Virginia Joins AAMVA’s Digital Trust Service for Mobile IDs

The Commonwealth of Virginia has become the third state to fully participate in the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators’ Digital Trust Service (DTS) for mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs), joining Maryland and Utah.

The move signals growing acceptance of the DTS, a framework that uses Public Key Infrastructure to authenticate mDLs while ensuring interoperability across a range of jurisdictions.

AAMVA recently launched the DTS as a “minimally viable product”, meaning it currently has only the essential elements needed for operation. This allows AAMVA to collect feedback from stakeholders and to implement any advisable changes into the DTS’s ongoing development cycle.

In terms of how the DTS works, participating authorities such as the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles provide their public keys to AAMVA for storage on a DTS list. This list can then be accessed by relying parties and issuing authorities in order to authenticate any given virtual driver’s license as needed.

AAMVA has no need to store personally identifiable information on the DTS, ensuring that the privacy of end users of mDLs is protected.

Maryland and Utah became the first jurisdictions to announce full support for the DTS in April, and AAMVA says that more are in the pipeline beyond Virginia. The news further signals that the mobile driver’s license concept is ramping up to mainstream acceptance, arriving shortly after the passage of the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 2024, which mandated the FAA to accept state-issued digital IDs and mDLs in situations where individuals are required to present government-issued identification.

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June 11, 2024 – by Alex Perala