Promotion of international standardization of ‘Digital Vaccine Passport’ in Korea
While ICT and information protection experts from all over the world plan to discuss standardization of digital vaccine passports, Korean public institutions such as Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) are working on mobile-based Covid-19 vaccination proof apps that include one solution that should be released from the second half of the year.
Discussions on standardization will be held through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) workshop on digital vaccination certificates that can be used for global pandemic situations; a workshop aiming at discussing technical issues and interlinked governance issues regarding international vaccination certificates. In particular, participants will examine the current situation, define a governance to determine what work is needed for mutual recognition between countries, and discuss three standardization items necessary for the interconnection of vaccination certificates as requested by the World Health Organization (WHO) and SG17, the ITU-T Study Group 17 that coordinates security-related work across all ITU-T Study Groups.
The ITU is the United Nations (UN) specialized agency for information and communication technologies. It gathers ICT regulators, academic organizations, and about 700 member companies. The ITU consists of three sectors: ITU-R, ITU-T and ITU-D. In this article, we will focus on the ITU-T, which is the ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) conducting research on telecommunication technologies and establishing recommendations for international standards. Recommendations made by ITU-T are likely to be adopted as national standards for each member country and used internationally.
The organizers of the above-mentioned ITU workshop plan to look at the Korean efforts on vaccination app and the European Union’s ‘Digital Green Certificate’ and other cases of technology operating in other countries. Initially, it was considered whether to deal with all disease-related vaccination methods, but organizers eventually decided to focus the discussion on the certificate related to Covid-19 in the judgment that it is urgent to deal with the pandemic situation.
The ITU workshop on digital vaccination certificate, which will be held online on August 11, will gather worldwide experts who will discuss ways to help overcome the global covid-19 crisis by standardizing digital vaccine passports that can resolve restrictions on travels between countries and regions. With this aim, the workshop will examine technologies related to digital vaccination certification and embody methods for mutual recognition between countries.
There are two main scenarios for making digital vaccines passports available internationally. One is to completely unify all information and trust structures of digital certificates into one, which requires the world to introduce the same technical specification or specifications that enable interoperability between certificates. The second method is the recognition of various trust schemes for verifying digital certificate information, which can be verified with trust systems tailored to each country’s circumstances, but may be limited in terms of universal mutual recognition.
In terms of technology, there are no details yet on what kind of technologies will be applied or promoted in the workshop. That said, according to the chairman of the ITU-T Study Group 17, there are some discussions pointing DID technology as one of the technologies that could be considered in the effort.
In Korea, a first ‘digital vaccine passport’ that proves the history of COVID-19 vaccination and negative test results when traveling abroad will be released by the end of July 2021. With KDCA opening vaccination data to private companies that comply with strict security guidelines, it is expected that further digital vaccine passports will be developed in the near term. With the organization of the ITU workshop, it will be interesting to see whether the Covid-19 digital vaccination certificate technology and operation methods introduced by Korean institutions such as the KDCA will be used as a model for international standards for digital vaccine passports.
Our view: ‘Digital Vaccine Passport’ is currently the hot topic as its application could reopen the world. A lot of great initiatives are being taken worldwide to adopt it but they often have a limited applications as its recognition does not cross borders. The ‘Digital Green Certificate’ offers an interesting case study since it will extend the application of one digital vaccination passport to a variety of countries. That said, if we want to look for a broader adoption, we need to look for global standardization of these digital vaccination passport’s underlying technologies. In this regard, the ITU could provide a great support to ease the adoption and interoperability of related technologies over the world.
Such efforts are also made by the ADI Association, which is striving to develop interoperability, trust and accountability between isolated identity systems. In particular, if Decentralized Identifier (DID) related technologies are promoted for the standardization efforts, ADIA specifications could support technical interoperability between different DID-based Digital Vaccine Passport. Learn more about ADI Association by clicking here.
