Skip to main content
Category

Blog

A DIF & ToIP joint Statement of Support for the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 specification becoming a W3C Standard

By Blog

This statement was co-written by DIF and ToIP.

On 3rd August 2021, the World Wide Web Consortium proposed advancing the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 specification to their W3C Recommendation stage, the ultimate level of the W3C standards process, which indicates that the specification as currently defined is technically sound, mature and ready for adoption. This includes the expectation that this will allow for widespread implementation, as well as further development and ongoing evaluation, paving the way for future versions.

Collectively, the memberships of the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) and the Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation represent over 350 companies globally who are committed to the development and implementation of decentralized identity and trust infrastructure. Many of these organizations have contributed directly or indirectly to the W3C DID 1.0 specification for one simple reason: the DID layer of cryptographically verifiable identifiers is foundational to the common infrastructure we are building together and on top of; therefore, this spec is an integral part of DIF’s and ToIP’s shared vision for an empowered, secure and interoperable future, and in line with W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles.

As such, DIF and ToIP support the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) 1.0 specification becoming an official W3C Recommendation. DID 1.0 represents the efforts of over thirty active W3C Working Group contributors over the past two years— on top of contributions from dozens of others in the W3C Credentials Community Group and its predecessors for several years before that. This is a significant milestone in the digital identity sector. Having common ground for development, particularly in terms of interoperability, allows work to continue with renewed energy and focus. It also mitigates the risk of shifting goalposts, which seriously hinders long-term development, investment, and widespread adoption. 

DIDs are a critical part of a technical foundation for the products and activities of many of our members. Many of the implementations in the DID Working Group’s implementation report were developed by engineers and companies who collaborate openly at DIF on points of technical interoperability, and at ToIP on points of policy and governance. DIF also hosts the Universal Resolver, a community project which puts practical intra-DID method interoperability into practice by co-developing a “translation engine” for diverse DIDs with contributions from DIF members and non-members alike. Similarly, other DIF efforts like the DID Communications protocol and the Presentation Exchange protocol and ToIP efforts like the ToIP Trust Registry Protocol serve to align a broad range of implementations and ecosystems already building on these standards, laying the groundwork for robust interoperability across ecosystems and diverse families of technologies.

This specification is the result of half a decade of sustained, broad-based, dedicated work on the part of W3C, DIF, and ToIP members. We acknowledge also the work done by numerous, forward-thinking organizations who have already built working implementations using the provisional specification, thereby laying the foundations of new infrastructures for “identity data”. We believe DIDs will change the course of digital identity by building in better user controls, portability and interoperability at the lowest possible level, while also offering increased security and simplicity for implementers and service providers. This advancement unlocks new opportunities for our digital lives, and we look forward to leveraging DIDs and other technologies developed in the community to champion a new class of user-first, self-owned digital identity systems.

Signed,

DIF & ToIP 

October, 2021

Engaging with the Ontario Digital Identity Program

By Blog

We recently had the honor to host a presentation from our Canadian counterparts in Ontario about their technology roadmap for their Digital Identity (ID) program.

The aim of their program is to “make accessing online and in-person services simpler, safer and more secure”, and they’re aiming to introduce Digital ID later this year.

They’ve been busy since their announcement in October 2020, hosting roundtable discussions with large market participants, surveying and consulting with the public and small-to-medium businesses, developing a tech roadmap to get questions and input from private-sector partners, and publishing the technical tools they’re going to leverage.

A four-step process with accompanying images: Download, Sign up, Add your ID card, and Use your digital ID.
Ontario’s simplified version of how Digital ID will work. Read more on their website.

The recent presentation to the ToIP Foundation was to further their goal of aligning and interoperating with the broader market for digital identity. They recognize the importance of market engagement, technology standards, and of partnering with the private sector in building a digital identity ecosystem. Ultimately, all this will help drive end user adoption and the delivery of value.

