Tuesday, 17 September 2024
Austroads has launched its pre-production/beta digital trust service (DTS), which will be showcased at the 10th International Interoperability Test Event (IVC24 Interop) in Sydney this October.
“For this event, the DTS will host a range of credentials, and not just mobile driver licences (mDLs), from both Australian and international issuing authorities, setting the stage for enhanced interoperability,” said Chris Goh, Austroads’ National Harmonisation Lead – Digital Identity.
The DTS represents a significant leap forward in digital credential verification. It will harmonise wallets and credentials not just nationally but internationally and will streamline and secure digital transactions without the need to store or exchange customer data.
The DTS leverages the Verified Issuer Certificate Authority List (VICAL) derived from an international standard ISO/IEC 18013-5. VICAL is a mechanism that is a trusted list of public keys, crucial for authenticating digital credentials. The public key from these trust lists, when paired with a customer or user keys allows verifiers/relying parties to have confidence the claims and attributes made within a digital credential was asserted by a trusted issuing authority.
Trust or master lists have existed and been successfully used for a while. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) uses one to allow the authentication of electronic machine-readable travel documents and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) has adopted the VICAL as a core component of its Digital Trust Service (DTS) to be used by the Transportation Security Administration under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to enable mDLs as a pseudo domestic passport for air travel.
“At a practical level, this means if someone from the US comes to Brisbane for the 2032 Olympic Games, they can have their mDL or other mutually trusted digital identity/credential verified seamlessly at a local pub and club without having to download an Australian app. We will trust the wallet of their choice in our ecosystem because we can verify with high assurance (because its cryptographically verified) the credentials were issued by a trusted authority,” said Chris.
“The other bonus, is that unlike a data exchange, a trust service does not need to store any data in a central repository as the keys that are exchanged have no identifying information making it safe for relying parties and customers/credential holders alike.”
Austroads extends its gratitude to MATTR for their collaboration and support in developing the pre-production/beta VICAL. This will host public cryptographic keys from US and European digital credentials, banking organisations, commercial wallet providers and verifiers from across the globe.
The learnings and outcomes from the Interop party will enable Austroads to launch the national Digital Trust Service in 2025 where mDLs and photo IDs from states and territories across Australia can then be both nationally, and in time, internationally verified and accepted.