Today we are announcing an effort that will allow ISRG to learn about systems for human digital identity. We're partnering with the SIROS Foundation for this exploration, and our work has been generously funded by Stina Ehrensvard, founder of SIROS Foundation and co-founder of Yubico.
ISRG has a wealth of experience in authenticating digital infrastructure via Let's Encrypt. When considering how we might leverage that experience to improve other aspects of our digital lives, we started thinking about various efforts around the world to manage digital identity for humans and whether or not we might be able to help. There's a lot of potential for such systems to make things better and/or easier, but there is also the potential for policy and technology decisions to be harmful. This space presents a potential opportunity for us to further pursue our mission to lower monetary, technological, and informational barriers to a more secure and privacy-respecting Internet.
There are several efforts in the digital identity space to create more robust and privacy-preserving identity options for users. These efforts include mobile drivers' licenses in several U.S. states, Web APIs for managing digital credentials, and efforts under EU laws that encourage the creation of interoperable digital identity across the EU. By engaging in this exploration we hope to build a deeper understanding of potential user identity ecosystems so that we can figure out if there might be a helpful role for ISRG to play in the future, in the U.S. or elsewhere.
ISRG will be participating in research and development for the PKI back-end of SIROS's EU digital identity efforts. Partners include Stina Ehrensvard, Yubico, and the Swedish and Greek university network organizations. A goal of the SIROS Foundation is to create an EU digital identity system that works for the public's benefit and acts with privacy and security as cornerstone priorities. What happens with digital identity in Europe over the next few years will heavily influence the choices made in the rest of the world, including the United States, so now is the time for us to start learning and helping to push things in the best possible direction.
We expect our effort to last approximately one year. We will not be operating any production infrastructure as part of this collaboration. Any software we produce will be open-sourced for others to learn from and/or use.