Source-linked AI summary
Towards a Platform for Mastering Personal Sovereignty
Judith Michael, Bernhard Rumpe, Antonio Bucchiarone, Dominik Bork
TL;DR
Digital systems fragment everyday roles into silos that can weaken individual control, while MyVirtualME proposes a person-controlled platform to mediate services and data exchanges. The paper presents this platform as a pathway toward a digitally integrated society that strengthens individual autonomy, while noting substantial open challenges.
Problem
Digital processes organized around isolated data silos can obstruct efficient self-management and leave people with diminished oversight and control.
Source: §1 · p. 2Method
MyVirtualME is a trusted, human-controlled platform that mediates data and services through user-defined permissions, purpose limits, and logged interactions.
Source: §1 · p. 2, §3.1 · p. 5Results
Takeaways & Limitations
The vision offers a pathway toward a digitally integrated society that strengthens rather than weakens individual autonomy.
Source: §4 · p. 6Realizing MyVirtualME remains a major interdisciplinary challenge, with open questions around scalable personal-data services, policy-aware exchange, sandboxing, and explainable AI.
Source: §4 · p. 6
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
The ongoing digital transformation of work, administration, health, mobility, and social interaction is profoundly reshaping everyday life, steadily shifting control from individuals to large platform providers. Although data is often labeled the "gold of the 21st century", its real value is realized through services that access, combine, and exploit it. Today, individuals have little sovereignty: life events (e.g., changing an address, insurance, job, or marital status) require fragmented, repetitive interactions across numerous systems, leaving users overwhelmed rather than empowered. We argue for a fundamental rethinking of this situation and propose a virtual, trustworthy platform, called "MyVirtualME" that acts on behalf of the human individual towards companies, administrations, and other actors. This platform centers services, data, permissions, and data usage around humans, not foreign actors, allowing genuine control and transparency. Our vision goes beyond a pure data focus: supported by trusted services ranging from basic notifications to intelligent assistants, MyVirtualME aims to reduce digital bureaucracy, improve and even automate interactions, and support informed oversight of an individual's health, financial, and administrative situation. We firmly believe that a human-centered MyVirtualME is essential for restoring personal sovereignty in our digital future.
1 Turning our ways of interaction
Everyday life connects multiple roles, but digital systems divide those experiences across isolated applications and data silos. MyVirtualME proposes a person-controlled platform to restore continuity and human sovereignty.
1 Turning our ways of interaction
- The proposal addresses the mismatch between connected life roles and digital systems that fragment them into separate applications and identities.People move among family, civic, professional, learning, health, and personal roles throughout everyday life.Source: §1 · p. 1
- Digital processes built on isolated data silos make self-management inefficient and can undermine human sovereignty.Repeated data entry, complex opt-outs, and multiple authentication apps can contribute to digital fatigue or a digital divide.Source: §1 · p. 2
- MyVirtualME maintains a trustworthy virtual representation across a person’s roles, with role-specific services governed by rules the person defines.The person controls the platform and can rely on it to act on their behalf, rather than using foreign services.Source: §1 · p. 2
2 A glance of our future with MyVirtualME
MyVirtualME is presented as a human-controlled intermediary that connects life contexts, selectively shares data, and makes interactions visible. The scenarios extend this approach from everyday role changes to healthcare and other domains.
2 A glance of our future with MyVirtualME
- Personal data and exchanges pass through MyVirtualME, which filters and authorizes sharing while giving Andy a dashboard to inspect and adjust interactions.Its dashboard supports both an overview of roles and actors involved and inspection of individual exchanges; automation remains adaptable by Andy.Source: §2 · p. 3
2.1 A more detailed scenario: Health care
- In healthcare, MyVirtualME could coordinate medical-record sharing, prescriptions, pharmacy delivery, insurance payment, and follow-up reminders.A fully automated workflow could forward a bill to insurance and transfer any uncovered difference from Andy’s bank account.Source: §2.1 · p. 4
2.2 Some more exemplaric scenarios
- Other scenarios include routing business expenses, filtering social feeds by Andy’s preferences, coordinating home construction, and managing smart-home or robot services.For a business expense, MyVirtualME can use Andy’s calendar to identify the expense as trip-related and forward it to the employer.Source: §2.2 · p. 4
3 Realizing a Trustworthy and Intelligent MyVirtualME
MyVirtualME is envisioned as a socio-technical ecosystem that integrates services, data governance, and intelligence around a persistent digital representation of the individual. Its trusted core mediates interactions under user-defined policies, while shared standards and identifiers support continuity across providers and institutions.
3 Realizing a Trustworthy and Intelligent MyVirtualME
- The platform shifts digital infrastructure from isolated tools to integrated services, governed data, and embedded intelligence in support of human sovereignty.It is conceived as a trusted, transparent, and evolvable ecosystem connecting people, services, and institutions through a digital representation of the individual.Source: §3 · pp. 4–5
3.1 MyVirtualME as a Trusted and Intelligent Digital Twin
- The digital twin maintains context-dependent personal data, runs internal services, acts for the individual, and provides transparent monitoring and control.It also exposes secure, standardized interfaces for external services under explicitly defined, revocable conditions.Source: §3.1 · p. 5
- External services receive no unrestricted personal-data access; trusted services enforce user-defined authorization, purpose, and time limits and log interaction details.Individuals can inspect, adapt, or revoke privileges, supporting regulatory compliance and digital self-awareness.Source: §3.1 · p. 5
- Bidirectional data links propagate relevant changes under user-defined policies, including personal-information updates and incoming changes to contracts or service conditions.Incoming changes are surfaced to the user in a structured, actionable form.Source: §3.1 · p. 5
- Rule-adaptive services and trusted AI agents monitor incoming information, detect relevant changes, and propose or prepare workflow actions within user preferences and legal constraints.Agents operate near personal data in the trusted core and interact externally only through policy-governed, human-controlled, sandboxed interfaces.Source: §3.1 · p. 5
3.2 Interoperability, Standards, and Digital Sovereignty
- Trust requires multiple independent providers, user choice and migration, and open standards for interactions, bidirectional connections, usage conditions, revocation, and service discovery.The standards cover purpose, scope, and retention conditions.Source: §3.2 · pp. 5–6
- A unique, persistent identifier controlled by the individual enables secure, privacy-preserving linkage of personal data across services and independence from specific providers.MyVirtualME manages the identifier rather than an email or platform-bound account.Source: §3.2 · p. 6
- With standardized organizational interfaces, services can be accessed by configuration, while trusted-core data can be reused across institutions with traceability and revocation.The proposed workflow avoids repeated registration, manual data entry, and ad hoc coordination.Source: §3.2 · p. 6
4 A Call for Action
Establishing MyVirtualME is a major interdisciplinary undertaking, with technical and societal implications. The authors call for reliable, scalable, and trustworthy platform development.
4 A Call for Action
- Developing MyVirtualME is a major interdisciplinary challenge spanning software engineering, distributed systems, data science, AI, security and privacy engineering, and human-computer interaction.Open questions include scalable long-term personal-data services, policy-aware exchange, verifiable sandboxing, and explainable AI agents; the authors frame the vision as supporting autonomy and balancing innovation with fundamental rights.Source: §4 · p. 6
- The authors call for starting the design and development of MyVirtualME in a reliable, scalable, and trustworthy way.They urge action rather than prolonged discussion.Source: §4 · p. 6