Learn how Indicio and SITA worked together using privacy-preserving technology to reshape contactless health information sharing.
Proof of testing or vaccination has become central to how we reopen travel to countries, admit visitors, and bring tourism economies back to life. Providing privacy and control for people is the key to establishing public confidence in a system for proving one’s health status.
A digital proof of a Covid negative test or vaccination must be designed to protect individual privacy. It should enable a medical or test center to directly provide that information to an individual—and involve no one else storing or managing their data. It should be tamper proof and incapable of being faked. And it should be easy to download and quick to use.
This is why Indicio.tech, a public benefit corporation that provides decentralized identity software solutions, and SITA, the leading global technology provider for the air transport industry, have used open source, privacy-by-design technology to build a solution that allows airports, airlines, and all elements of the tourist economy to use verifiable digital credentials to safely and securely return to life.
How to reopen travel and tourism and preserve privacy
Trusted data ecosystems use distributed ledger technology, cryptography, and a new way to provide an individual with control of their digital information. This means identity credentials that contain health information are issued directly to that person’s digital wallet, without any handoff to or management by third-parties. Trusted organizations can quickly issue millions of credentials without any of the information they contain being collected and stored in a third-party database.
Then, when the person decides they want to share all or just part of the information, such as the specific details of their test status, the authenticity and original source of that information can be definitively proven. This makes the digital credential compliant with health and data privacy law (HIPAA, GDPR).
The advantages of a Trusted Data Ecosystem are that it can:
- Replace paper cards with fully digitized identity information
- Increase efficiency by automating many tasks involved in presenting personal health status
- Ensure consent and control when sharing personal data
- Allow a user to select which information they want to disclose while obscuring the rest
- Enhance security through privacy-by-design, user-friendly digital records, and tamper-evident distributed ledger technology
- Avoid the problem of fraudulent health cards or paper forms from being presented
- Scale to include millions of participants, including employees, travelers, and residents, with just a few writes to a public ledger and an inexpensive mobile application
- Speed recovery of reopening venues and countries
Open and manage public spaces
Indicio’s identity ecosystem is built using Cardea, a complete ecosystem for the exchange of privacy-preserving digital credentials, open sourced as a project in Linux Foundation Public Health. Based on Hyperledger Indy and Aries open source technology, its flexible design means it can be easily adapted and deployed by any company, government, or organization that needs a privacy preserving digital credential for managing access.
Indicio’s implementation of Cardea for SITA and the Government of Aruba features a mobile interface in the form of a mobile app for users and a second mobile app for use by venues to receive and verify credentials from users. Software called mediator agents and enterprise agents allow for scaling and automation of the credential issuing and verification processes. Distributed ledger technology provides cryptographic assurance that the data within any given credential has not been tampered with or altered.
Cardea’s architecture protects privacy and aids compliance by separating issuers, holders, and verifiers of credentials. Issuers cannot know where credentials were used by those holding them, and verifiers (receivers) of credentials are able to limit the amount of data they receive and retain.
Successful test deployment in Aruba
The island of Aruba and global air transport technology provider SITA came to Indicio to create a trusted traveler system that makes it easy for visitors to share their health status privately and securely using their mobile device.
Aruba is focused on finding innovative ways to strengthen its tourism industry while minimizing the risk of Covid-19 infection from visitors. Unlike immunity passports, the verifiable digital credential system from Indicio allows visitors to share a trusted proof of their health status. This trust is possible because the traveler has shared their health status and had it verified by a public health agency.
Once a test result is approved, the traveler is issued a second credential by the public health agency to confirm that they have tested negative. This credential contains no medical data whatsoever and is used only to prove the person’s test status. The Happy Traveler Card, as this credential is called in Aruba, is verified by hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues that the traveler visits. It is an easy way for even their smallest businesses to ensure the safety and health of their guests.
The Happy Traveler Card in action
Machine readable governance enabled businesses and venues to trust that tourists had been tested on arrival by Aruba’s health department. Visitors using the digital Aruba Happy Traveler Card could be swiftly and reliably verified with a phone app. This freed both businesses and the government from the burden of mechanically collecting data with the attendant risk of error or fraud.
The Cardea ecosystem enables Aruba to move toward a privacy-first approach to supporting their tourism industry, which in 2019 accounted for 98.3% of Aruba’s GDP and supported 47,000 jobs—99% of all employment on the island.
Build on our experience for your solution
The tourism and hospitality identity solution for SITA is highly replicable for use cases in any industry and easy to integrate with existing systems. With a professionally staffed global network for verifiable digital credentials supported by many of the leading companies in this space, Indicio is building the future of Trusted Data Ecosystems. Open source and interoperable software means your solution is scalable and sustainable. Our expert team of architects and engineers can create and customize a solution quickly for business, governments, and organizations who need a privacy-first identity solution and they can deploy it in weeks.
To learn more or schedule a free one-on-one consultation to find out how you can benefit from ta Trusted Data Ecosystem, contact us.
