23K/ Paper: Your best friend for SSI adoption

“Physical Credential”:Your best friend for SSI adoption

Thursday 23K

Convener: Philippe Page @The Human Colossus Foundation

Notes-taker(s): --

Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:

Trust , Institutional trust, physical/digital credential,

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps: 

This session was called to highlight the importance of existing physical credentials when developing SSI Solutions.

We first went through the fundamentals of “credentials” before moving on to describe how a system involving digital credentials can overcome some of its limitations and mitigates certain risks by introducing a physical credential.

We have illustrated the logic through an existing project of Digital Immunization Passport where digital limitations are overcome through a physical dedicated credential.

Notes of the sessions are below.

Building on insight from IIW31 sessions

• Overlap of authentication and consent

  • Active/Passive Identifiers - OCA

• Human interaction in a Dynamic Data Economy

  • TDA - Trusted Digital Assistant

• Physical - Digital Duality@work

  • Birth Attestation

These 3 sessions highlight the opportunities of SSI but also its limitations. In each cases the awareness of the existing physical trust framework helps defining how the digital solution should be designed. What is often overlooked is that a number of processes, particularly if they related to trust, rely on an underlying trust framework. The point of this session is to discuss when this is actually the main driver for adoption.

Physical & Digital

We know the

• strengths & weaknesses of physical credentials

• benefits of digital credentials

We (believe) we know

• limitations of digital credentials

• risks of digital credentials

But we tend to forget that centuries of evolution have evolved into the current society “trust” framework. “Limitations” are a red flag for looking for physical alternatives (e.g. inclusiveness) and certain “Risk” can be mitigated also through physical alternatives.

Start with fundamentals

• Human always required trust

• Information always had value

All societies have developed mechanisms to secure value and develop trust. These mechanisms evolved with technology. Reference made to the “SSI Primer” explaining SSI through this historical angle. The digital technological improvement

• Global reach

• High level of flexibility

• Low cost

• …...

But we still need

• Agreed Trust Framework

• Transport Information

• Access for all members of the community (i.e. not only the ones that are running the latest version of an OS !)

Then the session moved to show the benefit of a physical credential in the use case of the Digital Immunization Passport. Some slides presented during the sessions are below: