There are currently a few initiatives around the world that want to develop digital vaccination records and bring them to market. However, the past has shown that even established solutions such as the international vaccination certificate (“Yellow Card”) cannot be digitized so easily. The current OwnYourData research project IDunion – funded by the “IKT der Zukunft” program from the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology in Austria (FFG Projekt 887052) – aims to adapt the previously NGI DAPSI project “Digital Immunization Passport” for the Austrian market and to develop a functional prototype in order to examine the business, legal, technical and social aspects of such a solution and to discuss them in a broader public.
Technically, the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) network offers interesting opportunities for citizens, authorities, and companies, a new form of trusting cooperation. Through a cooperation with the IDunion SSI network in Germany, we take the opportunity to test this technology specifically for the administration of COVID-19 test certificates from individuals in Austria.
Legally, it is necessary to define, document and enforce any data exchange through clearly defined terms of use. We will continue to expand the existing concept of usage policies and use semantic technologies to show that this enables an automated and GDPR-compliant implementation of consent management.
The big economic challenge is how health authorities and SMEs can access personal data in order to benefit from the potential of personal data just like internet companies. In this project, we present a technology platform that offers small and medium-sized businesses a simple approach to the use of SSI networks for managing digital certificates and enable them to exchange data between citizens and authorities / companies.
The social aspect of this solution is based on the human-centered approach of handling personal data. In this project, the citizen is the point of integration of all health-related data streams and has the option of managing COVID-19 test certificates either in a digital wallet on the smartphone, or also operating a personal data store in order to manage their own personal data in a self-sovereign way.
This project offers the opportunity to try out new architectures and technologies for an acute social and health issue. It is not a project that will make a solution immediately available, but it shows fundamental possibilities for a new approach to human-centered technology. This research project lays the foundation for developing the most secure and most modern health passport for Austria.
If you have any questions about the project or about OwnYourData in general don’t hesitate to contact us as support@ownyourdata.eu.
