Community Newsletter

Our Letter to the Biden Administration Reached its Intended Audience 

The meeting was attended by 15 ONC staff including the National Coordinator and Deputy National Coordinator. Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH), introduced LFPH and CCI and provided an overview of our approach and key progress so far. Jenny Wanger (Director of Programs at LFPH), Lucy Yang, John Walker, and Kaliya Young supported the Q&A where we were asked about implementation timeline, interoperability challenges, vaccine data sources, patient identity management, etc. 

Both our letter and presentation received positive responses, but there are no planned next steps yet. Currently, ONC/HHS is understanding existing work in COVID-19 related credentials with the goal to coordinate a federal response and develop a nationwide approach. We particularly highlighted our work within the Vaccine Credentials US Subgroup and its working document Vaccine Credentials Attestation Sources when responding to the questions around vaccine data sources. By continuing our great community work within this group and others, we will be able to provide further insights to ONC/HHS in our future conversations.

CCI News and Updates

There has been a lot of effort made prior to and after the breakout of COVID-19 in using Verifiable Credentials (VCs) for a digital-to-digital solution. However, this is not enough to provide worldwide usability especially when it comes to combating a public health crisis. There must be solutions for expressing VCs on paper so that those in low-resource settings and without phones are not excluded and can have an enhanced experience offered by VC systems too. 

CCI is convening a summit on March 4 among all groups working on paper-based VCs and COVID-19 credential issuance to rapidly iterate and come to convergent alignment on how VCs can be expressed on paper in a simple standard way globally. The goal of the summit is to get the outcomes into the hands of those who are working with WHO and other public health authorities and give them a clear idea of how it all comes together -- a coherent story about paper-based VCs. 

The summit attendance is limited to companies/projects working on paper solutions, but you can access the summit outline that includes presenter demos through the link below. We will share a summary of the summit outcomes and keep the community posted about the next steps.

CCI Subgroup Updates

Use Case Implementation Workstream

On March 2, the Use Case Implementation Workstream had one presentation and an update from the Schema Task Force (recording available). Carlos Korten from Bindle presented their solution to create entry passes from a digital copy of their COVID-19 test results and vaccine records. The entry passes can then be used for authorized access to enter places without revealing personal data or health information, freeing up businesses from having to navigate HIPAA compliance rules.

Following a successful kickoff meeting on February 22, Paul Knowles, the CCI Schema Task Force's convener, updated call participants on the group's concerted efforts to create minimum viable schema specifications starting with (1) COVID-19 vaccination reporting and (2) proof-of-vaccination certificate. Follow their work on the slack channel #cci-schema-tf

The next call is on Tuesday, March 16 at 7 am PT / 3:00 pm UTC. The agenda includes two presentations: (1) Consensas, a Canada-based vaccination credentials solution, and (2) Pathcheck PaperCred, a paper-first vaccination credentials solution using QR Codes. 

Rules & Governance Workstream

The co-leads of the Rules and Governance Workstream have plugged into other parts of CCI's work in the past two weeks to formulate thoughts and ideas for CCI Governance Framework V3. The group will be discussing revisions of V2 and new sections for V3 in the next meeting on Tuesday, March 9 at 7 am PT / 3:00 pm UTC.

Vaccine Credentials Focus Group - US Subgroup

The US Subgroup is currently focused on finding attestation sources for vaccine credentials, starting with jurisdictional Immunization Information Systems (IIS). A working document was created for this work, and a strategy is being formed to make it easy for more community participants to contribute. Join the slack channel #cci-vaccinecredentialsfg-us to provide your thoughts.

The next meeting of the Subgroup is on Thursday, March 4 at 11 am PT / 7:00 pm UTC.

Upcoming Events

The Thoughtful Biometrics Workshop

Date: March 8/10/12, 2021
The Thoughtful Biometrics Workshop is a 3-day virtual event that creates a space to dialogue about critical emerging issues surrounding biometric and digital identity technologies. 

Global COVID Vaccination: The Pivotal Role for Technology

Date: March 9, 2021
In this webinar, McKinsey and keynote speakers from GAVI and WHO will be presenting on the strategy for the Global COVID vaccination, the role for interoperable technology underpinned by ubiquitous connectivity, learnings from previous vaccination programmes, and lessons from GovTech.

Internet Identity Workshop #32

Date: April 20-22, 2021
At the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) you'll acquire the real-time pulse of genuinely disruptive technologies that are the foundation of today's important internet movements. Every IIW moves topics, code and projects downfield. Name an identity topic, and it's likely that more substantial discussion and work has been done at IIW than any other conference! 

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