Motorists in the UK are about to receive a new development on how they use the plastic driving license. Today, the CEO of UK's Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) shared an image on Twitter that they are working on a "prototype" that will allow drivers to store all the details of their driver's license card digitally within their iPhone Wallet app. He described this as a work in progress.
The Apple Wallet app on iOS was mainly created to store Apple Pay credit card information, boarding passes, tickets and reward cards. To get this feature to effectively work, the UK government is now currently working with Apple Pay developer APIs to allow the storage of driver's license cards as well as other cards.
So here's a little prototype of something we're working on #drivinglicence pic.twitter.com/a5eItrdiNI
— Oliver Morley (@omorley1) May 13, 2016
In a tweet he shared, Oliver Morley CEO of DVLA, said this concept is only a prototype and there's no specific timing as to when it will become available to the public. He also added that the digital photo card will not be a substitute for the traditional plastic card but only "an add-on" for added security.
The idea behind developing this digital photo card was strongly influenced by UK's decision to ditch the paper version of the photo card which was abolished least year.
Had the state of Iowa implemented its idea when it attempted to do something similar to this some few months ago, the UK agency would have been the second organization to do this. Iowa started looking for a way to make a digital version of driver's license available through an iPhone app but the project was never completed. So the development of a driver’s license card by DVLA would be the first digital photo card using Apple's Wallet extended service and not an iPhone standalone app.
Digital driver's license on our internet-connected smartphones could mean those cards issued and delivered to respective owners almost instantly. This will also put an end to situations where people have to wait for them to arrive in the post. This will also eliminate or at least reduce identity theft and fraud by making the cards difficult to compromise.
But again, this could also pose some challenges about what would happen when our mobile phones' battery runs out, that means we are suddenly with no ID card. DVLA hasn't yet responded to questions like this but probably issues like this would also be tackled as the app is still a work in progress.
It is also not clear how a digital driver's license could replace the physical one for so many reasons. For one, since all is needed is an image on the screen to identify the owner; those images could easily be faked along with other false information like name and or birth date.
DVLA might want to use a connected database to verify the information on the digital photo card but again, compromising highly encrypted databases is one of the easiest hacking practices for someone who knows what they are doing.
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