The presentation covered:

  • A summary of findings from government-led public consultations on digital identity
  • An overview of Ontario’s Digital ID technology roadmap, and discussions about the technology stacks and infrastructure
  • Ontario’s proposed conceptual model for digital identity, and the principles that inform it

The presentation emphasized how the Government of Ontario’s digital identity strategy and roadmap is building upon the ToIP dual-stack model. It was exciting and gratifying to see a major public sector organization contributing to a digital identity ecosystem based on the interoperable open standards that are the heart of our efforts here at the ToIP Foundation. Equally, we hope that Ontario will benefit through exposure of their efforts to our worldwide presence—and further inspire others to adopt decentralized digital trust infrastructure.

If you are not yet a member of the Trust Over IP Foundation and wish to participate in future state-of-the-art member briefings such as this one, we encourage you to read more about membership.

A Year in Review: New Beginnings and Successes

By Blog

The Internet is one of the most extraordinary developments in human history. It is connecting the world farther, faster, and deeper than any previous communications network. It is steadily digitizing every company, industry, and economy it touches. And it is establishing new pathways for information of all types to flow.

Unfortunately, all of this has come with a growing downside. The Internet wasn’t designed with an integrated layer for digital identity, security, and privacy. As a result, we are now suffering from cybersecurity and cyberprivacy problems so severe that they have at times brought entire companies and industries to their knees.

The Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation was launched in May 2020 to tackle this problem at its very core: to define a complete architecture for Internet-scale digital trust. It combines cryptographic assurance at the machine layers and human accountability at the business, legal, and social layers. While ambitious, this mission is so urgent and essential that the Foundation has grown from its initial 27 founding member organizations to over ten times that number in just one year.

As part of the Foundation’s launch, working groups were established from the dedicated efforts of our founding members and volunteers. What those groups have accomplished in their first year has been phenomenal. Specifications, recommendations, guides, white papers, and glossaries have all been delivered. Through the groups’ efforts the Foundation has supported Digital Trust advances in many organizations and operations, especially important as the world grapples with the pandemic and the voluminous increase in everyday online activity.

A curved line showing various ToIP deliverables and new working groups over 2020 and 2021.

Here’s a small taste of what our working groups have been up to since their inception last year.

Technology Stack Working Group (TSWG)

The TSWG provides guidance and specifications that support the ToIP 4-layer model from a technical standpoint.

The TSWG has, amongst many accomplishments:

  • Created and pushed a Task Force recommendation that constructs a mapping of Kim Cameron’s “Laws of Identity”
  • Created a task force in late 2020 to create early specifications for Authentic Chained Data Containers. This task force is focused on the semantics of source provenance, authorization provenance, and delegation.
  • Focused the Interoperability Task Force on the creation of interoperability test suites that leverage and extend the Hyperledger Aries test suites. Multiple underlying Layer-1 technologies are being examined as well. 
  • Focused the Technical Architecture Task Force on building the TSS (ToIP Standard Specification) that defines the overall technical requirements for the four layers of the ToIP Stack
  • Created a Trust Registry Task Force to handle creation of the specifications and API (OpenAPI 3.0 compatible) for trust registries. This work was spawned from the urgent need identified by the Good Health Pass Interoperability Working Group.

Governance Stack Working Group (GSWG)

The GSWG specifies tools, templates, and other resources for developing governance frameworks (collections of rules and policies). These, in turn, support the integration of the legal, business, and social components of Digital Trust.

The GSWG has, amongst many accomplishments:

  • Made steady progress with the ToIP Governance Architecture TSS
  • Advanced the ToIP Governance Metamodel to the point where the GSWB now plans to issue it as a separate specification (apart from the ToIP Governance Architecture TSS), along with an associated Companion Guide
  • Contributed heavily to the governance framework recommendations in the Good Health Pass Interoperability Blueprint
  • Advised the authors of several ToIP-based governance framework projects in the market
  • Initiated a Trust Assurance Task Force focusing on governance risk assessment and accountability
  • Drafted a Risk Assessment Worksheet Template and associated Companion Guide 

Ecosystem Foundry Working Group (EFWG)

The EFWG facilitates a community of practice among governance authorities, implementers, operators, and service providers of Trust over IP Layer-4 ecosystems. 

