La Linux Foundation Public Health unveiled several days ago its intentions to launch an initiative to enable interoperable and reliable verification of COVID certificates, as in recent months they have studied the cases of governments that have begun to design and implement COVID certificate systems, including the EU digital COVID Certificate (formerly the EU Digital Green Certificate).
The whole world has been fighting the coronavirus for a year and a half, a health situation that has caused the loss of almost 4 million lives. In such a context, vaccines have given much hope to control the pandemic, or even make it disappear. Many thought that most people would get vaccinated, but the findings are quite disappointing compared to expectations.
This is due in part to shortages in many countries, but also to misinformation and the paranoia about these vaccines. Even in the highest circles of intellectuals, you can find people who argue that vaccines are meant to implement lousy programs.
Through conversations and studies that have been conducted, mention that they have identified two critical challenges of which the main one is the lack of a global trust architecture, a system that verifiers in one jurisdiction can use to make a decision on whether or not to accept a certificate signed by another jurisdiction.
There are still many questions that government policymakers and technology teams have about how to build and manage COVID certificate systems, as the vendor offerings in this space are still very new and the standards are still being finalized.
Before all this the Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPN) already works in the Global COVID Certificate Network, a kind of reliable registry that will help to prove the status of the vaccine.
This Global Network of COVID Certificates (GCCN), is announced as «a Initiative to Enable Interoperable and Reliable Verification of COVID Certificates Between Jurisdictions for Safe Reopening of Borders ». Organizations, governments, developers and many more will work with the foundation to create a trusted global registry network and protocol. which will facilitate the verification of the validity of the different vaccination certificates issued by different countries. This is a Covid-19 international passport.
As Brian Behlendorf, CEO of the Linux Foundation for Blockchain, Health and Identity explains, mentions that the GCCN is vital, because “the first wave of applications to demonstrate its COVID status failed to show this proof beyond a single state or a single nation ", in addition to highlighting that the GCCN will solve this problem" respecting the high level of confidentiality and integrity. "
In addition the LFPH is being built in part to be compatible with the COVID digital certificate of the European Union, it is still mentioned that a global trust architecture and ready-to-deploy tools are still needed to build compatible systems in other countries is a real barrier to safely reopen borders between EU countries and third countries.
We will establish a global network of trusted registries, a directory of trusted peer registries. Through the directory, governments and industry alliances will be able to search other government trust or alliance records and decide based on the information provided whether to accept their certificates. They will also be able to publish their own indicators to lists of their own authorized issuers, for other countries to accept.
The LFPH is also following the Good Health Pass Collaborative (GHPC) Interoperability Plan, this is an industry coalition that has defined the principles and standards of COVID certificates.
We will start with a lightweight governance framework for board peers. Over time, the participating peers will develop the governance model, defining the future evolution of the service.
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