ID PASS Holds Key to Essential Services for World’s Most Vulnerable

‘Self-sovereign’ identity could open doors to healthcare, banking, education and justice for millions

Identity plays an integral role in how we access a variety of services in this increasingly digital world, according to the team at ID PASS. And yet, their research indicates that one in seven people worldwide lack documentation that would otherwise unlock access to basic services vital to their welfare.

ID PASS is a sustainable open-source digital identity solution designed for governments and humanitarian organizations. “It enables them to issue a decentralized, private, trusted and recoverable form of identity to all population subsets, including citizens, residents and refugees,” says Jeremi Joslin, CTO of Newlogic, a software company that, he explains, has been involved in the humanitarian sector for years.

Joslin and his three Newlogic co-founders Jeremy Bethmont, Loic Bistuer and Greg Martel attended June’s EOS Global Hackathon event in Hong Kong. There they met Paul Wehner and Raman Shalupau, with whom they joined forces to work on ID PASS. An attempt to offer levels of privacy and security missing in current identity systems, it took top prize at the event.

“We wanted to find a solution,” says Joslin. “And after investigating various standards, we settled on one that is based on work done by the RWOT (Rebooting the Web-of-Trust) group around self-sovereign identity and implementing it for the most vulnerable groups of people.”

So where does blockchain come into the equation? “While the lack of an identity document may hinder access to essential services, having an identity document can also constitute a threat to an individual’s privacy and safety,” he notes. “So we wanted to create a solution that does not rely on a shared central database storing all the data. And to achieve that, we needed a blockchain to act as a decentralized public key infrastructure anchoring a person’s identity, and a smart card to store the data.”

Now nearing beta stage with the venture, the team has since expanded to include a project manager, business analyst, UX designer and three software developers. Current engagements include familiarizing humanitarian agencies and governments with blockchain, and demonstrating how it can help them achieve strategic objectives. They will also be releasing more open-source code in the near future.

Thanking the EOS community and Block.one for their support, Joslin also divulges that the team are “talking with other EOSIO projects about potential integration, which the standardized account system can facilitate.” He adds that they are engaging with multiple organizations to carry out a pilot project in the first quarter of 2019.

“With its account system, focus on performance and ability to run as a consortium blockchain, EOSIO’s blockchain architecture fits the objective we’re trying to achieve.”

That objective — of providing robust documentation of identity for all, including the world’s poorest and most vulnerable — is one that ID PASS believes could affect millions of lives for the better.

For more information, visit https://idpass.org

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-Developer Relations team

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