The EFWG has, amongst many accomplishments:

  • Formed the Internet of Research Ecosystem Task Force to pioneer implementation of academic resource identifiers ecosystems for the research community
  • Created the COVID-19 Credentials Governance Framework Task Force to develop reference materials, best practices, and templates that enable diverse organizations to respond with technology
  • Formed the YOMA Ecosystem Task Force to create a ToIP-based Governance Framework to positively impact youth and local communities around the world
  • Formed the Human Trafficking Safety Response Task Force to research the use of ToIP models to effect the transformation of global human trafficking response
  • Drafted the initial Ecosystem Foundry Concepts and Workflow Model to aid ecosystem development and operation

Utility Foundry Working Group (UFWG) 

As with the EFWG, the UFWG also facilitates a community of practice among governance authorities, implementers, operators, and service providers, but instead for Trust over IP Layer-1 utilities.

The UFWG has, amongst many accomplishments:

  • Worked alongside utility conveners to document their utility into story formats
  • Committed best practice documents to the WG GitHub Repository, such as Decentralized Network Best Practices and Decentralized Network Design Principles
  • Worked to publish a public UFWG paper with which will incorporate many of our outputs as well as case studies from utility projects we’ve interfaced with
  • Committed to expanding the coverage of the UFWG to non-Indy-based ledgers.

Inputs and Semantics Working Group (ISWG) 

The ISWG provides an open forum for discussing the concepts and components that will ultimately shape a Dynamic Data Economy (DDE), a safe and secure decentralized data sharing economy. 

The ISWG has, amongst many accomplishments:

  • Delivered whitepapers such as Decentralized Resource Identifiers in the Research Landscape
  • Contributed to the Good Health Interoperability Blueprint (“GHP Blueprint”), such as for “Standard Data Models and Elements” and “Security, Privacy, and Data Protection”
  • Housed the Health Care Task Force (HCTF) that led to GHP Blueprint recommendations
  • Defined a privacy controller credential to ensure trustworthiness for the use of decentralized identifiers across ecosystems
  • Facilitated several presentations from external presenters of storage and portability solutions
  • Tackled important security concepts such as data correlation attacks, machine-readable data agreements, and data protection requirements

Concepts and Terminology Working Group (CTWG)

The CTWG analyzes and maintains terminology requirements of stakeholder groups within and outside the ToIP Foundation.

The CTWG has, amongst many accomplishments:

  • Maintained glossaries for the reuse of terms across groups, with mapping of terms and definitions across groups to encourage harmonization
  • Surveyed the available terminology development and maintenance tools on the market
  • Authored its own specification for a ToIP Term tool
  • Innovated with an approach called “terms wikis” to enable different stakeholder groups to develop and maintain glossaries in their own contexts.

Interoperability Working Group for Good Health Pass (IWG-GHP)

The IWG-GHP facilitated a community of practice among implementers, issuers, holders, verifiers, governance authorities, and other participants within the Good Health Pass digital trust ecosystem.

The IWG-GHP has, amongst many accomplishments:

  • Authored a blueprint based on an outline created by ID2020, going live in June 2021
  • Coordinated the meeting and responses of ten different drafting groups
  • Completed a 150-page report, the Good Health Pass Interoperability Blueprint, that makes key recommendations on how to reopen global travel with verifiable credentials for sharing COVID-19 health status (tests, vaccinations, and recovery).

There’s More To Do

Our work is just getting started! We encourage anyone interested in Digital Trust to join Trust Over IP and get involved in our working groups.

Read more about membership and find out the latest working group activity.

Here’s to our continued advancements and successes!

Trust over IP Foundation Issues Its First Tools for Managing Risk in Digital Trust Ecosystems

By Blog

The growing interest in verifiable digital credentials, such as mobile driver’s licenses or digital health passes, means companies and governments need new tools for managing risk in this decentralized infrastructure. “Risk management in financial services, such as banking and credit card networks, is a mature field,” said Scott Perry, co-chair of the ToIP Foundation Governance Stack Working Group. “But as we move into decentralized identity management, where individuals manage credentials in their own digital wallets, we need new risk management tools designed for this paradigm.”

