2021-06-22 Governance Framework Drafting Group Meeting Notes

Owned by Todd Gehrke
Last updated: Jun 22, 2021
4 min read

Attendees

  • Co-Leads: Drummond Reed
  • ID2020 PM: Todd Gehrke

Participants: 

  • Jacques Bikoundou  
  • Savita Farooqui  

Agenda Items

Welcome and Linux Foundation antitrust policy

  • Introductions
  • Review of comments from the public review
  • Decision about revisions
  • Updates to the Glossary
  • GHP WG Meeting Thursday 24 June 07:00-8:00 PT / 14:00-15:00 UTC
  • THANK YOU to all contributors

Presentations - 2021-06-22 Governance Framework DG Meeting.pdf


Notes



General Feedback

Trevor Butterworth - Indicio

We have significant concerns about the governance section of the blueprint and its potential negative impact on the adoption of otherwise GHP-compliant credentials.

Inviting governments or government bodies to become members of the GHPC to create and administer an Ecosystem Governance Framework (EGF) which will further develop, audit, certify, or enforce GHP requirements does not, in our view, reflect the way countries and blocs manage bilateral arrangements. These arrangements are local, particular, and both parties want to control the process. Moreover, in our experience implementing a pilot travel and health app, the government we dealt with explicitly wanted to be in control of the governance process.

We fear that any government looking at the draft governance outline in the Good Health Pass Blueprint will react in a similar fashion, and see either a loss of sovereignty, or a process that does not reflect working reality and the need for flexibility, or both. What if no government joins? How many government members are sufficient to establish a minimal viable EGF? How long will the recruitment of this number of members take?

The EGF also raises a more basic question as to why a new foundation to run global governance rather than collaborate with an established NGO or international association where countries are already members? The GHPC EGF is a novel concept; it lacks the compulsion of being familiar, tested, and understood; the time to stand up looks as if it could take years rather than weeks; the resources needed to build it out and sustain its operations would appear to be substantial yet their source appears to be undefined. Are members meant to pay to support the foundation? Will they? Finally, we wonder whether the considerable structural and operational complexity of the EGF will serve as an inducement to governments to join and support it.

In light of these concerns, we see the absence of an “MVP” governance to help Governments immediately implement a “good enough health pass” as a missed opportunity. Governments need to know the best standards, protocols, and practices they should follow now. Governments should not have to join anything. Instead, we should make it easy for them to make the best possible decisions given current circumstances and to choose a path toward compliance. That would create the value proposition whereby they would be willing to join a governance organization.

A more substantive governance framework can evolve from the collective experience of implementation. An advisory board of external organizations and government bodies can provide guidance and facilitate agile implementation. And once we start to see results—working health passes that conform to GHP specifications—then the need for a global foundation and auditing can be assessed and addressed.

Drummond Reed - Evernym

Based on feedback during the public review period, the proposed process for developing an independent governing authority for the general GHP Ecosystem Governance Framework now seems too complex and heavyweight. The Drafting Group should consider a much faster, lighter-weight process for establishing a general EGF governing authority who can develop and maintain a self-asserted conformance program on behalf of the GHP community for the period in which COVID-19 health credentials and passes are required.

Karl Kneis - IdRamp

It may be worth considering this feedback on scalability and interop from Kuppingercole
https://www.kuppingercole.com/blog/bailey/blueprint-for-a-digital-health-pass 

“In terms of scalability, the GHPC explains that a decentralized digital health pass could reduce stress and traffic between healthcare information systems by shifting the work of issuing and verifying credentials to other parties, but the scalability of the decentralized ecosystems is not addressed. The scalability of decentralized ecosystems is still a relatively open question, with widely varying results based on the particular public/private/consortium blockchain arrangement used.”

“GHPC may also have limited the potential for its own adoption by relying on a decentralized architecture only, instead of building interoperability for health passes already in circulation. “

The following section was added to the document to address feedback given by Trevor Butterworth from Indicio:

7.3.5 The Short Term: Self-Asserted Conformance of Specific Governance Frameworks

The COVID-19 landscape continues to evolve very quickly. Different countries are constantly adjusting their calculus between restrictions and reopening, carefully weighing tradeoffs between public health concerns and economic needs. To maximize the immediate relevance of GHP governance recommendations in this rapidly evolving landscape, we recommend the following first steps:

1. The Good Health Pass Collaborative (GHPC) SHOULD serve as the short-term Governing Authority for the GHP EGF.

2. The GHPC SHOULD work as quickly as possible to develop and publish an GHP EGF V1 that defines a simple, straightforward process by which governing authorities for specific EGFs can publicly self-assert conformance with the GHP EGF V1.

3. Each participating specific EGF governing authority—whether a government, an industry body, or health pass solution provider—SHOULD develop and publish its own specific EGF as soon as possible—ideally within 30 days of the publication of the GHP Interoperability Blueprint V1.

4. Each participating specific EGF SHOULD follow the self-assertion process defined in the GHP EGF V1 to self-assert conformance.

The drafting group discussed comments on health systems and scaleability of DLT and decided that they didn't warrant changes to the recommendations

  • Next steps

       

Action Items

  1. Todd to accept edits and provide a clean document to the GHPC steering committee