POSE: Phase II: Credentialing for Open Source Ecosystems (COSE): Ensuring Testable Interoperability

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People present credentials such as driver’s licenses, permanent resident cards, or degrees during important events in their lives. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for establishing touchless, trustworthy interactions has increased. The pandemic amplified the need to improve society's ability to engage in the same sort of trustworthy interactions we are used to in person, online. The US Federal Government has been funding digital credentialing initiatives in this space through the US Department of Homeland Security's Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) and similar initiatives undertaken by the US Department of Education. While web standards create the possibility of interoperability, they do not ensure demonstrable interoperability. This NSF project is being funded to ensure that the verifiable credentialing ecosystem has the underlying open source infrastructure to facilitate the broader interoperability effort. These efforts enable secure and reliable open technologies to gain adoption in the market over proprietary or closed solutions, lowering the cost of acquisition of these technologies to US Federal Government and society at large. This NSF project builds on ongoing work through the World Wide Web Consortium (such as the Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifiers, Digital Wallet, and Credential Request/Response protocols). The focus is on upgrading a strategically planned set of open-source test libraries, test suites, and an organized interoperability dashboard as foundational infrastructure for decision makers and developers when adopting standards-based digital credentialing approaches. This infrastructure is bolstered by an open compliance program through the Linux Foundation which will both continuously test the open source implementations and generate revenue for continued operation of the open source ecosystem. These efforts will help foster an open-market of digital credentialing software that provides the average citizen with secure, reliable access to their digital credentials. The US Federal Government will benefit from a broader set of vendors in the market and by being able to more accurately determine the level of standards conformance supported by each vendor, which will help combat vendor-lock in, price gouging, and false advertising in the digital credentialing space.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.