POSE: Phase II: Credentialing for Open Source Ecosystems (COSE): Ensuring Testable Interoperability

People present credentials such as driver’s licenses, degree certificates and other documents during important events in their lives. The need for touchless, trustworthy confirmation of these credentials has increased. While web standards create the possibility for the various systems, technologies or entities to communicate, exchange data and work together seamlessly, the actual practice of interoperability is more difficult. This project ensures that the verifiable credentialing ecosystem has the underlying open-source infrastructure to facilitate the broader interoperability effort. These efforts enable secure and reliable open technologies to gain adoption in the market over proprietary or closed solutions, lowering the cost of acquisition of these technologies. This project builds on ongoing work through the World Wide Web Consortium (such as the Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifiers, Digital Wallet, and Credential Request/Response protocols). The focus is on upgrading a strategically planned set of open-source test libraries, test suites, and an organized interoperability dashboard as foundational infrastructure for decision makers and developers when adopting standards-based digital credentialing approaches. This infrastructure is bolstered by an open compliance program through the Linux Foundation which will both continuously test the open source implementations and generate revenue for continued operation of the open-source ecosystem. These efforts will help foster an open-market of digital credentialing software that provides the average citizen with secure, reliable access to their digital credentials. The benefits include a broader set of vendors in the market and enabling the ability to more accurately determine the level of standards conformance supported by each vendor, which will help combat vendor-lock in, price gouging, and false advertising in the digital credentialing space. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.