A mobile driving licence (also mobile driver licence or mDL) is a

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

that replaces a physical

driving licence A driver's license, driving licence, or driving permit is a legal authorization, or the official document confirming such an authorization, for a specific individual to operate one or more types of motorized vehicles—such as motorcycles, car ...

. An

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...

(ISO) standard for the mobile driving licence (ISO/IEC 18013-5) was approved on 18 August 2021 and published on 30 September 2021.

History

Denmark

In November 2020, Denmark publicly released a digital/mobile driving licence using a proprietary app implementation using a QR code, also not conforming to the ISO/IEC 18013-5 standard. Similar to Iceland's implementation, it is fully equivalent to physical IDs, however only valid in Denmark.

Iceland

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

was the second country in Europe to introduce a digital/mobile driver's licence in July 2020. Icelandic driving licence holders can request a digital version of their licence online by using their electronic ID (Icelandic: rafræn skilríki) and is issued as a .pkpass file loaded into the Wallet app on

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

or a third-party app on Android. Digital driving licences display the same information as a physical licence, along with a barcode (renewed regularly by the server, acting as verification). Commercial establishments (e.g. for proof of age) can use the island.is app to verify barcodes. The licences are equally valid as official ID, even for voting, however only within Iceland. The implementation does not conform to the ISO/IEC 18013-5 standard. As of August 2022, 60% of driver's licences have been issued in digital/mobile form.

Mexico

The first instance of an electronic driver's license was deployed in Mexico as early as 2007, using the

Gemalto Gemalto was an international digital security company providing software applications, secure personal devices such as smart cards and tokens, e-wallets and managed services. It was formed in June 2006 by the merger of two companies, Axalto and ...

smart-card platform. In 2016, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (

NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...

) partnered with Gemalto to pilot the "digital driver's license" in

Washington D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

and

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

Norway

On 1 October 2019,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

became the first country in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

to introduce a digital driver's license. A holder of a Norwegian driver's license can request a digital version of their physical driver's license after downloading the app ''Førerkort'' from their preferred

app marketplace An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not in ...

. The applicant must verify their identity with

BankID BankID or Bank ID may refer to: * BankID (Sweden), a widely used electronic identification system in Sweden. * BankID (Norway) BankID is a personal electronic identification system in Norway, that is used for identification and signing. The se ...

upon logging in on the app for the first time, which will then retrieve information from the national database for driving licenses. After this procedure, the digital driver's license will display the exact same information as on the physical driver's license. The app only allows one phone with a digital driver's license per user. If the holder has recently passed their driving exam or upgraded to a new category, and hence awaiting to receive their physical driving license, the app will display a temporary driving permit. When the physical driver's license has been produced, the app is able to display the holder's digital driver's license, regardless if the holder has received their physical driving license by

mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

yet or not. If a holder's driver's license has been revoked or suspended, this will information will be displayed in the app as long as the holder has not gotten their driver's license back. Upon a

traffic stop A traffic stop, colloquially referred to as being pulled over, is a temporary Detention (imprisonment), detention of a driver of a vehicle and its occupants by police to Criminal investigation, investigate a possible crime or minor violation o ...

by the

police The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...

or coming in contact with the Public Roads Administration, the digital driver's license is valid as a proof of identification. Although the driver's license comes with a barcode, which can be scanned by either government authorities, commercial establishments or even private persons to verify the details, it is not considered as a proof of identification in most places. The digital driver's license is not valid outside of Norway.

United States

Louisiana

The first mDL that claims compliance with ISO/IEC 18013-5 is

Louisiana Louisiana ( ; ; ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25 ...

's, developed in part by Envoc, a software firm in

Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; , ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It had a population of 227,470 at the 2020 United States census, making it List of municipalities in Louisiana, Louisiana's second-m ...

, whose president claimed that most drivers under 40 won't go back home if they forget their physical laminated license, "but if they forget their phone, they always turn around."

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

in 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, announced a "Digital Identity Program," including a mobile driver's license.

Colorado

Colorado was the first state to deploy a production version of a digital license, primarily based on QR codes stored in a

digital wallet A digital wallet, also known as an e-wallet or mobile wallet, is an electronic device, online service, or software program that allows one party to make electronic transactions with another party bartering digital currency units for goods and s ...

, which it claims is accepted by police officers throughout the state. After going through the standard process at the state Department of Motor Vehicles, volunteers installed the "DigiDL" app on their phones and then downloaded the license. Volunteers tested the digital driver's license in stores, the

Colorado Lottery The Colorado Lottery is run by the state government of Colorado. It is a member of the Multi-State Lottery Association(MUSL). The Colorado Lottery began on January 24, 1983, initially selling only scratch tickets. Its first drawing took place ...

claim center, and an art fair.

Operating system support

Smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

are adapting to the new standard. For example, Android's JetPack suite comes with specific support for ISO 18013–5 from version API 24. In March 2022,

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

introduced support for mobile IDs conforming to ISO 18013-5 in

Apple Wallet Apple Wallet (or simply Wallet, known as Passbook prior to iOS 9) is a digital wallet developed by Apple Inc. and included with iOS and watchOS that allows users to store Wallet passes such as coupons, boarding passes, Campus card, student ID c ...

, through a proprietary enrollment process which is implemented in partnership with governments.

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

and

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

became the first two states to announce that IDs were supported on Apple Wallet, starting with version iOS 15.4. On 23 March 2022, Arizona officially launched their program which includes the first TSA checkpoint to support Apple’s mobile driving licence, Phoenix Sky Harbour Airport.

Conformance and testing

Safety organization Fime has a product to help test an app's conformance with the ISO/IEC 18013-5 standard. The

Kantara Initiative Kantara Initiative, Inc. is a non-profit trade association that works to develop standards for identity and personal data management. It focuses on improving the trustworthy use of identity and personal data in digital identity management and d ...

created a "Privacy & Identity Protection in Mobile Driving License Ecosystems Discussion Group" to issue a report on the need for conformance specifications around identity and privacy.

References

External links

Status page from Thales
- frequently updated
Kantara/IDESG wiki
- collection of privacy and notice issues {{DEFAULTSORT:ISO IEC 18013 Driving licences

Driver's license A driver's license, driving licence, or driving permit is a legal authorization, or the official document confirming such an authorization, for a specific individual to operate one or more types of motorized vehicles—such as motorcycles, ca ...

Identity management