The Good Health Pass Collaborative has established the following principles as a critical first step toward an interoperable, trusted framework and ecosystem for the issuance, use, and management of COVID-19 test and vaccination credentials for international travel. These principles seek to define what is necessary for a digital health credential system to be considered a “good health pass”.
Good Health Pass solutions must be designed and implemented to enhance privacy, support data minimization and auditability, and be compliant with relevant data privacy regulations. Solutions should not contribute to the creation of new centralized data stores of sensitive personal information.
User Control
Good Health Pass solutions must allow individuals to own and control their health and identity credentials. They must provide transparency over how user data is collected, used, and shared. Individuals must be able to determine where, when, with whom, and for what purposes their data is shared.
Choice & Consent
Use of a good health pass should be voluntary and consent-based. Those who do wish to use one should have a choice between a range of available solutions and using them on a mobile device, a secure physical form (e.g., a QR code, etc.), or both.
Trust
Good Health Pass solutions must be trusted. They must be designed, implemented, and operated to the highest standards for privacy, security, integrity, and transparency. Trust frameworks that govern these relationships are required and should incorporate input from public and private sector stakeholders, including – to the extent feasible – civil society organizations that focus on equity and digital privacy.
Inclusivity
Good Health Pass solutions must be designed to equitably serve everyone, including those who may be identity, socially, financially, digitally, or otherwise excluded. Alternative mechanisms should be available that offer a similar level of verifiability (e.g., paper-based credentials with printed digital signatures).
Open Standards
Solutions must adhere to broadly accepted open standards and be built upon open technology to contribute to transparency, compatibility, interoperability, and extensibility across the ecosystem and to prevent vendor lock-in.
Interoperability
Good Health Pass solutions must be interoperable across institutional, sectoral, and geographic boundaries.
Extensibility
Principles and standards developed for Good Health Pass solutions to address the various complexities of international travel will be readily adaptable – and extensible – to other use cases for COVID-19 pandemic recovery and for seamless travel.
Social Responsibility
Good health passes address a variety of social and economic issues that impact everyone. These efforts should align with the principles outlined in the UN Global Compact for corporate social responsibility.
Urgency
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread at an alarming rate, leaving human and economic devastation in its wake. While standards-development processes typically move slowly, a cross-sector effort is urgently required to bring good health pass solutions to market in 2021 and to scale globally – with the same urgency applied to vaccine development.
By clicking “accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information.
