To further accelerate acceptance and use of Mobile Driver’s Licenses (mDLs), the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is co-hosting two mDL community “hackathons” in fall 2024.

The Objectives of the Hackathons

The hackathons seek to promote the adoption of secure, privacy-preserving digital identity by:

• Helping relying party organizations and their partners incorporate mDLs into their user experiences by offering tooling, tests, and developer support to troubleshoot issues.
• Empowering developers to walk away with use cases that are executive ready to demonstrate within their own organizations, highlight the topline and bottom-line benefits of mDLs and streamline the path to live production.
• Welcoming government and civil society and other VIP observers to see what the technology offers, the challenges facing the community, and identify barriers to unblock adoption.
• Creating a safe space for digital identity community to support relying party adoption across platforms and standards.

Two Hackathon Events

	Public Event	Government Event
Date and Time	8AM to 8PM October 1, 2024	8AM to 4PM November 1, 2024
Location	Mountain View Computer History Museum	Sacramento CA State Government Building
Teams	Up to 15 teams	Up to 10 teams
Eligibility	Anyone with a mDL acceptance use case. Preferences will be given to private sector organizations with the most compelling use cases.	State, local, federal and international government agencies only. Government entities can apply together with their vendors.
How to Apply	Please submit your application here by August 9, 2024, at 11:59 pm PST   The application form will take no more than 30 min to complete if you formed a team and identified a use case.	Please submit your application here by September 11, 2024, at 11:59 pm PST.   If you’d like to discuss your use case/participation before applying, please email hackathon@dmv.ca.gov to schedule a call with us.
What Happens After I Apply	Applications will be screened by the hackathon co-organizers based on the relevance, viability, and scalability of the use cases proposed. Selected teams will be: – Notified by August 16, 2024 – Invited to a virtual orientation on August 28, 2024	Application will be screened by the hackathon co-organizers based on the relevance, viability, and scalability of the use cases proposed.   Selected teams will be: – Notified by September 18, 2024 – Invited to a virtual orientation (date and time TBD)

Use Cases

Most participants are expected to be organizations currently using physical or digital driver’s licenses. They can benefit from CA mDLs for enhanced security, privacy, and cost-efficiency. Others may need to verify identities remotely, which CA mDLs can simplify. We prioritize applicants with practical use cases ready to move from hackathon to production quickly and encourage innovative ideas that benefit Californian residents and businesses.

Question & Answer

You can find the Hackathon FAQs here. If you have additional questions, please email them to hackathon@dmv.ca.gov.   The CA DMV hosted a public briefing on July 26 (see recording).

The hackathons are presented in partnership with the OpenID Foundation.

Expectations

This is not a typical ‘hackathon’.

Teams are expected to:

• Be composed of 3-5 members from no more than three organizations.
• Have at least 2 members to join the hackathons in person on the event days.
• Participate in at least one of the tracks of the hackathons.
• Complete all technical work and have use case presentations ready prior to the event days unless there are issues that require onsite support to address on the day.
• Have a fully functional technical flow for the verification and use of a CA mDL by using your own tooling or that provided by the CA DMV and its partners. Teams can propose complex use cases that involve the use of multiple credentials beyond CA mDLs as well as issuance of further credentials. However, for the parts beyond the verification and use of a CA mDL, teams are not expected to have the tech built out completely and can use wireframes in the final presentations to demonstrate the use cases fully.

Teams will be given:

• 4-6 weeks prior to the hackathon events to conduct technical development and prepare use case presentations.
• Technical tooling and support prior to and during the hackathon events.
• A limited number of test credentials on CA DMV Wallet for technical development and testing use.
• Materials and guidance (including judging criteria) to prepare for the final use case presentations.
• Time on the day of the events to finish any technical work left with onsite support provided by hackathon organizers and partners and finalize use case presentations.
• Time on the day of the events to test among each other and with tooling provided by the hackathon organizers to ensure everything functions properly.
• Time on the day of the events to engage with judges and VIP observers prior to use case presentations to get feedback.

Tracks and Tooling

Teams can participate in one or more of the following tracks of their choice to deliver their use cases. Tooling that can be made available for the hackathons will be released by mid/late August. Participants are welcome to use any tooling you have already built as well. Use of tooling provided by the hackathon organizers are not required.

Track 1	In-Person Presentation: – ISO mDL 18013-5: QR code or NFC – W3C Verifiable Credential (W3C VC): QR code only
Track 2	Online Presentation and Issuance: – W3C VC v1.1 (JWT) + OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance (OID4VCI) – W3C VC v1.1 (JWT) + OpenID for Verifiable Presentation (OID4VP)
Track 3	Online Presentation: – ISO 18013-7: mdoc + OID4VP
Track 4	Online Presentation: – Digital Credentials API: Wallet Selection

The hackathons are presented in partnership with the OpenID Foundation.

About CA DMV Wallet

In 2021, the California legislature authorized the CA DMV to conduct a pilot to evaluate the use of mDLs. Since then, the DMV has built a custom CA DMV Wallet and made the mDL platform agnostic, which improves accessibility by affording Californians additional choice in what devices they use and where they store and manage their online identities. In August 2023, the DMV introduced the pilot program to Californians. To date, over 500k California residents have provisioned a CA mDL and can use their digital identity to access various public and commercial services and applications.