Hello World from the COVID-19 Credentials Initiative

The COVID-19 pandemic has, in a few months’ time, taken the lives of almost half a million people worldwide and brought economies into lockdown globally. While many are struggling with the effects of social distancing, financial distress, or fear of contracting the virus, here at the COVID-19 Credentials Initiative (CCI), nearly 300 individuals from 100 organizations have united around a cause worthy of our collective efforts: supporting projects that deploy privacy-preserving Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and strengthen our societies and economies.

We are a global community that shares a vision for the effective use of technology to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. We believe that, when used responsibly, VCs can be great privacy-preserving components of solutions addressing the numerous social and economic challenges caused by this and future pandemics. We are aware that without a holistic perspective from the onset, many COVID-19 technology solutions may introduce unintended results (e.g. surveillance, abuse of personal data, social inequalities). To avoid such outcomes, we have committed ourselves to open collaboration with a diverse range of experts, embracing open standards, and protecting the fundamental privacy and personal data rights of all stakeholders.

If you lead a project implementing VCs in your local communities and are aligned with our values, we want to hear from you. We also wish to share and discuss our work openly, including its technical, medical, legal, ethical, and business implications. We invite your input on these considerations as well as any other important aspects that can help build responsible, human-centric VC solutions to fight COVID-19.

If you are ready to contribute or collaborate, please join us at https://www.covidcreds.com/.