To begin to fill this gap, today the Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation announced the release of the ToIP Risk Assessment Worksheet (Excel format) and Companion Guide (PDF). These new tools are intended to equip architects of digital governance frameworks — ”rulebooks” for establishing trust online—with the knowledge they need to perform a risk assessment grounded in generally accepted global standards and techniques, including:

  • Proper consideration and identification of potential risks,
  • Critical analysis of risks in terms of likelihood and severity,
  • Calculating a systematic risk impact score,
  • Triaging risks for further treatment,
  • Risk mitigation requirements and strategies,
  • Performance of an annual review to reassess existing risks and consider new ones.

The Risk Assessment Worksheet and Companion Guide provides a step-by-step method of performing a systematic risk assessment that conforms with industry-standard guidance such as ISO/IEC 27005 and NIST 800-30. This process identifies and categorizes risks by likelihood and severity in order to create a risk score that can be color-coded, and stack ranked to highlight the need for countermeasures as shown below. The Worksheet and Companion Guide include enough background and educational content that even risk assessment novices should be able to drive the risk assessment process. “A key missing piece of building open digital trust ecosystems has been a deep understanding of the various risks they introduce.

A table with Scale of Severity across the top, and Scale of Likelihood down the side

This can scare off key stakeholders“, said Darrell O’Donnell, CEO of Continuum Loop and Chair of the ToIP Governance Stack Working Group. “The Risk Assessment Worksheet is a powerful tool that helps create clarity about where the real risks are in an ecosystem and what to do about them.”

The Risk Assessment Worksheet and Companion Guide are the first deliverables from the ToIP Governance Stack Working Group (GSWG), whose mission is to produce a complete suite of tools, models, templates, and guides for digital governance frameworks. GSWG member Vikas Malhotra, CEO of WOPLLI Technologies, explained why risk assessment was at the top of the list: “Willingness to take risks is key to forming trust. A risk assessment process helps to qualify and quanfy the risk in a situation, so that the potential trustor can use the information to understand if they should take the risk or not.”

These new tools for risk assessment are already being put to use by digital trust ecosystems being incubated within the ToIP Ecosystem Foundry Working Group. An example is the YOMA governance framework for youth education and life skills credentials in Africa. “Designing a digital trust ecosystem without first assessing the specific risks it is intended to address is like laying underground pipes without testing them to determine the possibility of leakages” said Frednand Furia, who is leading the Yoma Trust Assurance Task Force. “The ToIP Risk Assessment Worksheet and Companion Guide have already proved to be very effective in architecting the YOMA Rules governance and trust framework.”

Good Health Pass Collaborative Releases Draft Blueprint for Digital Health Passes in Advance of G7 Summit

By Blog, News

In an effort to restore global travel and restart the global economy, the Good Health Pass Collaborative today announced the release of the eagerly-anticipated Good Health Pass Interoperability Blueprint.

The Blueprint – released today in draft form for a three-week period of stakeholder consultations and public comment – is intended to stimulate discussion at the G7 Summit, which will open Friday in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, UK.

This announcement follows on a May 18 letter, sent by the Good Health Pass Collaborative to G7 leaders, urging them to adopt a statement of principles for digital health passes. The letter also called for the formation of a working group – composed of senior ministerial staff from G7, G20, and European Union health and transport ministries – with the task of reaching international consensus on standards by July 16.

Unprecedented global collaboration – between governments, nonprofits, universities, and the private sector – propelled the rapid development and distribution of highly effective COVID vaccines. A similar level of collaboration is urgently needed to ensure that verifiable digital health passes for international travel can be issued and universally accepted worldwide by airlines, border control agencies, and others.

Most governments already require proof of travelers’ COVID status – either through a recent negative test or, increasingly, proof of vaccination– as a precondition of entry. While dozens of solutions have been rushed to market to meet this growing demand, they vary greatly in the extent to which they protect user privacy and security and enable individuals to control access to their personal health information.

