International digital credential adoption
The article was originally published by Chris Wirrig on Medium.
If you’re involved with digital credentialing technology, you’re in good company alongside other developments globally. Rest assured that you don’t just operate in a bubble. You’re investing in the bigger picture and are adopting a future-proof and expandable technological set-up.
Let’s take a wee tour around the globe and peek at some examples I’ve come across.
📍Europe
From the IDunion cooperative to EBSI’s public sector blockchain infrastructure and EUDI wallets, and guided by eIDAS 2.0, Europe is all over digital credentialing technology based on self-sovereign identity (SSI) principles. And this comes from the top!
Business, politics and academia have come together to “implement the DataSpace Industrie 4.0” under the banner of Manufacturing-X. This is to enable data exchange and use across the entire supply chain on a European to global level. In all this, open standards are key for trustworthy data ecosystems. The automotive industry is taking a structured approach with Catena-X, the energy industry with Energy Data-X and the chemical and material supply chain with Chem-X.
In addition, the banking industry is looking into streamlining KYC due diligence.
Digital identity goes beyond human and enterprise identity solutions, as it can also be leveraged for products. Welcome to the digital product passport! Driven by the 2024 Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and the 2023 Battery Regulation, there’s a lot of commotion in this area. For example, bus manufacturers have already achieved regulatory compliance thanks to this timely innovation.
📍USA
In recent years, we saw a few developments in different areas. The US Department of Homeland Security worked on human and enterprise digital identity. Google’s ID Pass can now be used at TSA checkpoints in place of a physical document. Amazon provides the rails to implement mobile driver’s licence (mDL) certificates. Through NACS and TruAge, US convenience stores obtained an SSI-based age-check solution for the sale of alcohol or other age-restricted items.
Close to my heart is the work of the Open Credentialing Initiative (OCI) that has enabled pharmaceutical organisations and regulators to identify each other in fully automated, legally compliant product information exchanges. Adherence to this open, vendor-neutral, standard-driven trust framework helps keep counterfeiters at bay, entirely removes the powerlessness of blind trust in the internal customer-vetting processes of solution providers, and delivers solid evidence of executed due diligence in any investigation or court case.
The White House has also been getting increasingly interested in more secure and efficient ways of handling digital identity.
The previous Biden administration issued executive orders calling for zero trust architecture (ZTA) and verifiable credentials. SSI-based technology addresses both.
The new Trump administration leans strongly towards advanced innovative technologies, in particular “digital assets, blockchain technology and related technologies across all sectors of the economy.” SSI as an approach to web 3.0 fits right into ‘related’ technologies. “Internet 3.0 is what we’re talking about today, and that’s the Internet of value — and we’re approaching it in a principled way,” said Congressman Thompson. “It’s about bad actors doing bad things by any means necessary,” said Senator Scott.
📍Canada
British Columbia’s government has been working on easy-to-use digital credentials for its businesses and citizens to increase security and digital trust by getting away from paper copies and emailed PDFs.
📍Australia
Australia’s government has issued their Digital ID Bill 2024 embracing identity credentials to help protect people’s personal data online. They’ve already implemented a Digital ID system for individuals and identity service providers, including an accreditation scheme for the latter to assert that they live up to expected standards.
📍New Zealand
New Zealand’s government has implemented a digital identity trust framework for individuals and businesses, including an accreditation scheme for identity service providers. SSI-based verifiable credentials are on the roadmap to evolve what’s already in place.
The Trust Alliance New Zealand has already gone further and set up an SSI-based digital ecosystem for the agricultural sector to create transparency and “move from brand promise to brand proof.”
📍Bhutan
Bhutan boldly went ahead and launched a decentralised SSI-based national digital ID system for its citizens.
📍United Nations
“The United Nations Transparency Protocol (UNTP) aims to support governments and industry with practical measures to counter greenwashing by implementing supply chain traceability and transparency at the scale needed to achieve meaningful impacts on global sustainability outcomes.” To this end, detailed specifications have been designed to enable the development of interoperable systems.
The UNTP is explicit about its support for SSI-based verifiable credentials and sees a future where such decentralised credentials help facilitate cross-border trade, manage passports, any ‘real-world’ credentials, and traceability events.
📍Global industry
The world’s leading car and consumer electronics manufacturers got together to create the Car Connectivity Consortium. It is the “global driving force behind vehicle accessibility for all smart mobile devices [that] enables technologies that set the gold standard for cross-platform end-to-end interoperability.” The standardised digital identity in the form of a ‘CCC Digital Key’ enables secure, privacy-preserving identity and access management.
