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NEWSLETTER
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LFPH SITE
We are now hosted by Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH), an initiative by the Linux Foundation to build, secure, and sustain open-source software to help public health authorities (PHAs) combat COVID and future epidemics.
CNN Business
If you want to travel next year, you may need a vaccine passport

"The Linux Foundation has partnered with the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative, a collective of more than 300 people representing dozens of organizations across five continents..."

Dec 28, 2020
Press Release
Linux Foundation Public Health Expands Technology and Public Health Community, Accelerates the Fight Against COVID-19

"LFPH extends exposure risk notifications playbook to privacy-driven vaccination credentials by hosting the COVID-19 Credentials Initiative."

Dec 16, 2020
NBC News
Paper beats app: Vaccine verification will likely be proven offline. Here's why.

"A network of tech companies called the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative is trying to set standards for vaccine certificates, while..."
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Dec 10, 2020

What is CCI

The COVID Credentials Initiative (“CCI”) is an open global community collaborating to enable the interoperable use of open-standard-based privacy-preserving credentials and other related technologies for public health purposes.
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The community currently focuses on the application of Verifiable Credentials (VCs), an open standard and emerging technology, which could provide a close experience to physical credentials while offering additional benefits, the most important being privacy-preserving and temper-evident.

We joined Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) in Dec 2020 to work together on an open-standard-based open-source approach to COVID credentials. At CCI, we develop specifications (including governance frameworks and other documents), organizing activities and incubating ideas/projects for LFPH and other related communities.

What is a Verifiable Credential

Much like a physical credential (e.g. the cards in one’s wallet), a Verifiable Credential (VC) is an issued assertion containing a set of claims about an individual or organization. The unique value of VCs is that they are digitally native and cryptographically secure, making them a great privacy-preserving alternative to other types of credentials, if used responsibly.

As shown in the illustration, after accepting a VC (e.g. a driver’s license) from a trusted issuer (e.g. a government body), holders can generate a proof with minimum information (e.g. over 18) needed to prove to a verifier (e.g. a liquor store) that they possess VCs with specific characteristics (e.g. age), qualifying them for certain types of access defined by the verifier. And there is no need for direct contact between the issuer and verifier throughout the process. This opens doors to a wide range of solutions to the social and economic challenges incurred as a result of COVID-19.

How to get involved

As a global initiative, a key success factor for CCI is to engage and connect the right person(s) or organization(s) across geographies and disciplines with relevant domain experts to foster collaboration and provide valuable support for developing solutions. Solutions can require expertise in digital identity, healthcare, technology, legal, governance, ethics or policy making domains. Given this aim, we are extending an open invitation for you or your organization to join our global endeavor.

CCI offers free membership to both organizations and individuals . To start participating and contributing, you need to become a member and sign our membership agreeement (review copy and launch event slides).
Signing Instructions:
Contributor (only for individuals): please use a personal email and write "Individual" for Title and "N/A" for Company Name.
Steering Member (only for organizations and covers all employees): Needs to be signed by a person with signing authority.
Become a Member
WORKSTREAM

Use Case Implementation

This workstream identifies privacy-preserving verifiable credentials (VCs) that are most useful to the COVID-19 response and provides a forum and platform for those who are implementing COVID-19 VCs to present their projects/solutions.
In 2020, we have more than 20 COVID-19 credentials projects from small and large companies across the world present at this workstream. In the new year, it will continue to serve as a forum for these projects to come, share and gain feedback from the community.

By joining this workstream, you will be able to get a better understanding of how verifiable credentials are implemented for COVID-19 use cases. If you have a existing project, we want to help connect you with the right resounces and people!
  • Identify local implementations of VC solutions to COVID-19 and provide support by collaborating with other workstreams.
  • Define a set of immediately useful verifiable credentials and the technical requirements for issuing and verifying them.
  • Focus on very specific trust problems unique to the COVID-19 pandemic in different societies and investigate the unintended consequences of their use.
JOIN WORKSTREAM
WORKSTREAM

Rules & Governance

This workstream defines rules and guidelines for general or particular COVID-19 verifiable credential use cases and develops MVP governance frameworks to enable solutions to be deployed at speed.
In 2020, we have developed two versions of CCI Governance Framework, which laid a solid foundation for our current work in vaccine credentials. We hope to work with implementers in 2021 to guide them on contextualizing the CCI framework for vaccine credential use cases.

By joining this workstream, you will be collaborating with a group of world-class experts who are experienced in governance for verifiable credential at all layers of the technology.
  • Design and propose a governance framework that defines what policies must be followed by issuers of these credentials, and what levels of assurance they could provide about the security and privacy of the data.
  • Define what happens if something goes wrong, and set out the safeguards required to prevent abuse by governments, hackers, and others with power.
JOIN WORKSTREAM
FOCUS GROUP

Vaccine Credentials

The purpose of this focus group is to bring together key stakeholders to urgently address the global COVID-19 pandemic by identifying trusted and scalable ways of rolling out vaccine credentials.
We are working to inform and empower Public Health Authorities (PHA) by assisting them in identifying and formulating an approach for the adoption of verifiable credentials to enhance their implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine administration. To accomplish this we will establish jurisdictionally specific subgroups whose target it is to gain traction with PHAs and establish POC or pilot programs within their jurisdictions.

Our first subgroup is the U.S. Subgroup.
  • Identify local implementations of VC solutions to COVID-19 and provide support by collaborating with other workstreams.
  • Define a set of immediately useful verifiable credentials and the technical requirements for issuing and verifying them.
  • Focus on very specific trust problems unique to the COVID-19 pandemic in different societies and investigate the unintended consequences of their use.
JOIN US SUBGROUP

Tools and technology

Join the technical conversations around how to best architect and deploy the VC technology needed for COVID-19 credentials.
Objectives:
  • Publish architecture guidance, tools, and documentation that all participants could use to solve COVID-19 credential use-cases in an aligned, synergistic, and interoperable way.
  • Cooperate on advancing existing verifiable credential-focused open source technology such that a greater number of organizations can more easily make use of it.
JOIN WORKSTREAM

Participating Organizations

We are setting up a new process to onboard participating organizations and individuals, so this section is temporarily under maintenance and will be back up when we kick off the new process. In the meantime, we welcome you to start participating in the community work through the above mentioned ways. If you are interested in becoming a member of our host organization, please visit LFPH membership page.

Subscribe to CCI's Biweekly Community Newsletter

(see past editions here)

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News & Thought Leadership

Stay tuned for upcoming posts about our work, the projects we support, and the progress we are making in the fight against COVID-19.
CCI launched the free membership program

Here is our why and how we joined LFPH with the invitation letter we received from Brian Benhlendorf, the newly appointed Executive Director of LFPH.

Carrying Your COVID-19 Credentials in a Physical “Wallet”

Tangem, a CCI participating company extended the use of their NFC-enabled cards from storing digital currencies to verifiable credentials.

CCI Released a Paper on Different Flavors of Verifiable Credentials

A case study on the key challenges that arose in CCI's efforts to responsibly use new privacy-preserving technologies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

GO to OUR BLOG

Contact us

If you are interested in joining or supporting the initiative, writing about the progress being made, or connecting with us, fill out the information below and we will get back to you.
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