The Illinois administration and the Czech Government each express the desire to advance towards the deployment of mobile driving licenses (mDL) infrastructure this year. Also this week, mobile data capture solutions provider Socket Mobile announces it will hold an mDL-focussed webinar in February.
Illinois to deploy mDL to ‘adjust to the 21st century’
The news was reported by 23WIFR which spoke to Senator John Connor (D- Lockport), who recently wrote a proposal to amend the Illinois Vehicle Code to include mDLs.
In the document, Connor mentioned that several individuals have appeared in traffic court after being unable to show a driving license when pulled over by the police, which is a waste of both time and money.
To avoid this issue, the Senator plans to work with the Illinois Secretary of State’s office to deploy mDL technologies that will enable people to download an app and have their driver’s license on their phone. Such an app, according to Connor’s proposed legislation, should not cost more than $6.
The Senator also added he understands the proposal may not be approved by the end of the shortened session this spring but urged the Illinois administration to move the idea forward so that it may be considered in the near future.
A number of U.S. states have already deployed mDL technologies, including Mississippi , Utah, and Colorado.
A U.S. Treasury Department representative also said during the Road Ahead Cybersecurity Policy Forum hosted by the FIDO Alliance, Better Identity Coalition and ITRC that the federal government is considering supporting state mDL initiatives with a voluntary grant program.
Czech Government renews mDL and digital ID efforts
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced that the government intends to bring “ID cards and driving licenses to mobile phones,” Prague Morning reports.
According to Fiala, the Czech administration is already working towards the development of digital ID mobile infrastructure that will be able to store both mDLs and ID cards, with plans to support additional documents in the future.
The technology will be reportedly available by 2023 and will be based on the eDokladovska mobile app developed by the State Printing Works of Securities (STC).
The sharing of information will be granular and controlled by users. From a technological standpoint, the app will use QR codes and Bluetooth transmission, and will also work offline.
“The security of data storage and the method of data exchange between the holder’s application and the verifier’s application is based on the globally recognized interoperable standard ISO 18013-5,” Fiala explained.
STC showcased a prototype of the eDokladovka app in April 2021, with plans of releasing the technology within one year from the approval of legislation for the use of digital documentation.
Socket Mobile announces mDL-focused webinar
Socket Mobile will hold a webinar on February 15th to discuss mDLs, the ISO 18013 standard, and the integration of their technology into retail POS apps.
The webinar will include sessions from speakers Dave Holmes (Chief Business Officer at Socket Mobile) and Alice Chan, an Advisor at UL, a global independent safety science company.
“At Socket, we believe strongly that states continuing to roll out mDL will have a big impact on the retail sector,” Holmes says.
“We want our application partners to know the latest developments in this space and how they can benefit from them.”
A live Q&A session will follow the speakers’ session to address questions attendees may have.
iOS 15 was supposed to include the first set of mobile driver’s licenses launched in partnership with 8 states. Now Apple’s mobile driver’s license launch is delayed. Late last year, various articles surfaced concerns about Apple’s contract with state governments, specifically regarding who was paying for them (governments, aka taxpayers) and who had control over the launch (Apple).
Now, I don’t think Apple is a bad company. They build some of the most secure, usable, beautiful technology, at scale. Of all the big tech companies, Apple has been the most successful in creating a functional and adopted mobile wallet (not to mention porting that tech to your wrist). The Apple wallet has between 45 to 50 percent of the payment wallet market share with an estimated $90 billion in transactions conducted in 2021. Apple’s success here is no small feat and should be celebrated. They really have no competition even if Apple wallet exists as a value add to keep the iPhone competitive.
The Government perspective
Governments exist to fulfill the needs of their citizens, and unlike private corporations, do not have the luxury of focusing on a target market. Governments must provide services for ALL citizens and do this with a constantly challenged public sector budget. (I don’t recall reading any articles about folks offering to willingly pay more taxes to give the government bigger budgets.)
Governments use a competitive market to get the best technology at the best price for their use cases.
For a competitive technology market to work, the technology has to interoperate or at least use the same underlying technology standards. Governments like standards because standards set a baseline for interoperability, reducing the fear of vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in happens when you are stuck using a specific vendor’s technology because it is too expensive to switch to a competitor. Technology standards create a common language that companies can use to create competing technology solutions.
Often the government will fund the development of standards, and solutions built on standards, in order to jumpstart a new market. The government benefits from these investments by creating new competitive markets which they (the government) benefit from as well as the private sector. This is one way the government supports capitalist market innovation in the U.S.
Let’s talk about Standards
ISO 18013-5 is the recent standard for mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs), it specifies technology used to share the mobile driver’s license data once it is in a digital wallet. But it isn’t the only standard that supports the kind of government-issued verified credentials similar to mDLs–the user-centric digital identity community has explored this use case for over a decade. And the ISO standard doesn’t cover provisioning the mDL from the government issuer (the state DMV) into the mobile wallet.
