Open Identity Exchange urges organisations to leverage this guide and create frameworks and Smart Digital IDs that will ensure future global digital ID success.

UK, 04 February 2022 - The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) has launched its definitive guide for governments and major stakeholders around the world to develop Smart Digital IDs and Trust Frameworks that will govern digital ID eco-systems effectively and guarantee trusted identity transactions internationally.

The OIX Guide to Trust Frameworks for Smart Digital ID is a clear, practical and essential view on how Trust Frameworks should be developed and evolved, in order to ensure they meets the needs of all the parties involved and provide a solid base for trust to be established between those parties and across all sectors and borders.

It is aimed at global organisations that need to define the rules for trust ie framework creators, existing framework operators, those who will create Smart Digital IDs, global ID influencers and those organisations that will come to rely heavily on digital ID.

The new OIX guide is a culmination of research, papers and guides undertaken by the OIX over the last 10 years to address key challenges related to ensuring the success of digital ID, including how it is governed. It builds on a beta version OIX released in 2020 and incorporates the findings from evaluation and comparison of existing Trust Frameworks around the world, the need to Digital ID to be Smart, as well as input from OIX members and stakeholders.

OIX has identified 30 salient components, including roles, responsibilities, principles, policies, procedures and standards, that need to be considered for Trust Frameworks to be successful.

There are three key concepts highlighted by the guide as missing from existing Trust Frameworks and vital to future digital ID success.

1. The consumer must be at the front centre and end of the process - A Digital ID must work for both the user and for the organisations who want to get trusted information from that user. It must be linked to user centricity through a set of aligned principles, outlined in the guide.
2. Digital ID needs to be Smart - It must guide the user through the often complex process and rules that organisations must follow to proof them: gathering credentials, allowing information to be derived from those credentials, then consent to sharing of that information in a data minimised way. It must do all that without requiring the user to understand the complex rules. Trust Frameworks will be vital in facilitating this.
3. Compatibility and interoperability must form an essential element to ensure future global success - Interoperability is a global challenge and could become a major barrier to digital ID adoption. OIX is exploring the need for a ‘meta’ framework that will enable translation between one framework and another so that interoperability across borders is enabled.

Nick Mothershaw, Chief Identity Strategist at OIX, said: “OIX is passionate about the concept of reusable digital ID and its value for people, governments and economies. It needs to happen, it needs to be ‘smart’ and Trusts Frameworks will play a vital role, but we must resolve the complexity of the Trust Framework layer in order to make it happen.

“Working with industries and governments across the globe, we recognised the need for a definitive guide. Our new guide fully embraces all the key concepts and approaches being discussed, such as smart wallets and the self-sovereign ID approach, whilst remaining technology agnostic. Moreover, it is a comprehensive and practical guide that could mean the difference between a framework that meets all its parties’ needs or one that fails.”

The guide can be accessed HERE.

ENDS

For more information, please contact Serj Hallam 

E: communications@openidentityexchange.org 

T: +44 (0) 7789 372771

About The Open Identity Exchange (OIX)

The OIX is a non-profit trade organisation on a mission to create a world where everyone can prove their identity and eligibility anywhere through a universally trusted ID. OIX is a community for all those involved in the ID sector to connect and collaborate, developing the guidance needed for inter-operable, trusted identities. Through our definition of, and education on Trust Frameworks, we create the rules, tools and confidence that will allow every individual a trusted, universally accepted, identity.