View: CoWIN an example of India's capability | Economic Times

Over the last few days, an avoidable controversy around the British government having concerns on the certification process of Covid vaccination in India had erupted. It was later clarified by the British high commissioner to India that Britain had no concern about the vaccine certification process.Built for a scale of a billion-plus, CoWIN was launched, along with the Covid vaccination drive, on January 16, 2021. From the start, CoWIN has been providing verifiable digital-vaccinated certificates to all vaccinated in India, among the first countries to issue such a digitally secure certificate.Opening a New CoWINdowBy design, CoWIN issues a certificate for every individual vaccination event. These are generated in real time as soon as each vaccination event is recorded on the CoWIN platform. A provisional certificate is issued for dose 1, and a final certificate for dose 2 in a two-dose regimen. Till September 25, CoWIN has generated 627 million provisional and 220 million final certificates, making it one of the world's biggest digitally verifiable vaccination certificate-generating platforms.Individuals have been offered the convenience of multiple modes to access these certificates via download on the CoWIN portal, or printed form available at Covid-19 vaccination centres (CVCs). Leveraging the open application programming interfaces (APIs) of CoWIN, authorised third-party service providers - Aarogya Setu, Umang, DigiLocker, Paytm, etc - can also extend access to digital certificates for beneficiaries. To ensure language barriers are not a concern, CoWIN also provides certificates in as many as 17 languages.As India works to resume business as usual, vaccination certificates will play an instrumental role in building trust around vaccination compliance. This trust will be even more important to restart international travel, while relaxing today's stringent and expensive quarantine restrictions.To ensure this, the quick response (QR) design of the CoWIN-generated vaccination certificate has been aligned with internationally accepted specifications of the World Health Organisation (WHO) - Digital Documentation of Covid-19 Certificates: Vaccination Status (DDCC:VS) - and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)-verifiable credential data model.GoI is bilaterally engaging with other countries to establish a mechanism for mutual recognition of their vaccination certificates. To enable this, CoWIN plans to release an international version of the vaccination certificate for travel purposes. Citizens will soon be able to log in to the CoWIN portal and apply for an international travel vaccination certificate (ITVC). An ITVC will soon be available for download in various internationally accepted formats, including WHO's DDCC:VS, the EU's digital Covid certificate (DCC), and the International Civil Aviation Organisation's (ICAO) visible digital seal (VDS).CoWIN has also set up a facility for beneficiaries to link one's passport number to the certificate for international travel purposes on the portal. Furthermore, it was observed that at times, individuals were using different mobile numbers to register for their two doses. To resolve this issue, the capability to merge multiple first-dose certificates was also facilitated. People-centricity has been an overarching objective of the entire vaccination process and the technology platform.Right Vaccine for CertificationThere may be instances where an entity does not need to see the certificate in full and will just need to know an individual's vaccination status, as in the case of offices, airlines, railways and hotels. CoWIN accommodates such requests through the new API, Know Your Customer's Vaccination Status (KYC-VS). With an Aadhaar-like authentication service, CoWIN sends a response to the verifying entity on the individual's status of vaccination: 0 signifying when a person is not vaccinated, 1 when partially vaccinated, and two when fully vaccinated.CoWIN is a highly configurable, adaptable and inclusive platform. It has evolved according to the changing policy landscape and requirements of people. When it was learnt that issues were being faced due to errors in entries of individual details, CoWIN provisioned for amendment requests in the vaccination certificates. Now, a beneficiary can correct his or her name with technology that ensures there are no frauds in the process.Then there's the fundamental question of the verification of the certificate's authenticity and integrity. All CoWIN certificates are privacy-preserving, digitally signed and secure QR code-based. The QR codes are signed using a private-public key cryptography mechanism and a widely used secure digital signature algorithm. These certificates can be verified through online and offline methods.For offline verification, CoWIN has established a distribution channel for third-party verifiers to access the certificate public key. Through the earlier mentioned APIs, there is a provision for third-party verifiers to scan and read, decode and verify the certificates through a secure private-public key mechanism.CoWIN has been designed as a robust, reliable, scalable and inclusive platform to support the world's largest vaccination drive. It's yet another example of India's capability of building population-scale systems.