Primer on digital identity wallets from DHS breaks down W3C standards

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is forging ahead with its plan for digital credentials, this week publishing a feature article that offers an overview of digital identity and digital wallet systems.

“The Question of Who You Are” follows in the wake of the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)’s announcement that it has awarded contracts to six firms to develop digital credential wallets based on open standards through its Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP). It explains how S&T and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) have come together to issue mobile digital identity credentials such as green cards, using free, open internet standards.

Together, S&T and USCIS’s Office of Intake and Document Production (OIDP), which designs and secures vendors to produce immigration documents, decided to use two open global standards – the Verifiable Credentials Data Model (VCDM) and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs).
“Created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a global standards development organization, with the support of S&T, USCIS, and many other like-minded partners, these standards describe how a secure, privacy respecting digital credentialing process can be implemented,” the article says.