What You Should Know:
– Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) announced a new collaborative network, the Global COVID Certificate Network, to facilitate the safe and free movement of individuals globally during the COVID pandemic.
– The new collaboration will establish a global trust registry network that enables interoperable and trustworthy exchanges of COVID certificates among countries for safe reopening and provide related technology and guidance for implementation.
– The effort is supported by industry leaders such as IBM who have implemented COVID certificate or pass systems for governments and industries.
Global COVID Certificates (GCC) Overview
GCCN will support Global COVID Certificates (GCC) that apply to three use cases: vaccination, recovery from infection, and test results. These certificates can be held and shared in both paper and digital formats. Participating governments and industry alliances will specify the type(s) and format(s) of COVID certificates they issue and accept, allowing for flexibility but also harmonization.
The GCC schema definitions and minimal datasets will follow the recommendations of the Blueprint, as well as GCCN’s technical and governance documents, implementation guide, and open-source reference implementations, which will be developed in collaboration with supporting organizations and the broader LFPH community.
The GCCN community will offer peer-based implementation and governance guidance to governments and industries as they start to implement COVID certificate systems. This includes how to build a country/jurisdiction-level trust registry and other related infrastructure, and how to leverage GCC to incorporate existing ecosystems into a national or jurisdiction-level infrastructure.
LFPH and the supporting organizations have been pioneering the responsible, effective use of technology to address the global response to COVID since the earliest days of the pandemic.
“The first wave of apps for proving one’s COVID status did not allow that proof to be shown beyond a single state or nation, did not avoid vendor lock-in, and did not distinguish between rich health data and simple passes. The Blueprint gives this industry a way to solve those issues while meeting a high bar for privacy and integrity, and GCCN turns those plans into action” said Brian Behlendorf, General Manager for Blockchain, Healthcare and Identity at the Linux Foundation.
