SIDI Hub brings together digital ID orgs to tackle global interoperability

A new joint initiative among 17 open standards groups working in digital identity aims to address the challenge of creating a digital ID that is interoperable across borders, by turning the current fragmented approach into something more universal.

A release says the Sustainable and Interoperable Digital Identity (SIDI) Hub will work to accelerate and define what is needed for the development of cross-border interoperability, which it considers crucial for a fair and inclusive digital society. It is led by the Secure Identity Alliance (SIA), along with GlobalPlatform and OpenID, and membership includes DIF, the Trust Over IP Foundation, the FIDO Alliance, the Kantara Initiative, the Open Wallet Foundation, OIX and the Digital ID & Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC), among other government and non-profit organizations.

“In the same way payments can be made across borders, we need mechanisms in place to assure people that they’ll be able to prove their identity online and offline, whenever needed,” says an unnamed representative from SIDI Hub’s membership.

The group purports to do this by building on and coordinating among digital ID schemes already in place and refining a governance structure for digital identity credentials. Per a release from Open ID, a road map developed at the inaugural SIDI Hub summit at the November 2023 Trustech conference in Paris identifies four work streams: identifying “champion use cases” for cross-border interoperability; defining minimum interoperability requirements for priority use cases; mapping trust frameworks across jurisdictions; and defining metrics of success.

The SIDI Hub summit brought together representatives from government and non-profits working in the biometrics and digital ID space for a hands-on workshop. The U.S., UK, Japan, Australia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Brazil were among those to send experts. The summit will serve as a model for future developmental events, with 92 percent of its attendees agreeing in an exit poll that the work must continue in 2024. A full report from the event is available here.

SIDI also offers a digital ID recommended reading list of resources on its website.

Article Topics

DIACC  |  digital identity  |  FIDO Alliance  |  Kantara  |  Open Identity Exchange (OIX)  |  OpenID Foundation  |  OpenWallet Foundation (OWF)  |  Secure Identity Alliance  |  Sustainable and Interoperable Digital Identity (SIDI) Hub