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US Digital Immigration Credentials Overview

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Anil John
Anil John

USCIS Presentation at the 2022 Fed ID Conference on Using W3C VCs and W3C DIDs for Digital Immigration Credentials

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U.S. Digital Immigration Credentials Encouraging Innovation, Ensuring Diversity, and Enabling a Global Ecosystem Jared Goodwin, Division Chief U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Management Directorate, Office of Intake and Document Production
Why Digital Credentials? • USCIS issues high-value, authoritative credentials to immigrants and non-immigrants in the United States • This is where the world is going, where the agency is going, and what our Customers expect when it comes to ease and convenience • Ability to issue, renew, extend and revoke digital credentials in a standardized manner • Complements our physical credentials; does not replace them
Why Now? • Existence and maturity of open, global standards that enable our Customers to have visibility into, and control of their interactions • As a benefit-granting agency with global reach, using open standards to ensure broad acceptability and usage of our credentials is critical for USCIS • We now have multi-year experience and expertise in contributing to, supporting and learning from the open, global standards development and implementations • Global interoperability of solutions is an important consideration to prevent technology/vendor lock-in
USCIS Implementation Priorities • Not a requirement; a choice! • Starting with the digital Permanent Resident Card (PRC), immigrants will be invited to request a digital version when they receive the physical credential • Immigrant can continue to conduct all Government transactions with their existing physical credential • Eliminate “phone home” architecture/technology/implementations • Eliminate “back-channel” interactions between verifiers of the credential and the issuer (USCIS) which are not visible to the credential holder • Support for selective disclosure capabilities to provide the holder of the credential granular control over what information they can share and when • Encourage and support a plurality of independent, interoperable, standards-based implementations to counter vendor/technology lock-in, and mitigate perverse incentives that accrue market power to entities that can result in a gatekeeper functionality between the Government and its customers
USCIS Implementation Standards W3C Verifiable Credentials & W3C Decentralized Identifiers 5 W3C VC/DID architecture is an evolution of existing models that: • Enables an individual to have control over their data • Addresses the “phone home” problem • Provides selective disclosure capability with informed consent • Solves the issue where an identifier serves as both entity identifier and an authenticator (i.e. Social Security Number) • Supports global resolution of an Issuer’s identifier to its public key(s) & their retrieval • Encourages an open ecosystem with multiple implementations to foster competition • The W3C VC Data Model Standard identifies an abstract component called a “Verifiable Data Registry” which in our implementation we refer to as a “Metadata (or Public Key) Resolver” • USCIS supports and require a Bring-Your-Own-W3C-DID-in-Digital-Wallet in our implementation
US Immigration Credential Ecosystem 6 • Interactions between the Immigrant and Government • Interactions between the Immigrant and the private sector
7 https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/ https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/ https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/ https://w3c-ccg.github.io/citizenship-vocab/ Online or In-Person Presentation Digital Permanent Resident Card
Global Support for W3C VCs & DIDs 8 Global acceptance and usage of W3C VC and DID Standards … • by Governments (Canada, EU, Germany, New Zealand etc.) and • the Private Sector (Microsoft, NACS, Square/Block etc.) of … … interoperability standards, technologies and approaches funded, refined, used and championed by DHS over the last 7+ years
9 https://canada-ca.github.io/ucvdcc/ US-Canada Collaboration USCIS & CBP <> TBS & ISED Opportunity to work together on: • Approaches to accept digital credentials issued by other Countries for benefits adjudicated by USCIS • Open and common security, privacy and interoperability baselines for digital wallets • Enabling wallet choice and selection capabilities for individuals • Enabling cryptographic agility in verifiable credential solutions
Deliveringan OperationalCapability Competitive Global Solicitation No .gov system + synthetic data in Phases 1-3 .gov system + operational data in Phases 4-5 Phase 1 •Delivery of a Minimum Viable Product Phase 2 •Full Capability Build Phase 3 •Red Team Testing Phase 4 •Operational Validation Phase 5 •Initial Operating Capability
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US Digital Immigration Credentials Overview