The absence of internationally recognized, consensus-based open standards – to which all solutions adhere – could leave individuals uncertain about the security and privacy of their data and even unsure of whether their health pass will be accepted for travel.

“Digital health passes offer our best hope to safely, confidently, and promptly restore global travel and restart the global economy – but only if they are widely trusted and adopted by the public and universally accepted by airlines and border control agencies,” said ID2020 executive director, Dakota Gruener. “The standards proposed in the Good Health Pass Interoperability Blueprint will make it possible for digital health pass systems around the world to be interoperable with one another, thus creating a trusted, convenient, and seamless experience for travelers as well as for airlines, airports, and border control agencies.”

Restoring international travel is vital to restarting the global economy. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that 61.6 million tourism-related jobs worldwide have been lost as a result of the pandemic. In 2020, travel and tourism contributions to global GDP decreased by 49.1%, a loss of $4.5 trillion (USD), nearly 18 times the impact experienced during the 2009 global financial crisis.

Under normal circumstances, it would take years to develop standards for digital health passes.

In February, ID2020 launched the Good Health Pass Collaborative, a multi-sector, global initiative to establish guiding principles for digital health passes and dramatically streamline the standards development process. Within weeks, the Collaborative grew from 25 partners to more than 125 companies and organizations from across the health, travel, and technology sectors.

Nine “drafting groups”, bringing together more than 120 experts from the health, travel, and technology sectors were managed through a partnership with the Trust Over IP Foundation the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative and Linux Foundation Public Health – all projects of the Linux Foundation.

The resulting Good Health Pass Interoperability Blueprint addresses – in considerable depth and detail – nine technical and interoperability challenges around which global consensus must be reached:

  • Design principles
  • Creating a consistent user experience
  • Standard data models and elements
  • Credential formats, signatures, and exchange protocols
  • Security, privacy, and data protection
  • Trust registries
  • Rules engines
  • Identity binding (ensuring the authenticity of the holder)
  • Governance

“This draft blueprint is historic, both in its depth and breadth of proposed standards, as well as the number of expert volunteers who contributed their time to its development,” said Gruener. “When we partnered with the Trust Over IP Foundation, we committed to an open and inclusive process. Releasing the draft for public comment today takes that commitment a step further. We felt this was incredibly important, given the range of public and private entities expected to play a role in the issuance and acceptance of digital health passes and the need to build public trust and support their adoption.”

The UK government – in its capacity as president of the G7 – has identified “leading the global recovery from coronavirus, while strengthening our resilience against further pandemic” as the highest policy priority for this 47th G7 Summit. International agreement on principles and standards for digital health passes are critical to achieving this policy priority.

About ID2020

ID2020 is a global public-private partnership that harnesses the collective power of nonprofits, corporations, and governments to promote the adoption and implementation of user-managed, privacy-protecting and portable digital ID solutions.

By developing and applying rigorous technical standards to certify identity solutions, providing advisory services and implementing pilot programs, and advocating for the ethical implementation of digital ID, ID2020 is strengthening social and economic development globally. Alliance partners are committed to a future in which all of the world’s seven billion people can fully exercise their basic human rights, while ensuring data remains private and in the hands of the individual. www.id2020.org

 

Trust over IP and Sovrin sign agreement to strengthen collaboration

By Blog, News

The Sovrin Foundation (“Sovrin”) Board of Trustees and Trust over IP Foundation (“ToIP”) Steering Committee are pleased to announce that they have signed a Letter Agreement (dated March 18, 2021). This agreement signifies the commitment of both organizations to mutual cooperation and recognition for each other’s mandates. Sovrin and ToIP intend to work together toward advancing the infrastructure and governance required for digital trust and digital identity ecosystems. 

“By signing this Letter Agreement, Sovrin and ToIP are excited to take a step further to support the need and importance of our separate but interrelated mandates to benefit people and organizations across all social and economic sectors through secure digital identity ecosystems based on verifiable credentials and SSI,” said Chris Raczkowski, Chairman of Board of Trustees, Sovrin Foundation. 

