The OSIA Initiative

Target #16.9 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is to “provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” by the year 2030. But there’s a major barrier: the lack of vendor/provider and technology neutrality – commonly known as “vendor lock-in”.

Through Open Standards, the global identity industry has come together to deliver a simple, financially viable solution to vendor dependency: the OSIA initiative.

The OSIA initiative has been created for the public good to enable seamless connectivity between all components of the identity management ecosystem – independent of technology, solution architecture or vendor.

Now, governments around the world can exert full control over their national identity programs – to better protect citizens and their civil rights, to deliver equality of access to economic and social services, and to achieve their national development agendas.

1. Adopting an open standards approach

An elegant solution to a complex problem, OSIA provides a simple, open standards-based connectivity layer between all key components and systems within the identity ecosystem. So everything works together – seamlessly.

The OSIA Initiative is vendor and technology neutral. It protects investments today and tomorrow, and forever eliminates issues of supplier dependency. With OSIA governments are free to select the components they need, from the suppliers they choose – without fear of lock in.

And because OSIA operates at the interface layer, interoperability is assured without the need to rearchitect environments or rebuild solutions from the ground up. Components are simply swapped in and out as the use case demands – from best-of-breed options already available on the market.

This real-world approach dramatically reduces operational and financial risk, increases the effectiveness of existing identity ecosystems, and rapidly moves government initiatives from proof of concept to live environments.

2. OSIA project scope

OSIA provides a simple, open standards-based connectivity layer between all key components within the national identity system. Components can simply be swapped in and out or added to an existing ecosystem as the use case demands.

The OSIA scope is as follows:

Addressing the lack of common definitions within the ID ecosystem

The components of ID ecosystems (civil registry, population registry, biometric identification system etc.) are functionally incompatible due to the absence of a common definition/understanding of broader functionalities and scope.

The first step has been to formalize definitions, scope and main functionalities of each component within the identity ecosystem.

Creating a standardized, open interface

The second step has been to create a standardized open interface

This core piece of work develops the standardized data formats and open interface to connect the multiple ecosystem components to ensure seamless interaction of services

3. Towards a sustainable future

The OSIA initiative ushers in a new era of openness and collaboration between major players in the identity industry that will eliminate the interoperability challenges that have, until now, hampered the evolution of national identity systems.

Supported by all major ID vendors, OSIA makes it possible for governments and implementing bodies across the world to invest with confidence. Initiating robust identification platforms for their citizens, preserving the value of existing systems while evolving their environments without fear of vendor lock-in.

For more information visit www.osia.io.

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