NIST takes next step in studying feasibility of mobile driver’s licenses
The National Institute of Standards and Technology on Tuesday asked organizations with expertise in digital identity services to help the agency with its effort to encourage the development of mobile identification cards, including mobile driver’s licenses.
The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence — a cybersecurity-focused public-private collaboration housed within NIST — is running the Accelerate Adoption of Digital Identities on Mobile Devices initiative. The goal is to address some of the key questions and challenges raised by this emerging technology, including potential privacy risks and currently limited standards for verifying digital identities.
“Digital identities are supplementing and supplanting traditional physical identity cards. Customers, consumers of services, law enforcement, vendors, suppliers, businesses, and health care entities may require a method of verifying a person via a mobile device,” reads a notice posted to the Federal Register. “If these digital identities on mobile devices are to meet the demands of varying use cases, there must be technological interoperability, security, and cross-domain trust.’
Back in March, NIST released a draft description of the project. Now, the agency is hoping to develop “a reference architecture” for developing these tools — while also keeping security, equity, adoptability, and privacy front of mind.
In the notice published on Tuesday, NIST said that, through the project, it hopes to develop a demonstration of mobile driver’s licenses, a practice guide for implementing mobile driver’s license technology, and a tool for evaluating mobile driver’s license implementations’ compliance with established standards.
The agency said collaboration on the project will begin as soon as it has enough interest from approved organizations to begin, but not earlier than late September.
