualitative field studies of information systems use and development since the
early 1980s. I have also supervised several graduate thesis projects and more than 100 course projects
involving similar field studies. In this research program, I will take overall responsibility for the day to
day research direction and the final project results. In consultation with other members of the research
team, I will develop and refine the conceptual model of identity performance as well as oversee the
informant recruiting criteria and strategies, the interview protocols, the video-recording, the analysis
methods, publication and presentation venues, project web site maintenance and financial priorities. This
will be linked to the ongoing supervision of the dissertation work of my PhD students involved in the
project. Each year I will convene a two-day research project workshop for the full team. This will give
all members an opportunity to present and discuss their research as well as to set the project direction for
the coming year. During the period of this project I currently have no other funded projects, so this will
be my primary research activity.
David J. Phillips (Collaborator) Associate Professor, Faculty of Information Studies,
University of Toronto
David Phillip’s research has combined theoretical work on surveillance to explore generative
possibilities of surveillance practice -- possibilities for transgressive visibility, subcultural identities and
knowledges, with case studies in infrastructure development, drawing on STS, legal, discursive, and
political economic analyses. His writings on such topics as privacy, surveillance, politics, queer theory,
visibility, sexual identity, pseudonymity, and information technology have appeared in journals across a
wide range of disciplines. Empirically, he is interested in activity in the technology, culture, policy, and
economics of identification, monitoring, and mapping. Theoretically, he is interested in investigating the
possibilities of infrastructures which more equitably distribute access to techniques of identification,
monitoring, mapping, etc. In this project Prof Phillips will provide advice to the research team on
theorizing identity and identification as well as assist in the interpretation of field data, specifically,
those aspects relating to the ways people selectively make (in)visible aspects of their identities.
Colin J. Bennett (Collaborator) Professor, Political Science, University of Victoria
Colin Bennett’s research interests have focused on the comparative analysis of information privacy
protection policies at the domestic and international levels. He has published Regulating Privacy: Data
Protection and Public Policy in Europe and the United States (Cornell University Press, 1992). He is
also co-editor of Visions of Privacy: Policy Choices for the Digital Age (University of Toronto Press,
1999), co-author of The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective (MIT Press,
2006) and co-editor, with David Lyon, of the forthcoming Playing the Identity Card (Routledge, 2008).
He has recently completed an international study of privacy advocacy, so can provide a comparative
perspective of public attitudes and resistance to identification schemes. Prof Bennett will bring his
connections with Canadian Privacy Commissioners and extensive experience in policy, regulation and
advocacy in the privacy arena to bear on this project as it attempts to develop understandings in the less
developed arena of identity rights. His principal role in the project work will be in the annual research
workshop in Toronto, at which he will share his current research and provide constructive responses to
the research presentations.
CLEMENT p. 25
4B. Training (Role of Students)
The training of PhD and Masters students at the Faculty of Information Studies is central to this research
project. They will be involved in all aspects of the work – research design, informant recruiting,
interviewing, analysis and writing up results – and assisted as necessary throughout in mastering the
relevant skills. As with previous projects, student collaborators will be recognized as co-authors on
published works and supported in traveling to conferences to present their work (see the Contributions
to Training section of my CV which follows).
The main role for PhD students will be conducting the case studies. They will work those aspects
most directly pertinent to their dissertation research (sketched below) while highlighting the connections
to the common themes of identity performance. I am already supervising the research of the four
initially proposed PhD students:
Krista Boa – public consultation approaches to identity scheme development
Joseph Ferenbok – facialization of identity via automated facial recognition technologies
Karen Smith – on-line public policy consultation techniques, including via collaborative prototyping
Diane Dechief – challenges in naming for identification, especially in immigration settings
It is very likely that two or three of these PhD students will graduate during the course of this research
project. However, there should be no difficulty in recruiting other PhD students to work on the project.
The PhD program at FIS has more than 40 candidates currently enrolled and regularly attracts wellqualified applicants interested in doing studies of information use and policy. My active role in the
Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI and the Identity, Privacy and Security Initiative (IPSI) also
puts me in a good position to attract PhD students to this project from other collaborating units at the
University of Toronto.
Recruiting Masters students as needed should be no difficulty since there are over 300 Masters
students enrolled at FIS and from prior experience plenty are keen and able to do this type of work. Even
without being hired as salaried research assistants, I expect that some Masters students will be interested
in working with this project for their own thesis research as well as part of their course work. Two
graduate elective courses that I teach, FIS 2165 – Social Issues with Information and Communications
Technologies, and FIS 2198 – Seminar in Security Technology and Policy, have significant components
on identity technologies. This research will provide useful teaching materials as well as offer the basis
for term projects.
CLEMENT p. 26
4C. Previous and On-Going Research Results
SSHRC: Developing Information Policies for Canada’s Information Infrastructure
This was a three year collaborative project funded in 1995 by SSHRC’s Strategic Grants Program in
the area of Science and Technology Policy, and served as the foundation for the on-going Information
Policy Research Program (IPRP), based at the Faculty of Information Studies. Through its partnership
connections with several federal government departments, most notably Industry Canada, Canadian
Heritage, Human Resources Development Canada, this lead to a series of related projects oriented to
developing various aspects of Canadian access strategy. A major academic result was the development
of the ‘access rainbow’, a seven layered model of information infrastructure (Clement and Shade, 2000),
which has been found useful by other researchers in discussing specific aspects of ‘access’ beyond the
conventional focus on connectivity. Other work has contributed to understanding the notion
‘universality’ in light of Canadian policy over the past century, the emergence of electronic cash as a
part of Canadian national information infrastructure, the role of public interest organizations in access
policy, and the comparison of Canadian ‘information highway’ policies with those of other countries,
notably the US.
On the policy development front, we convened a series of three policy workshops that brought
federal policy officials together with academic and public interest policy researchers for intensive, two
and a half day discussions. These culminated in the formulation of Key Elements of a National Access
Strategy: A Public Interest Proposal, which we publicly presented to the Federal Ministers of Industry
and Heritage in 1998. This also lead to contributions to official recommendations to the Minister of
Health concerning access to Canada’s ‘health infostructure’, and to the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) Hearings on New Media. (see Final Productivity Report for
the SSHRC funded strategic project - Developing Information Policies for Canada’s Information
Infrastructure, and the IPRP website: http://fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp/)
SSHRC: Electronic Representation of Workers Project
This SSHRC Standard Research grant was funded for three years in 1996, and extended by a one
year research grant from the Bell Canada University Laboratories, entitled “User modeling methods and
tools applied to Persona agents. Assessment of personal and social implications of the use of persona
technology”. The research focused on exploring how the identities of workers in intensively
computerized workplaces were shaped by interactions with the information systems, their managers and
their co-workers. On the conceptual front, we elaborated Clarke’s notions of a ‘digital persona’, to
make it applicable to workplace settings and its relationship to software agents. Empirically the work
has been based on participant observation in the call centres of two major financial institutions. Our
main finding is that computerized systems, especially for the detailed monitoring of work, can play a
significant role on how much influence workers exercise in presenting themselves to relevant others
(clients, co-workers and supervisors). However, even with fine-grained tracking systems, there are
multiple, conventional ways still available for self-presentation.
This project work has mainly been presented at workshops and conferences in Canada and
internationally (US, UK, Denmark, Norway and Hungary). (see Final Productivity Report for the
SSHRC funded project - Electronic Representation of Workers
SSHRC: Everyday Experiences with Networked Services
This three year Standard Research project was funded in 2001. This research sought to inform active
Canadian policy debates by investigating qualitatively how regular internet users experience on-line
services in the context of their everyday lives. The ethnographic fieldwork is being conducted in a
downtown Toronto neighbourhood that offers a variety of modes of internet access and that well reflects
the socio-economic and ethnic diversity of Canadian society along many of the key demographic
CLEMENT p. 27
dimensions of digital divide debates. Research results addressing mainly the issues of privacy and
domestic versus public access to internet services, have been presented at conferences in Ottawa, Oxford
(Clement, Aspinall, Viseu & Suchman, 2002) and Maastricht (Clement, Aspinall, Viseu & Shade, 2002;
Viseu, Clement & Aspinall, 2002), and published in refereed journals (Viseu, Clement, Aspinall,
Kennedy, 2006); Viseu, Clement & Aspinall, 2004).