  • 1. U.S. Digital Immigration Credentials Encouraging Innovation, Ensuring Diversity, and Enabling a Global Ecosystem Jared Goodwin, Division Chief U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Management Directorate, Office of Intake and Document Production
  • 2. Why Digital Credentials? • USCIS issues high-value, authoritative credentials to immigrants and non-immigrants in the United States • This is where the world is going, where the agency is going, and what our Customers expect when it comes to ease and convenience • Ability to issue, renew, extend and revoke digital credentials in a standardized manner • Complements our physical credentials; does not replace them
  • 3. Why Now? • Existence and maturity of open, global standards that enable our Customers to have visibility into, and control of their interactions • As a benefit-granting agency with global reach, using open standards to ensure broad acceptability and usage of our credentials is critical for USCIS • We now have multi-year experience and expertise in contributing to, supporting and learning from the open, global standards development and implementations • Global interoperability of solutions is an important consideration to prevent technology/vendor lock-in
  • 4. USCIS Implementation Priorities • Not a requirement; a choice! • Starting with the digital Permanent Resident Card (PRC), immigrants will be invited to request a digital version when they receive the physical credential • Immigrant can continue to conduct all Government transactions with their existing physical credential • Eliminate “phone home” architecture/technology/implementations • Eliminate “back-channel” interactions between verifiers of the credential and the issuer (USCIS) which are not visible to the credential holder • Support for selective disclosure capabilities to provide the holder of the credential granular control over what information they can share and when • Encourage and support a plurality of independent, interoperable, standards-based implementations to counter vendor/technology lock-in, and mitigate perverse incentives that accrue market power to entities that can result in a gatekeeper functionality between the Government and its customers
  • 5. USCIS Implementation Standards W3C Verifiable Credentials & W3C Decentralized Identifiers 5 W3C VC/DID architecture is an evolution of existing models that: • Enables an individual to have control over their data • Addresses the “phone home” problem • Provides selective disclosure capability with informed consent • Solves the issue where an identifier serves as both entity identifier and an authenticator (i.e. Social Security Number) • Supports global resolution of an Issuer’s identifier to its public key(s) & their retrieval • Encourages an open ecosystem with multiple implementations to foster competition • The W3C VC Data Model Standard identifies an abstract component called a “Verifiable Data Registry” which in our implementation we refer to as a “Metadata (or Public Key) Resolver” • USCIS supports and require a Bring-Your-Own-W3C-DID-in-Digital-Wallet in our implementation
  • 6. US Immigration Credential Ecosystem 6 • Interactions between the Immigrant and Government • Interactions between the Immigrant and the private sector
  • 8. Global Support for W3C VCs & DIDs 8 Global acceptance and usage of W3C VC and DID Standards … • by Governments (Canada, EU, Germany, New Zealand etc.) and • the Private Sector (Microsoft, NACS, Square/Block etc.) of … … interoperability standards, technologies and approaches funded, refined, used and championed by DHS over the last 7+ years
  • 9. 9 https://canada-ca.github.io/ucvdcc/ US-Canada Collaboration USCIS & CBP <> TBS & ISED Opportunity to work together on: • Approaches to accept digital credentials issued by other Countries for benefits adjudicated by USCIS • Open and common security, privacy and interoperability baselines for digital wallets • Enabling wallet choice and selection capabilities for individuals • Enabling cryptographic agility in verifiable credential solutions
  • 10. Deliveringan OperationalCapability Competitive Global Solicitation No .gov system + synthetic data in Phases 1-3 .gov system + operational data in Phases 4-5 Phase 1 •Delivery of a Minimum Viable Product Phase 2 •Full Capability Build Phase 3 •Red Team Testing Phase 4 •Operational Validation Phase 5 •Initial Operating Capability
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