Verifying Legal Status

One of the major issues to come out of the 2008 legislative session may be tied to digital identity, how to verify the status of individuals. In this case, it deals primarily with the legal status of aliens. SB 81 requires, for example, that the DABC verify the legal status of someone to be in the country before providing a liquor license. It requires that a public agency verify that a contractor is using "Status Verification System" to determine legal status of its employees when using the services of that contractor. There are two federal systems that I am aware of at the federal level (and this must be federal) that could do that, e-Verify and EVVE. As far as I can tell so far, e-Verify is for use by employers who must document such. So it does not meet the needs for some of the requirements outlined in SB 81. Federal and State agencies communicate with the EVVE system via an XML message called a Vital Event Transaction (VET). The federal and/or state agency generates a request to be sent to the EVVE hub using the VET format. I'm not sure if EVVE is fully designed to meet the requirements specified in the bill. Both options have the potential to be the Status Verification System. We need to determine if either one of them will actually do the job.

• Plan detailing how Massachussetts plans to use EVVE for citizenship verification
• This AAMVA presentation gives you an idea where EVVE is headed
• Perhaps the TSA ID card system will help
  By the way, TSA has a new blog, and it's getting lots of comments
  And here is TSA's Technology Strategy
  
• Some people want to implant a chip under the skin of guest workers

Capitol Hill

The Capitol Preservation Board has installed a counter on their website counting down the days until the Capitol Grand Opening. It will be nice if we can ever get this place looking respectable again!

The Utah Senate majority is doing a good job keeping their blog updated with new content.

Not to be outdone, the Utah House has a blog of their own, but it hasn't had a post since August.

Representative Craig Frank shares his opinions in a podcast.

Although we're still over two weeks away from the session, several dozen bills have already been numbered for the 2007 General Session. Should be a busy year, especially with the big surplus that is available.

I now have all the State parks tagged. Take a look.
RSS Feed

Someone named Wayoff has been tagging all the state capitol buildings. Too bad he hasn't included photos of the buildings. Perhaps that is a future project.