As I sit here in the airport lounge at Philadelphia International Airport, I'm thinking about the security checks I'm ever so familiar with these days.

Today, for example, was my tenth in two weeks. And every time I get to security I show both boarding pass (most often a mobile phone screen) and some form of ID at least once, sometimes more. There are airline employees, airport employees, and TSA agents at a minimum looking at that ID every time.

That's only domestic U.S. travel: Add in international, and even more agents and employees must touch that ID, and often other documents like visas. Each organization involved in that process has some, if not extensive, identity data on me; just not the same data. Travel in general is a great illustration of the issues with data silos. Each holder of some type of identity data-governments, airlines, hotels, businesses, etc.-have their own source of truth, or develop it based on documentation (or biometrics) you're carrying with you.