Under the agreement, each organization will assign one member to act as a liaison to coordinate and maintain lines of communication, attend plenary sessions, and provide periodic updates to the Sovrin Board of Trustees and ToIP Steering Committee. They will also seek opportunities proactively to exchange information, participate in discussions of shared interest, promote the value of each other’s work through joint announcements and media products, as well as collaborate to achieve their respective mandates.

Sovrin and ToIP both operate in a manner that respects open licensing, open source code and open standards. The organizations agree that their open, public materials will be available for reference (with attribution) by the other.

“ToIP and Sovrin each offer something unique to the market. Our members already collaborate together informally on many topics. Signing this agreement makes our work together more visible and open. It will create new opportunities to collaborate on challenges that affect every layer of our trust model,”  said John Jordan, Executive Director of Trust over IP Foundation. “By working together, we want to help solve interoperability problems more quickly and support the adoption of digital trust ecosystems more widely.”” 

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact info@sovrin.com or operations@trustoverip.org  

To view the text of the agreement, please find it here.

About Sovrin Foundation

The Sovrin Foundation is a non-profit social enterprise which acts as the administrator and governance authority for public available SSI infrastructure, as well as supporting interoperability digital identity ecosystems that adhere to the Principles of SSI. Sovrin’s activities aim to serve the common good of providing secure, privacy-respecting digital identity for all, including individuals, organizations and things.      

About Trust over IP Foundation

Launched in 2020, the Trust over IP Foundation is an independent project hosted by the Linux Foundation. Its members include over 200 leading companies, organizations and individual contributors sharing expertise and collaborating to define standard specifications to advance a secure trust layer for the digital world. Through this collaborative effort, the Trust over IP Foundation aims to define a complete architecture for Internet-scale digital trust that combines cryptographic trust at the machine layer with human trust at the business, legal, and social layers. For more information, please visit us at trustoverip.org

ToIP Foundation Hosts the Interoperability Working Group for Good Health Pass

By Blog, News

Digital health passes — often mischaracterized as “vaccine passports” in the popular press — are making headlines as a key component in the drive to restore global travel and restart the global economy after the massive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enabling individuals to receive and selectively share proof-of-test, proof-of-vaccination, and proof-of-recovery with the highest standards for security, privacy and data protection will allow destination countries and travel systems worldwide to accept credentials from multiple market vendors. But concerns related to equity and access can only be addressed if these health pass implementations are designed to be interoperable.

As the leading global consortium for interoperable digital trust infrastructure, the ToIP Foundation has partnered with the Good Health Pass Collaborative – a project of ID2020 – to host a new Working Group focused on the core issues of interoperability, privacy, and equity for digital health passes. The Interoperability Working Group for Good Health Pass consists of nine drafting groups, each focused on a specific interoperability challenge as defined in the Interoperability Blueprint Outline.

“The Good Health Pass Collaborative is bringing people together to solve a set of problems that affect the entire world,” said John Jordan, executive director of the ToIP Foundation. “This ambitious effort uniquely aligns with the mission of ToIP because it requires interoperable digital credentials that can be accepted and verified anywhere they are needed. Getting this right, and doing so now, will not only make it safe for people to travel again, it will open the door for new tools and services that can solve other challenging problems that also require global-scale digital trust. For these reasons, ToIP is honored to contribute to this urgent global mission by hosting the Interoperability Working Group on behalf of the Good Health Pass Collaborative.”

Each drafting group, consisting of volunteer representatives from around the world representing the health, travel, technology, and policy sectors, will first conduct an intensive 30-day sprint to develop an initial set of draft recommendations. This will be followed by a second 30 day community and public review process to develop a final set of recommendations.

“Digital health passes – If properly designed and implemented – could offer a path to safely restore domestic and international travel, resume certain aspects of public life, and restart the global economy,“ said ID2020 executive director, Dakota Gruener. “Collaboration is critical at this juncture. Our organizations share a commitment to ensuring that digital health passes are designed and implemented in ways that serve the needs of the individuals and institutions that rely on them, while simultaneously protecting core values like privacy, civil liberties, and equity. ToIP has developed a powerful set of tools and models for digital trust frameworks, and we are delighted to be partnering with them in this critically important effort.”

