News or events of interest to Governance Stack WG members:

Scott Perry published a blog about 'How Do Humans Trust', (it received 2,700 views on LinkedIn and many positive feedback).

• The next IIW starts on 18 April - see here for more details 

Jacques von Benecke, the CTO of Druk Holdings and Investments (DHI), the company in-charge implementing Bhutan's National Foundational Id or NFID, gave their first ever public presentation, the recording of the talk can be accessed at the Ecosystem Foundry WG link.

Drummond Reed got involved in the project fairly early on and that the switch over to SSI was due to the Drummond's book which was picked by Jacques and his team. He explains that Bhutan skipped federated Ids and went straight to SSI and it was similar to how developing countries skipped over conventional telecom systems and leapfrogged straight into mobile. He mentioned how Bhutan took governance seriously and drafted a National Digital Identity Act to root their project in law. Although the act has not been passed yet, it is in Parliament, and they hope it will be passed in the next session.

Although, the National Digital Identity Act was drafted with the help of outside experts, the act is meant to provide a legal framework for digital identity in the country and ensure governance and regulation of the system. The act follows the Meta model, which designates a governing authority and an administering body, with the administering body responsible for implementing policies and frameworks. The act also includes a public review period and follows many of the recommendations made by Drummond and other SSI experts.

Scott Perry discussed his work with Bhutan on governance, compliance, and accreditation. He mentioned that they have already made decisions on their technical stack and that they need to figure out what rules they want to hold themselves accountable to. Scott notes that the ecosystems of digital trust and identity will require some kind of oversight governance rules and trust assurance schemes, but there are still interoperability issues associated with it. He also said that there is still work to be done on the governance structure, and there are many rules that need to be established.

Neil Thomson was concerned that if the government does not keep a copy of the credential, then how will they check it for expiry or updates in the future. Drummond explained that the credential issuer will have the underlying data, but once issued, the data is given to the holder, and they will not track the usage of that credential. He clarified that the selective disclosure and privacy features are important, and the financial format is the non-credit one that supports not just selective disclosure but also zero-knowledge proof-based disclosure.

Daniel Bachenheimer  discussed the use of Aadhar, a unique 12-digit identification number used in India, primarily to establish uniqueness within the population. He mentioned that Bhutan is also using Aadhar to establish uniqueness and to obtain a core identity credential in a decentralized digital identity wallet. Dan also talked about his recent briefing with Bangalore International Airport Limited, which is using Hyperledger Aries and Aadhar to establish uniqueness in their decentralized digital identity wallet and suggests that this could be an interesting reference.

Drummond Reed and Scott Perry provided takeaways from the Steering Committee Call where Viky Manaila presented on eIDAS-2.

Viky gave a presentation on the state of play of the European digital identity Wallets initiative under eIDAS-2 and the governance around it, specifically trust services. initiative, and one of the primary reasons she is involved is that she sees ToIP as the primary place where the hard problems on interoperability as a whole are being worked. She believes the Trust Spanning Protocol will be essential to interoperability between wallets. The governance of the initiative will largely be in the regulation, with member states and industry-specific frameworks working within that overall ecosystem. The role of trust services is significant, and Viky works for a trust service provider in Italy.

Scott Perry will explore the creation of two task forces: 1) Museum Pass TF and 2) Credential Issuer Governance TF.