1. Introduction to W3C Verifiable Claims Work
Matthew Pittinsky, Ph.D.
CEO, Parchment | Asst. Research Professor, Arizona State University

2. About World Wide Web Consortium
W3C is an international community including than 400 organizational member
It is a key enabler in interoperability - critical to helping to get today’s 3.2 billion internet users connected
Standards include HMTL, more recently HTML5, HTTP, CSS, XML, and JSON-LD
Image: W3C

3. Members of W3C
Image: W3C

4. Process and Progress
Community Group processes at W3C allows an open, public forums on advancing technology standards in 240 areas.
Both Web Payments and Credentials Community Groups at W3C share common needs to verify and trust identity claims in emerging web standardization efforts
The Verifiable Claims Taskforce emerged from these communities and worked to focus on researching the problem space for future standardization
The Taskforce produced its 2016 report of stakeholders and experts confirming agreement on the problem statement and interest towards a W3C member effort
published Verifiable Claims Report from Industry and Invited Experts including stakeholder survey and interviews across experts from developers of many existing identity technologies and the credentials community - found support for solving the problem and direction on reuse of existing work, security protections, and scalability
The Taskforce is drafting a charter, FAQ, and initial syntax towards W3C vote and approval of a Working Group, where ~20 members work on deliverables for ~18 months
A Verifiable Claims Working Group would produce a data model, syntax, and vocabulary along with a note on how exchange can use existing (e.g. SAML), modified, or new technologies to accomplish a user-centric system. Defining a new technology is out of scope.
Image: W3C

5. Focusing on the Problem
A verifiable claim is a trusted assertion an issuer makes about an entity to a verifier who is authorized.
In our world, Columbia University awarding a diploma to a student where you can affirm electronically that Columbia did indeed award, and access the diploma claim (data) itself
In a broader context, a government affirming that a consumer is over 21, where you can validate electronically that the government made the claim and access the age.
However, there is currently no widely used user-centric and privacy-enhancing standard for expressing and transacting verifiable claims via the Web.
Today we use service-centric workflows, such as Facebook Connect, Google Sign In, and SAML to manage our digital identities. This service-based model limits portability, vendor choice, cross-industry use, and user control of their data.
To begin, the group must create a data architecture that allows claims to be signed.
The fit of existing exchange architectures with the user-centric model will also be evaluated (OpenID Connect, SAML, etc.), however creating a new exchange technology standard is beyond the initial scope.
Parchment has always been about centralizing

6. Current Effort: Six Elements
Context: Reference to the data schema (field name and URL method)
ID: Where the credential information is hosted (URL method)
Type: Class and subclass of claim (From the context)
Issuer: Who the organization is that attests to the claim (URL method)
Claim: Underlying claim data that are defined by Context (JSON-LD orientation)
Signature: Validation mechanism that confirms content based on creator (digital signature)
Parchment has always been about centralizing

7. Draft Data Modeling Example
Verifiable Claim: data describing attributes of an individual, digitally signed by issuer
For example, a claim could be a digital diploma
@context value links structure data to a published standard (JSON-LD concept)
Here, PESC’s Academic E-portfolio Standard that expresses a diploma
id value is the web home of the claim
type describes the class of the claim; establishing diplomas, from certificates, from badges
other metadata used is defined by the standard referenced

8. Draft Data Modeling Example
claim section includes all the data about the individual to which the issuer is attesting
In this example, that includes Full Name, Date of Birth, ID numbers
Since this is a diploma, it also includes data prescribed by the standard to define the type of credential earned and date details
All data in the claim can be check through comparison of the included digital signature in comparison with the linked public key (creator)

9. Participation Parchment has always been about centralizing
Technology providers and Education are well-represented in the Task Force and W3C Members may join the Working Group, but to realize the potential of the work there must be collaboration
In the coming effort, standard bodies should ensure their data models can be expressed sufficiently within the Verifiable Claims standard
The Task Force continues to seek feedback from the open community on the work to date and support in continuing,
Participate in the survey at
- Initial results indicate enough support to receive an approval vote within W3C this summer
Organizations and individuals are welcomed to participate via mailing list or via weekly phone conference.
- Details are at available
Parchment has always been about centralizing

10. GDN and Standards Landscape
Organization
Starting
Market
Participants
Scope
Credential Transparency Initiative
Source: 1, 2, 3, 4
2013
US Workforce and US Higher Education
Led by the GWU’s Institute of Public Policy (GWIPP), Workcred – an affiliate of ANSI, and Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale’s Center for Workforce Development. 45 Pilot site partners
Develop common terms for describing credentials and credential issuers exposed via an open Credential Registry, including a Credentials Directory App and API
EMREX
Source: 1, 2
2014
Higher Education Student Record Exchange in support of increasing student mobility
8 partners from 6 countries
Establish standards for transfer of digital student records between higher education institutions in Europe
Erasmus without paper
2012
Higher Education Process Record Exchange in support of increasing student mobility
11 partner institutions, organizations, and companies partners across 8 European countries + 11 associate partners
Digital student data portability including privacy rights, ownership of data, identification, access, data sharing, systems compatibility and data comparability
IMS Global
1997
System interoperability standards and conformance testing with stakeholders in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education
>135 Contributing Members and 100+ Associate Members from Educational institutions, suppliers, and government organizations
Standards in digital curriculum, e-assessment, learning tools, learning data and analytics, and digital credentialing
PESC
Source: 1
Educational data standards and exchange protocols
Global membership including institutions across education and education technology
Standards in application Data, transcripts, course cataloging, test scoring, student aid, data transport
W3C Verifiable Claims Task Force
Organizations in all economic sectors, highlighting finance, education
Task Force participants include IMS Global, Digtal Bazaar, ETS, Accreditrust, US Federal Reserve, Badge Alliance, Parchment, and CEDS. Working Group would include ~20 W3C members with interest
Data model standard that will allow verifiable claims to have linked data for exchange between issuers, entities, curators, and verifiers, across many data domains
See participants in task force row

11. Introduction to Verifiable Claims Work within W3C
(Domain Discussions)
(Technical Discussions)