Immigration Documents On Chain

[IMPACT]

PHASE ONE

This will be the initial research phase of this project with the goal being to provide a roadmap, a MVP, and documentation about developing a working implementation at an university.

Update 3/15/22: The more I continue to research this, the more it seems this proposal will look to other projects, such as RootsWallet (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/profile/3092424), to see about utilizing other open source efforts along with our own, and help expand upon other projects if we can by sharing information and collaborating. Our goal is to provide a repo and other forms of documentation to help an U.S. University handle incoming immigration documents that need verification from the University they are to attend.

The focus at first are immigration advisors at U.S. Universities that would use a homegrown developed system that could grab documents and credentials from a blockchain and decentralized cloud file storage system akin to IPFS, allow these advisors to then confirm the information in a "document check" phase, and then have the life cycle of this data exist for the duration of stay, until their SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System used in the U.S. for immigration compliance) program ends, and a grace period thereafter.

As opposed to focusing on a project that just develops this very end solution of itself: this phase of this project is just to research how best to go forward to develop the end solution. This solution should be open source so that colleges like M.I.T. can not only use it for their own solutions, but then contribute back to the project for it to begin to support its own life cycle.

The set of deliverables is publicly available document(s), relevant code, and public GitHub repos. KPIs are in the form of how useable these materials are to begin development by Atala PRISM and Plutus developers, and then also International Education offices and their IT support staff.

A survey to these stakeholders and volunteers about how useful this research is, how much it assisted with their development, how many hours of development/research did it save, and ultimately did this project help them produce an end solution for their international immigration document verification? These are the end results of this project everyone should expect.

The challenge is in the development. The Linux Foundation, Jim St. Clair, and many others have faced HIPAA compliance concerns, and this will concern FERPA compliance. Basically: how private can we make this decentralized approach to be? How to we improve over the current methods, and how? What are the established solutions already presented commercially by https://iamx.id/ , others, and how can our open source solution offer the same features and support that is community based?

[FEASIBILITY]

I have spent a year researching this myself. I just need to bring my research together with a few others, write white papers and provide a more formalized presentation of my scattered research that can be better consumed by others, collaborate with others (if they are available) such as Jim St. Clair to see what they have done in the medical field with medical records and handling HIPAA compliance.

$1800 for an open source roadmap and skeleton of a Atala PRISM based solution for intaking immigration documents at universities (primarily using United States based institutions as working models and examples).

The funds are to primarily pay others for consultancies, such as having some time with Jim St. Clair that has many experiences with medical records placed on chain, and I am still working on confirming these collaborations with others. I will update this proposal as I receive information from them.

In the very least, the budget provides myself funding to carve out time I can then use to put out various reports and materials based on my past research already completed. I can certainly provide the immigration document need of this project, and also provide what technical roadmaps I can see that I already intend to take unless this phase of research proves my approach incorrect. Although I hope I can volunteer all or much of my time, and use the funding in order to obtain information from others.

Steven Sevic

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevensevic/

CA/vCA, and have been involved in Catalyst since Fund 6.

Currently in IT support in International Education for the University of Arkansas, and as CTO of International Office Consulting. I both oversee data feeds to and from universities and the Department of Homeland Security in the United States. I have been a CA since Fund 6, and a CA/vCA since Fund 7, in Catalyst, and have been studying blockchain development for a few years.

Jim St. Clair

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimstclair/

Jim is a 2019 and 2020 FedHealthIT 100 winner, and is also active in the Healthcare Committee for the Government Blockchain Association, and member of the HIMSS Healthcare Blockchain Working Group. He is an advisor to multiple healthcare Blockchain start-ups, and guest lectures on Blockchain and technology at Universities and Industry.

Jim has worked with large and small companies focusing on Agile development and project management, cyber security and healthcare information technology. Prior to that, Jim was Senior Director for Interoperability at HIMSS, a cause-based, not-for-profit organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare.

Jim is a veteran and former naval officer, having served in both active and reserve capacity.

[AUDITABILITY]

GitHub, or other publicly and open sourced available resources, contributions in both document and source code is provided at the end of the project. Discord and other publicly available social media communities should also be formed to present these materials, and then for me to field questions thereafter.

Ultimate success is for an university in the United States to implement the research formed and presented by this project enough to have a prototype or a minimum viable product (MVP) produced at their institutions to then contribute back to the public project.

The basic successful process would be an international student or scholar, say from Rwanda, place their documents into this implemented system, the university to then confirm these documents and able to download them, and then for that university to use this system for this purpose to be confident to allow this student to continue their studies at their universities confident their international students or scholars are in positive immigration status.

This is an entirely new project and should be a foundation for others that will expand and continue this work.