The nine drafting groups collaborating within the new Working Group are:

  1. Paper Based Credentials will define how a paper-based alternative can be created for any digital health pass so access will be available to all.
  2. Consistent User Experience will specify the common elements required so that individuals can easily, intuitively, and safely use digital health pass implementations.
  3. Standard Data Models and Elements will determine the core data items needed across all digital health pass implementations for both COVID-19 testing and vaccinations.
  4. Credential Formats, Signatures, and Exchange Protocols will specify the requirements for technical interoperability of Good Health Pass implementations.
  5. Security, Privacy, and Data Protection will define the safety requirements for Good Health Pass compliant implementations.
  6. Trust Registries will specify how verifiers can confirm that a digital health pass has been issued by an authorized issuer.
  7. Rules Engines will define how digital health pass apps can access different sources of policy information to determine what test or vaccination status is needed for a specific usage scenario.
  8. Identity Binding will specify the options for verifying that the holder of a digital health pass is the individual who received the test or vaccination credential.
  9. Governance Framework will define the overall set of policies that must be followed for an implementation to qualify as Good Health Pass compliant.

By adhering to the Good Health Pass Interoperability Blueprint that will be synthesized from the outputs of these nine drafting groups, airlines, airports, hospitality industries, international customs officials and others will be able to process visitors easily without requiring additional unnecessary steps mandated by proprietary systems. Travelers will not be confused about which credential they need for each point of verification. Moreover, since individuals will be fully in control of their own personal data in credentials in their own wallets or devices, they can be confident that their private health data is not being tracked or misused.  

Interested organizations are invited to join the ToIP Foundation to participate directly in this new Working Group or in the public comment period in May. They are also encouraged to join the Good Health Pass Collaborative at ID2020 to participate in the construction, adoption, and advocacy of the Good Health Pass Interoperability Blueprint.

Trust over IP Foundation Introduces a New Tool for Interoperable Digital Trust

By Blog

When the ToIP Foundation launched in May 2020, our mission was to define a new model for achieving trust online—a model that breaks away from the thousands of siloed solutions for secure, privacy-enhancing digital identity and trust that do not work with each other. This lack of interoperability costs billions of dollars per year in complicated and time-consuming integration and hinders adoption by the very customers we are trying to serve.

Our goal is to drive adoption of a new model for digital trust based on open standard digital wallets and digital credentials that are every bit as interoperable as the physical wallets and paper or plastic credentials that we use every day—to do everything from getting on a plane to entering a hospital to signing a mortgage. As these new tools emerge as the primary mechanism for contactless identity verification, payments, and other online transactions, they will become as essential to our digital lives as browsers and email clients have become to the Web today.

As that happens, it is critical to avoid recreating the vendor-lock in and fragmentation of the “browser wars” that hindered the early days of the Web. Interoperable solutions that avoid vendor lock-in are paramount for a vibrant digital marketplace where consumers are free to choose their preferred digital wallet software from a variety of vendors and use digital credentials from any issuer as they choose.

The need for market-driven interoperability

Open standards alone do not produce interoperable market solutions—there are too many ways interoperability can still go off the rails. Testing labs are another step in the right direction—but vendors need incentives to use them, and those incentives can be scarce in a new market.

The ToIP Foundation recognized that, as our economy grows increasingly digital and collaboration tools grow steadily more powerful, there is a new path to interoperability: tapping market dynamics to drive incubation and adoption of truly interoperable solutions.

With this approach, vendors and customers voluntarily work together to develop interoperability testing requirements designed to meet explicit customer needs in the market. Vendors then satisfy those requirements by passing these interoperability tests with production-ready software.