SSHRC: Digital Identity Constructions
A direct continuation of the Electronic Representation of Workers Project, this research conducted three
in-depth case studies of digital identity construction – two in workplaces using ethnographic, participant
observer methods - telephone technical operations (Viseu, 2005) and banking call centres (McPhail &
Clement, in progress) – and one using freedom of information requests to analyse the development of
the Ontario Smart Card Project, a now cancelled jurisdictional identity card scheme (Boa, 2003, Boa and
Clement, in progress).
SSHRC: Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking
(CRACIN.ca)
Just completed, this INE Research Alliance project of which I was the principal investigator, has been
the principal focus of my research energies since 2003. Conducted as a linked set of in-depth case
studies of community networking initiatives across Canada, this research combined ethnographic and
other qualitative research methods to address local practitioner as well national policy issues. The
results have been presented in many venues: academic; policy oriented; and community focused. An
edited collection of the research results consisting of 22 chapters is to be submitted to a Canadian
academic publisher by the end of 2007.
Office of the Privacy Commission: Visions for Canada’s Identity Policies
Understanding Identity Policy and Policy Alternatives
Conducted this past year, this Contribution Program project provided an extensive analysis of national
identity developments currently underway in Canada and internationally and offered alternative
approaches. The results were presented at several conferences (Computers Freedom and Privacy, May,
2007; the Queen’s University Surveillance Project ID Card Workshop, June 2007, and Society for Social
Studies of Science (4S) conference, October 2007. It also produced a substantial report (Boa, Clement,
Davies & Hosein, 2007) and a chapter in the forthcoming Playing the Identity Card collection (Clement
et al, 2008).
Infrastructure Canada: Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP.ca)
This two year project currently underway is exploring the options for community and municipal internet
infrastructure development. One aspect of this research examines how individuals and groups use their
service set identifiers (SSIDs) to signal their public or private availability (Wong, Powell & Clement,
2007).
Bell University Labs: PIPWatch – Privacy protection through social navigation
This one year project currently underway is producing a software tool designed to assist web users in
determining whether the sites they visit are compliant or not with Canadian privacy legislation, notably
PIPEDA.
CLEMENT p. 28
7. Request for adjudication by Committee 15
This research is appropriately multi-disciplinary in several important respects:
Central topic
‘Identity performance’ explicitly brings together social and technical phenomena so inextricably bound
up with each other that no single disciplinary perspective can do it justice.
Research team
The principal investigator holds a PhD in Computer Science, while one collaborator (Phillips) has a
Communications PhD and the other (Bennett) is a Political Scientist. The PhD candidates conducting the
case studies bring relevant educational backgrounds in English, Communications, Information Studies,
and physical sciences.
The project is based in the Faculty of Information Studies which identifies itself as multi-disciplinary,
reflecting the diverse range of its faculty members.
Literatures
The literatures cited in this proposal alone give a good indication of the disciplinary range of this
research. In addition to drawing from such interdisciplinary fields as Cultural Studies, Science and
Technology Studies, Gender Studies and Information Studies, the books and articles cited above reflect
such disciplines as Sociology, Management, Education, Computer Science, Political Economy, and
Psychology.
Methods
The qualitative methods draw principally on anthropological traditions (notably ethnography), but also
require an appreciation of the technical characteristics of the devices, databases and interfaces used
implicated in the digital identity construction.
None of the other SSHRC Committees fit all these various facets of the research well.
Therefore, we request that this proposal be adjudicated by Committee 15.