Dive Brief:

• Accenture announced its partnering with Microsoft and Avanade to develop an identity prototype based on blockchain and biometric technologies, according to an announcement. Accenture and Microsoft demonstrated a prototype Monday at the ID2020 Summit at the U.N.

• The project will support ID2020, a global public-private partnership dedicated to providing legal identification to those without the necessary official documents, a group that currently includes about 1.1 billion people, according to Accenture. The prototype was built on an existing Accenture platform and runs on Microsoft Azure.

• "People without a documented identity suffer by being excluded from modern society," said David Treat, a managing director in Accenture’s global blockchain business. "Our prototype is personal, private and portable, empowering individuals to access and share appropriate information when convenient and without the worry of using or losing paper documentation."

Dive Insight:

Managing online identities is a growing problem as the world becomes more computerized. For some people, it can also be an impediment to offline activities most people take for granted.

For Accenture and Microsoft, it’s yet another way to show how blockchain tech can be used for an activity that requires high security despite the involvement of multiple parties. Blockchain technology is increasingly used in a wide variety of industries, from financial services to education and insurance.

Microsoft has been dabbling in blockchain a bit this year. In March, Microsoft and more than 30 other companies announced they are collaborating on a blockchain consortium, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) will work to improve "privacy, security and scalability" of Ethereum blockchain. Accenture has been involved in blockchain longer, but has primarily focused on the financial services industry until now.