Independent advisory · Digital identity & DPI

Deployed national identity systems from the supplier side.
Now I help governments buy and run them.

For governments, development banks, and UN agencies. From a single phase to the whole program.

Working in English · French · Portuguese · Spanish

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Atlas Perspective is the independent advisory practice of Emmanuel Vassor.

Engagements with

World Bank · Inter-American Development Bank · International Organization for Migration · National governments in 14 countries

What I do

Advisory across the lifecycle of national identity and DPI programs.

Four lines of work, mapped to the phases of a program. Each can be engaged on its own or combined.

01 Diagnose02 Design03 Structure04 Procure05 Implement06 Sustain

01Diagnose
02Design
03Structure
04Procure
05Implement
06Sustain

Diagnostics & Strategy
When you need to know where the system stands and what to do first.
Phases 01–02
Governance & Institutional Reform
When the constraint is the mandate, the legal basis, or coordination between agencies.
All phases
Program Structuring & Procurement
When a program has to become fundable and buyable.
Phases 03–04
Technical Assurance & Implementation
When the specification has to be right, and what gets delivered has to match it.
Phases 02–06

Each line of work cuts across the same four domains: governance, technical systems, sector adoption, and delivery.
Programs usually handle them separately; read together, the four show what is missing.

See the full capability map

Experience

Global experience, grounded in the field.

National programs advised from the inside;
a comparative base across the rest.

14

Years

digital identity, civil registration and DPI

14

Countries

advised directly, across four continents

155

US$ million

in civil registration and identity components led directly

4

Languages

English · French · Portuguese · Spanish

West & Central Africa

Senegal2026–
Republic of Congo2023–
Central African Republic2021–
Niger2026
Cameroon2025
Chad2023
São Tomé e Príncipe2022–24

Southern & Eastern Africa

Madagascar2022–24
Angola2021–22
Mozambique2020–23

Latin America & Caribbean

Haiti2021–
Brazil2019–22

Asia & Middle East

Iraq2026
Timor-Leste2021

Research & comparative work

150+

Countries analysed

Global. Research and data collection for the World Bank's ID4D Global Dataset.

Latin America & Caribbean. 13-country survey of digital authentication platforms (for the World Bank with CLARCIEV).

Europe. Legal and institutional analysis of the EU identification framework, its agencies and its systems (for IOM).

Building blocks. Cross-country ID4D policy and technical notes on vendor ecosystems, credentials, and PKI.

Migration. Identification and civil documentation for people on the move, from EU policy to field operations in Iraq.

Selected engagements

Challenges

What breaks is rarely technical.

Three patterns recur across programs.

01
No one owns the whole

Civil registry, identity agency, digital agency, line ministries: every mandate stops at its own perimeter. The program runs across all of them, and none covers that.
02
Built for one, needed by many

When a system is specified around a single administration's needs, the sectors meant to rely on it build their own way round it. That is how one registry becomes several.
03
The choice passes by default

Knowing the outcome is not the same as writing a requirement that can be bid and scored. Where the second is missing, the technical choice passes from the buyer to the seller by default.

How I work

Three commitments you can hold me to.

01
Independent by design

My only revenue is the fee paid by the institution I advise. No supplier agreements, no referral fees, and I never bid on systems I help specify.
02
Specifications suppliers can compete on

Years on the supplier side taught me how a requirement reads from the other end. I write specifications that let good suppliers compete on merit.
03
Designed with and for the country that has to run it

No two countries start from the same place, so a reference model is where the work begins, not where it ends. I bring the institutions involved around one table and shape every choice to the country's own context.

About

Technical grounding, institutional expertise.

Economics and international affairs by training;
engineering and complex program delivery by practice.

Emmanuel Vassor Founder, Atlas Perspective

Portrait of Emmanuel Vassor, founder of Atlas Perspective

My career began in 2012 at Morpho (now IDEMIA), on Chile's US$350M national identity card and passport program. Working with engineering teams and the client's staff to hold a national rollout to its specifications and deadlines — that is where I built my technical depth and hands-on delivery experience.

Since 2018, I have worked as technical lead within multilateral development bank operations totalling over US$700M. Working with ministers and agency heads to shape how national identity systems are governed and run — that is where technical work met institutional reform.

Outside advisory work, I am involved in cacao agroforestry and forest regeneration in the Brazilian Amazon.

Based in: São Paulo, Brazil
Languages: French · English · Spanish · Portuguese
Education: M.A. International Economics & International Relations, Johns Hopkins SAIS
M.Sc. Management, EDHEC Business School

Download CV · PDF, 2 pages

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