The Dublin Digital Identity Manager is a distributed identity management system enabling users to control their personal data through utilization of a combination Blockchain technology and PKI. The purpose of the Identity Manager is to supply the City of Dublin with a distributed ledger technology solution that is capable of identifying residents of Dublin and securely storing their personally identifiable information. In addition, the application gives the City the ability to engage users through a series of questionnaires and other polling mechanisms. The system is capable of recording all information, resident responses, and preferences in an immutable ledger that has been cryptographically validated and secured. The Identity Manager also provides users the ability to receive and redeem tokens of value at participating venues.
The Dublin Digital Identity Manager utilizes a decentralized blockchain supported through a mining process capable of being carried out by the City. The Dublin Public Blockchain (DPB, a component of the identity manager) is a tokenless platform able to securely store and share records and documents to residents and systems within Dublin. The DPB is designed to lend itself to a federated model that is able to integrate with other similar jurisdictions hosting their own chain; facilitating the transfer of information between cities across the country.
Main features included with the final product include:
* Establish and demonstrate individual identity and elements of identity of a user.
* Collect, record, store, and report discrete choices and preferences of a user.
* Providing a token of value within an enclosed system of credits and debits.
The main components of the system can be broken down into 4 categories:
* Dublin’s Public Blockchain
* Individual Identities
* Discrete User Choice
* Token of Value
By keeping the identity data securely partitioned from the public blockchain data, users are able to be authorized and having parts of their identity confirmed while remaining seemingly anonymous otherwise.
The public blockchain is built of off Software Verde’s data management system, DocChain. DocChain stores data within its blockchain in their entirety (not just store their hashes). The documents stored are encrypted before being submitted to the network, and therefore are only accessible by those granted access. Records may be distributed to the public by either publishing the document without encryption, or publicly sharing the encryption key.
Records cannot be modified once they are mined within a block; however, while records cannot be modified, they may be pruned. This allows the DPB to be able to purge records from the chain (although artifacts/proof of their previous existence will always remain, but their content will become unavailable).
Individual identities are created by authorized City of Dublin employees. Dublin will create a certificate authority where each user is granted a signed message by the Dublin Identity Authority (“DIA”). This signed message states that the user is unequivocally who they claim to be and the user’s entire identity therefore becomes the master private key held by the user and the signed public key from the DIA. This custom message contains the recipient’s public key so that it is only usable by the recipient. The message directly grants the recipient permission to query the DIA with the user’s information that the user has granted permission for the recipient to view.
The token of value is currently carried out as a coupon system, where City of Dublin employees can award users with a token of value for their use of the system.