Verifiable Credentials for First Responders

Internet and Web standards play a critical role in the creation of competitive marketplaces by enabling interoperable solutions for digital identity, credentialing, and access management. With respect to first responder organizations, the use of new global identity standards for personnel identity and onsite qualifications when responding to a disaster not only have the power to increase security, efficiency, and coordination, but they can also greatly reduce the cost of deployment and management of such a system through the use of commercial off-the-shelf technologies and market competition between vendors that implement to the global standards.During phase I, Digital Bazaar's objective is to gather focal use cases and requirements to create a first responder badge ecosystem architecture that aligns with the Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifier, and ISO/IEC 23220 standards. We will then create a proof of concept for issuing and verifying a first responder badge in an online scenario and demonstrate global standards interoperability with the partners listed in this proposal. This work will result in a first responder badge specification that could be taken standards-track at a global standards setting organization and an architecture capability report, gap analysis, and future work proposal that could be executed upon in a future phase II initiative.