Image sourced from Chat GPT

The OpenID Foundation is proud to co-host two Hackathons with the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in support of their Mobile Drivers License (mDL) pilot.

What is the Project?

In 2021, the California legislature authorized the DMV to start an mDL pilot, and since the launch in August 2023, more than 500K Californians now have access to digital versions of their driving license or ID (“mDLs”).  The California pilot will encompass up to 1.5M Californian residents holding a California Driving License or ID Card. 

The OpenID Foundation is delighted that the California DMV is not only a member of the OpenID Foundation, but that the CA DMV selected OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance and OpenID for Verifiable Presentation as a part of their architecture.  Co-hosting the California Hackathon was a natural progression of this relationship to ensure the community had support building out use cases and demonstrating the value of digital identity credentials as a public good. 

The first use cases for acceptance of California mDLs have included TSA security checks, proof of age at convenience stores, online login to CA DMV websites, and the ability to present mDLs “peer to peer” between mobile devices. The Hackathons are a mechanism to help a wider set of relying parties to experiment with the technology with the help of community subject matter experts. 

The Hackathons will focus on the capabilities currently enabled by the CA DMV Wallet. However Relying Parties that choose to participate will benefit from market momentum, since Governor Gavin Newsom’s August announcement that California will enable both Apple and Google Wallets, with Google Wallet launched August 23rd.  

Here are a few of the reasons why the OpenID Foundation applauds the CA DMV’s community-based approach.

Verifier Benefits

At the OpenID Foundation, we are committed to supporting ecosystem growth. Any ecosystem struggles with the “Cold Start Problem,” which refers to the struggle to gain traction on all sides of the market (i.e., buyers, sellers, users). In the case of emerging identity standards, the more difficult side of the marketplace tends to be the “Verifiers” - those businesses and entities that need to consume and verify identity information for any number of use cases (often referred to as “Relying Parties”). The Hackathons are laser focused on this problem - actively engaging Verifiers to drive adoption.

You can catch OpenID Foundation Member and Chair of the Digital Credentials Protocol Working Group, Kristina Yasuda, making this argument (brilliantly, we might add) in her keynote at the European Identity and Cloud Conference.

Simplified Implementation & Optionality

In order to support a wide range of Verifier use cases, the CA DMV is issuing mDLs in two standardized formats: one that follows the ISO 18013-5 standard and the other following the W3C Verifiable Credentials v1.1 specification. This “Dual Issuance” is invisible to the user but enables Verifiers to, well, verify to the specification that suits their use case. It’s a smart move that enables an ecosystem to grow as the constellation of standards develops. You can find more for developers looking at the CA DMV approach on their website.

Wide Range of Participant Types & Use Cases

Applications have already come in from a wide range of entities and use cases. We have received applications from small and large entities, and a wide range of industry and government verticals and use cases.  

There are two upcoming Hackathons:

• October 1 (Mountain View) will focus on private entities
• November 1 (Sacramento) will engage government Verifiers in California, the US Government, and (potentially) other governments

Applications for the private sector event on October 1st are now closed, but stay tuned for more news on Participants and their use cases! Applications for the government event are still open, and will be accepted through September 11th.   

Public-Private Collaboration

Another reason we are proud and excited to be a part of this project with the CA DMV is the example it sets for public-private engagement and community-wide support. Some participants will be experts and others will be completely new to the technology. By creating a safe, vendor-neutral environment, government and private entities alike can collaborate more easily with global experts such as non-profits, standards bodies, and trade associations. They can efficiently gather the information needed to build a minimum viable product, demonstrate its value, and share those insights with executives, partners, officials, compliance experts, and any of their stakeholders. These are tangible steps towards a production implementation.  

The OpenID Community

Finally, this initiative is great for the OpenID Foundation community. Hackathon participants have not been announced as yet, but rest assured that members of our community are heavily represented. The strong representation of OIDF members is in part because of the OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance and OpenID for Verifiable Presentation specs in the California architecture, an architecture that also closely mirrors the European Commission’s Architectural Reference Framework.   Events like these Hackathons, also help ensure that OpenID Foundation workgroups and other standards bodies benefit  from implementors rolling out the specifications, and sometimes providing feedback to help mature the underlying specifications. 

The OpenID Foundation is just one entity proud to offer its support to the Hackathon participants, to help them achieve success with the use case(s) that matter to them.  We hope to see these Hackathons play a meaningful role to help early adopters cross the chasm and accelerate their speed to market.  We would like to thank the CA DMV for inviting the OIDF and other community experts into this process, helping to improve our standards, and help mature the entire ecosystem along the way! 

About the OpenID Foundation