Episode 4 - AAMVA and the mDoc Standard

And we, as the AMBA community, we've been on a standards journey for quite a while.

Talk about where that started when you started with AMBA, where the standards path started for AMBA.

Sure.

Well, if you really peel back the onion of it, the idea of there being standards really dates back to the origins of AMBA in 1933.

So 1933, when AMVU was founded, when you go and you look at the original charter documents, even though there weren't 51 U.S. jurisdictions, there weren't a full 69 jurisdictions on the U.S. and Canada, even those jurisdictions at the time really defined the idea that they were doing driver's licensing and vehicle registration and titling, and they should do so more similar than different.

And so even though they didn't use the word standards specifically, Even from those early days, the idea of consistency, uniformity, and interoperability have always been there.

And so AMBA has, even when they didn't know they were working on standards predating any of us, they were always working on that idea of doing things, whether you use the word standard or a synonym like consistency, uniformity, it's always been there.

That being said, certainly as the idea of true technical standards evolved, AMVA has always been really in that conversation and that really heightened in the 90s when AMVA established having people dedicated to working on standards, providing standards for members, and relative to this conversation, engaging in the international community with ISO and other bodies for standardization.

Yeah, sure.

Many years ago, the physical card became a standardized document for us.

Take the audience through what happened then, because that's directly related to the 18.013 Parts Five and Seven standard, which we'll talk about in just a second.

Well, certainly from the AMPA perspective, obviously all the jurisdictions were issuing driver's license and identity cards.

And as they were evolving, different jurisdictions started doing different things with those cards, whether it was going from paper to laminate to plastic, or when California was the first one who decided, let's put a picture on this thing.

And the community evolved and recognized that this credential that was originally meant to prove you could legally operate a motor vehicle

It

was being used for everything in addition to.

I wouldn't say everything but that, certainly for that.

But obviously, and this audience, I'm preaching to the choir here, they know this.

You pull out your license out of your wallet, more often than not, to have nothing to do with driving.

And so when the AMPA members recognized that, they said, if everyone's going to rely on this, let's make them look more alike than different.

Let's make them have similar security features, have the data in the same place, and most importantly, the machine-readable technology be standard and consistent.

And so the idea that, at least in North America, that barcode is on the back, how it works, how it relates to the card, is all through the AMVA card design standard, which is built directly off of, I wouldn't say there's...

It's not a waterfall, one or the other.

It's more of a circular kind of agile development.

The relationship between the AMPA car design standard and the ISO standard for physical credentials, they are, it is not a coincidence how much they are alike.

And we, as the AMBA community, we've been on a standards journey for quite a while.

Talk about where that started when you started with AMBA, where the standards path started for AMBA.

Sure.

Well, if you really peel back the onion of it, the idea of there being standards really dates back to the origins of AMBA in 1933.

So 1933, when AMVU was founded, when you go and you look at the original charter documents, even though there weren't 51 U.S. jurisdictions, there weren't a full 69 jurisdictions on the U.S. and Canada, even those jurisdictions at the time really defined the idea that they were doing driver's licensing and vehicle registration and titling, and they should do so more similar than different.

And so even though they didn't use the word standards specifically, Even from those early days, the idea of consistency, uniformity, and interoperability have always been there.

And so AMBA has, even when they didn't know they were working on standards predating any of us, they were always working on that idea of doing things, whether you use the word standard or a synonym like consistency, uniformity, it's always been there.

That being said, certainly as the idea of true technical standards evolved, AMVA has always been really in that conversation and that really heightened in the 90s when AMVA established having people dedicated to working on standards, providing standards for members, and relative to this conversation, engaging in the international community with ISO and other bodies for standardization.

Yeah, sure.

Many years ago, the physical card became a standardized document for us.

Take the audience through what happened then, because that's directly related to the 18.013 Parts Five and Seven standard, which we'll talk about in just a second.

Well, certainly from the AMPA perspective, obviously all the jurisdictions were issuing driver's license and identity cards.

And as they were evolving, different jurisdictions started doing different things with those cards, whether it was going from paper to laminate to plastic, or when California was the first one who decided, let's put a picture on this thing.

And the community evolved and recognized that this credential that was originally meant to prove you could legally operate a motor vehicle

It

was being used for everything in addition to.

I wouldn't say everything but that, certainly for that.

But obviously, and this audience, I'm preaching to the choir here, they know this.

You pull out your license out of your wallet, more often than not, to have nothing to do with driving.

And so when the AMPA members recognized that, they said, if everyone's going to rely on this, let's make them look more alike than different.

Let's make them have similar security features, have the data in the same place, and most importantly, the machine-readable technology be standard and consistent.

And so the idea that, at least in North America, that barcode is on the back, how it works, how it relates to the card, is all through the AMVA card design standard, which is built directly off of, I wouldn't say there's...

It's not a waterfall, one or the other.

It's more of a circular kind of agile development.

The relationship between the AMPA car design standard and the ISO standard for physical credentials, they are, it is not a coincidence how much they are alike.