Niall McCann is currently consulting on legal identity policy matters for the United Nations Development Programme. From 2013-2022 he was the Policy Advisor and Project Manager for both Electoral Assistance and Legal Identity, based at the UN HQ in New York and in Brussels. In this position he provided advisory support to UN Country Teams engaged in supporting national elections, civil registration and national ID schemes (approx. 60 per year), as well as contributing to the development of the UN’s policy on electoral assistance, civil registration, national identity schemes, privacy, data protection, and regulating the use of biometric technologies. Since 1996, he has worked for a number of UN, EU and OSCE field missions, providing frontline assistance to the national electoral and legal identity authorities in over 40 countries, including long-term residential missions in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Yemen and Zambia.