The 1.0 release of a product rarely satisfies everyone’s requirements. That’s why ISO 18013-7 is under development to standardize additional mDL transport modes and capabilities. There’s an opportunity to explore collaboration and co-leveraging between the work at ISO and other standards like the Verifiable Credentials Data Model 1.1 at the W3C. But there is still the problem of a technology standard that state governments can use to issue mobile drivers licenses to wallets. In the case of Apple, state governments must use Apple’s proprietary technology to get their data into the wallet – which is also hardware bound. I have to wonder; how do taxpayers feel about funding mDLs only for the Apple Wallet?
Last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for public comments on minimal requirements for mobile driver’s licenses. Apple, EFF, the Iowa DOT, American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, biometrics providers Idemia and Tech5, and 56 others (62 in total) submitted comments, showing that indeed, ISO 18013-5 is just the beginning of a longer conversation.
While Apple’s tech supports the ISO standard, in theory, many of us in the industry don’t know what that means in practicality. Will Apple support later ISO standards? What about future provisioning standards? I’m personally concerned about Apple’s appetite to use future standards based on their behavior with another W3C standard in development that is tied to Verified Credentials – the DID Spec. In the case of the DID Spec, Apple lobbed an objection at the last hour, dramatically diverging from the published standardization process. This has, in effect, obstructed the release of a community-created standard that would support a new competitive marketplace.
Apple is already pretty much the only commercially successful player in the digital wallet world so far. There is very real concern that they could use their power to obstruct or at least influence mobile drivers license standards to their benefit. We would be naive to assume anything different.
About the author
Heather Vescent is a digital identity industry thought leader and futurist with more than a decade of experience delivering strategic intelligence consulting to governments, corporations, and entrepreneurs. Vescent’s research has been covered in the New York Times, CNN, American Banker, CNBC, Fox, and the Atlantic. She is co-author of The Secrets of Spies, The Cyber Attack Survival Manual, and The Comprehensive Guide to Self-Sovereign Identity.
A new biometric-based digital identity system dubbed NIS, currently being developed in South Africa, will go a long way in enhancing access to a variety of services for citizens and other foreign nations living in the country, according to the Department of Home Affairs (DHA).
The DHA writes in an official notice that the ID system, which is expected to be in place by March 2024, will not only trigger economic transformation for the country but will also ensure the security of citizens and expatriates. It is also expected to reduce incidents of fraud as well as boost digital government and business transactions.
A new biometric-based digital identity system dubbed NIS, currently being developed in South Africa, will go a long way in enhancing access to a variety of services for citizens and other foreign nations living the country, according to the Department of Home Affairs (DHA).
The DHA writes in an official notice that the ID system, which is expected to be in place by March 2024, will not only trigger economic transformation for the country but will also ensure the security of citizens and expatriates. It is also expected to reduce incidents of fraud as well as boost digital government and business transactions.
“The department is in the process of implementing a single integrated source of biographic and biometric information – to make digital service delivery a seamless reality. The current disparate civic and immigration systems will produce secure data that will feed into the NIS according to an identity management policy and an updated identification Act. Under this system, all processes – the registration of births, marriages and deaths – will be digitized and secured,” the DHA said in a statement quoted by Business Tech.
The report recalls that the NIS, being developed to replace the current National Population Register, is part of the country’s ten-year digital transformation plan and “will be enabled by robust integrated backend systems and modern network infrastructure, which in turn will enable all DHA front-end processes and alignment with all related government systems.”
Among other things, the new digital ID system will enable digital processes for issuing birth, marriage and death certificates; the use of modified screening procedures at e-gates at high volume land points of entry for pre-approved frequent travellers; and a single platform for the adjudication of permits and visas, Business Tech writes.
The DHA has assured the system will phase out some of the challenges citizens have often faced in accessing certain services and will be able to also enjoy people-centric services.
‘Smart card’ driving licenses may roll out this year
Meanwhile, it is likely that a new design for driving licenses in South Africa will become operational in the course of this year if the cabinet okays a proposal that will be submitted to it, Business Tech reveals in a separate article.
The report attributes this development to Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula who says these plans started last year when government initiated the move to replace the current laminated driving licenses with ‘smart card’ versions.
The Driving License Card Account (DLCA) – the body in charge of producing licenses in South Africa – is quoted as saying the new document will be designed with new technology and will meet international standards in the domain.
“The introduction of the new driving license involves a new design of the driving license card and the re-engineering of processes to allow for agility and focus on delivering services efficiently and quickly. The project will allow for the adoption of digital technologies such as blockchain and other related technologies which will form the platform an integrated transport system,” says the DCLA in a statement.
The DCLA has voiced plans of equally introducing an electronic driving license in the future.
The current driving license issuance system in South Africa, however, is already reported to be experiencing technical issues, which have led to nearly 400,000 licenses not being printed.
