In August 2016, the US Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) awarded a $2M grant to Thales to support the development of a smartphone-based mobile driver’s license to provide citizens a secure companion to their physical permit or ID card. More about our mobile driver's license pilot. These standards provide strengthened privacy settings to ensure personal information is kept private. While early pilots retained the key visual aspects of a physical driver's license, displaying the driver's personal information - name, address, and date of birth, along with his photo, new standards are now used that allows the user to control what information is shared and displayed in each situation.
The primary goals of the driving license, whether physical or digital, remain to confirm the identity and to confer the right to drive a vehicle.ĭuring the last few years, studies and pilots have been conducted in several states in the US to explore the technical feasibility of a digital driver's license.ĭigital driver's licenses, also called mobile driver's licenses, were developed and tested to ensure proper security protocols were incorporated for advanced digital security alongside a convenient user experience.