Introducing the ToIP Interoperability Profile (TIP)

To facilitate this new approach to market-driven interoperability, the Technology Stack Working Group of the ToIP Foundation developed the ToIP Interoperability Profile (TIP). A TIP represents a specific combination of technologies that span each of the four layers of the ToIP technology stack in order to meet the requirements of a set of target customers in one or more digital trust ecosystems

TIPs can be designed, refined and supported by multiple vendors and customers wishing to collaborate on interoperability. A TIP typically includes the following elements critical to customer success:

  • Use cases capturing the specific requirements of customers in one or more digital trust ecosystems.
  • Design principles that must be clearly defined when combining technology and business policies to formulate a solution architecture. 
  • Documentation that clearly communicates the design, architecture, features, and benefits of a TIP to the digital trust ecosystems targeted for adoption.
  • Best practices and implementation guidance for adoption of a TIP, including how to incorporate policies from the ToIP governance stack.
  • Interoperability tests that enable vendors supporting the TIP to be certified for verifiable interoperability.
  • Adoption metrics and case study references that provide quantifiable evidence of the real market impact.

TIPs harness market forces to drive convergence on interoperability

Each TIP consists of two types of components:

  1. Fully-standardized components of the ToIP stack. These components, called ToIP Standard Specifications (TSS), are standards that have already gained Foundation-wide approval. 
  2. Custom components that are specific to a TIP. Some places in the ToIP stack do not yet have agreed-upon specifications. For these gaps, a TIP must specify how it fills the gap via an open community specification that can be implemented by any vendor or open source project.

A conceptual “lego block” picture of a complete four-layer TIP—showing how it is constructed from a combination of standard TSS components and custom TIP-specific components—is shown in the figure below.

Launching the Saturn-V TIP

The first TIP published by the ToIP Technology Stack Working Group is named for the historically significant multi-stage rocket platform, the Saturn-V. This TIP emerged from work begun at a 2019 Connect-a-Thon event held by the Hyperledger Indy community. When the ToIP Foundation was launched in May 2020, ToIP members including Commerzbank (Main-Incubator), esatus AG, Evernym, IBM, Trinsic and idRamp recognized the opportunity to coalesce their collaboration into a TIP. 

Once the ToIP Technology Stack Working Group was formed, it established the criteria for managing the lifecycle of TIP from incubation through design, demonstration, acceptance and adoption. The Saturn-V collaborators then proposed their TIP following this process and it was formally accepted as a Draft Deliverable by the Technology Stack Working Group at their 24 August 2020 meeting.

The next stage: mission-critical collaboration on interoperability testing

All the vendors participating in the Saturn-V TIP actively pair with developers from other participants to work through agreed-upon test plans. Having the Technology Stack Working Group oversee the TIP development life cycle on behalf of all participating vendors ensures a more transparent and robust joint testing project than a typical multi-vendor “plug-fest”. 

Since the technologies used for the Saturn-V TIP are Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries at layers 1-3 of the ToIP Technology Stack, the open source Aries Test suites will be used as the baseline for all test plans. Participating vendors are currently tackling the following stages of the Saturn-V Interop Test Plan One:

  • Self-Validation against Aries Protocol Test Suite for Aries Interop Profile v. 1.0
  • Peer-Validation
    • Core Aries Interop Profile v. 1.0 (Aries RFC 302), which supports DID connections, issuing credentials, and fulfilling proofs
    • Connectionless Proofs using the Service Decorator (Aries RFC 56),
    • HTTP over DIDComm (Aries RFC 348).

Future missions

Once Test Plan One is complete, TIP Participants will define Saturn-V Interop Test Plan Two which intends to minimally include peer-to-peer validation for:

Once these stages of interoperability testing are completed, the Technology Stack Working Group will be able to assess whether component specifications of this TIP meets the criteria to become a TSS. If so, these will be advanced to become their own Draft Deliverables for ultimate approval by the Working Group and then the ToIP Steering Committee.

Please join us

We invite you to join in development of the Saturn-V TIP and formulation of new TIPs that provide full-stack interoperability for digital trust ecosystems. If you are not yet a member of the ToIP Foundation, membership is open to anyone—individual or organization—at both free and paid membership levels. For more information, please visit the Foundation membership page.

TIP development is coordinated through the ToIP Technology Stack Working Group

To join the Technology Stack Working Group, go to https://lists.trustoverip.org/, log in with the email address of your ToIP Foundation membership, then subscribe to the mailing list.