Last year, South Africa also launched a tender seeking a biometric provider to manage its tax-payer system
Canadian province Quebec is considering the possibility of including documents issued by private companies, such as proof of insurance, in its upcoming digital identity infrastructure. The upcoming digital wallet will also support device-based biometrics, such as facial recognition or fingerprint recognition, to unlock the digital ID.
Scheduled for launch in 2025, the digital identity wallet will include identity documents issued by the Quebec government, including health insurance cards, birth certificates, and driver’s license’s.
According to leSoleil, the Quebec government is in discussions with financial institutions to assess the possibility of including non-government documents.
“We want to be able to integrate documents in our Quebec identity system that are not necessarily government documents,” Eric Caire, minister of Cybersecurity and Digital Technology told leSoleil, as translated by Google.
At the same time, Caire explained, the new digital ID should not include citizens’ social insurance numbers (SIN, the equivalent of Americans’ social security number), which the minister believes should be gradually discontinued from the system altogether.
From a security standpoint, the minister said it is absolutely essential for the upcoming digital identity to be strongly protected against malicious actors and cyberattacks, particularly in light of the recent security breaches concerning the launch of the vaccine passport in the country.
“With the vaccination passport, the objective was to deploy it quickly […] The digital wallet must be much more secure than the vaccination passport. We have time to do it and we have to do something that […] must be much safer [to use].”
The use of biometrics will be optional for those with the technology at their disposal.
“We have the infrastructure so that we can use biometrics,” Caire said in French. “From there, I would tell you that it is up to the citizens to decide if they are comfortable using it.”
Quebecers hope that the plan is based on a sound understanding of the practical requirements, but a new report casts doubt on how common that understanding is among government officials.
Global report suggests senior officials’ understanding of digital ID lacking
A new report from Global Government Forum (GGF) and Kevin Cunnington, former director-general of the UK’s Government Digital Service, suggested several opportunities whereby ‘central digital chiefs’ could learn from one another and overcome existing barriers to digital transformation.
Based on interviews with seven national digital leaders, the report initially warns that departmental leaders and ministers often lack the technical understanding to drive digital transformation, as most of them come from political and policy backgrounds.
These individuals, the report reads, have “spent their entire careers being reflexively liability-conscious and risk-averse – because that’s how they got to be [departmental leaders].”
They also “know that their organizations should be more user-centered and more agile, but they’re not quite sure what that means and they don’t understand how to get there – given the way they’ve been taught to do business and all the other pressures in their world.”
However, the report adds that through the creation of strong digital ID systems and high-quality, cross-government data management initiatives these obstacles can be overcome.
These goals can be achieved, the GGF research said, by enabling sharing and matching data on individuals across government departments, addressing any discrepancies between their datasets, and giving citizens a single, secure, online access point.
“Given an agreed way to match up the data they hold around citizens or organizations, for example, departments can develop a much fuller picture of service users’ situations, needs, and behavior – ‘personalizing’ and automating services, improving coordination, and strengthening preventive work.”
DIGITAL TRIAL:
Passengers will be able to verify their ID via Wallet at TSA checkpoints at two US airports
Air passengers with Apple devices will soon be able to verify their identity at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at two US airports by presenting a digital ID document such as their mobile driving licence (mDL) or state ID stored in Wallet.
The TSA is to begin trialling the use of Apple digital IDs as part of a pilot programme that will roll out to airports in “two additional states around March of 2022”, enabling travellers to tap their Apple device on an NFC reader or use a QR scanner to initiate an automated identity verification process.
“Standards-based digital IDs, such as state-issued mDL, will help streamline and secure the identity verification process,” the TSA told a Secure Technology Alliance event, where it confirmed it would be launching a “phased rollout, with mDL Apple Wallet integration being its first step”.
“Instead of TSA staff examining a physical ID card, manually comparing a traveller’s ID photo to their face and verifying flight information, a machine will automate the process,” the TSA said.
“Travellers will simply tap an NFC reader or use a QR scanner to initiate the data exchange.
“A TSA staff member will be present to oversee and validate the verification process.”
Multifunction
Apple announced that TSA airport security checkpoints would be among the first locations to support the use of digital ID credentials stored in Wallet when it originally unveiled the feature in June last year, and confirmed in September that users would soon be able to present their driving licence or state ID to the TSA by tapping their iPhone or Apple Watch at an identity reader.
Apple has also updated its Wallet page to confirm that, in addition to mDLs and digital state IDs, it is adding support for digital employee IDs and corporate passes that will enable users “to badge into the office, get access to the fitness center — even pay for a meal at the company café” with their iPhone or Apple Watch in “early 2022”.
Eight US states — Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah — have so far confirmed that they are planning to roll out Apple digital IDs early this year after an earlier launch due in late 2021 was postponed.
Memorandums of agreement between Apple and some of those US states released in November 2021 revealed that Apple retains control over when the service launches in any given territory.