Mattr introduces VICAL Viewer to ease mDL adoption for relying parties

The trust registries that underpin the interoperability of digital IDs based on the ISO/IEC 18013-5 standard are easier to use if the relying party knows what credentials they can accept. Mattr has introduced a VICAL Viewer to render the VICAL (Verified Issuer Certificate Authority List) easily readable by humans, so their organizations can accept mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) from any jurisdiction, so long as it complies with the standard.

Mattr CPO Luke McIntyre talks about the VICAL project as a tool for bridging the gap between the potential benefits of digital driver’s licenses and similar credentials and the practical convenience needed for consumer-led adoption.

The VICAL is the mechanism of the national Digital Trust Service (DTS) Mattr has been collaborating with Austroads on, as defined in the ISO standard.

“Trust or master lists have existed for quite a while,” Austroads National Harmonisation Lead Christopher Goh points out in comments emailed to Biometric Update. “The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) provides one to allow the authentication of electronic machine readable travel documents. The ICAO Master List and ICAO Health Master List  have been operational in international airports for more than a decade. The public key from these trust lists, when paired with a customer or user keys allows verifiers/relying parties to have confidence the claims and attributes made within a digital credential was asserted by a trusted issuing authority.”

As such, it combines zero-trust with authoritative assurance, says McInyre. The ICAO PKD is analogous to the VICAL as the “the most successful global example of digital trust service cross-jurisdiction,” despite significant differences, mostly related to the limited scope of ICAO-defined use cases for passports at border crossings.

In the U.S., the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators(AAMVA) has achieved some momentum for the standard in the U.S., McIntyre says, and Mattr is also part of NIST’s collaborative mDL implementation initiative.

“AAMVA has adopted the VICAL as a core component of its Digital Trust Service and it is used by the Transportation Security Administration under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to enable mobile driver licences (mDLs) as a pseudo domestic passport for air travel,” Goh adds.

The road to adoption

The DTS all about “exchanging trust information, as opposed to exchanging PII or attributes, which I think is the big differential between what’s gone on before with all these federated systems and exchanging attributes and the holistic transaction taking place through these systems,” McInyre says. “Versus the trust services we’re now seeing in terms of the DTS and the VICAL type of approach, which is about exchanging trust information. So, sharing keys, sharing information that’s used to verify against the VICAL.”

Along with part 7 of the ISO standard, which addresses online identity verification, the VICAL stands as a “key enabler” for relying party adoption, according to McIntyre. It allows attribute and identity verification to scale for different use cases, like age checks, by automating checks against authoritative documents from other jurisdictions that would otherwise be impractical.

Adopting the same trust list standards enables mutual recognition or reciprocity, Goh explains, between Australia and the U.S., and potentially Europe and other regions in the future.

“Austroads will shortly publish its pre-production VICAL and will use it to host national and international credential public keys as part of the 10th International Standard Interop Party hosted in Sydney from 3 to 5 October.”

This means that when Americans come to visit Brisbane for the 2032 Olympics, they will be able to use their mDL at pubs and other businesses.

“I think what these enable are really broad sets of utility without having to have a fixed device with an NFC reader that reads an e-passport and does a biometric and with a cost of however many thousands of dollars,” McIntyre says.

Article Topics

AAMVA Digital Trust Service  |  Austroads  |  digital ID  |  Digital Trust Service (DTS)  |  interoperability  |  ISO 18013-5  |  ISO 18013-7  |  ISO standards  |  Mattr  |  mDL (mobile driver's license)  |  VICAL (Verified Issuer Certificate Authority List)