Proposal of improvements for the Digital COVID-19 Certificate

Abstract

Between the beginning and the first half of 2021, countries from the European Union have developed a system in an effort to return a normal life to its citizens. The approved and final solution is what is called the "Digital COVID-19 Certificate": the DCC is defined as a digital documentation that testifies a full vaccination, a negative test or a recovery from COVID-19. This certification is provided in the form of a QR code and it has to be checked, via apposite applications together with a valid ID, when the law requires it (for example when entering a restaurant or taking a flight), attesting that a person is not infected or is immunized against COVID-19. The density of the QR becomes an issue for example when this code is printed; we noticed that the official Italian verification app (VerificaC19) would struggle to get it right and multiple attempts were necessary to get it accepted and verified. The main focus of our work is to propose improvements to the DCC QR code and for that two possible ways are presented in this thesis. The first proposal is to provide a slenderer Digital Green COVID-19 Certificate QR code, without any modifications to its content but using a more efficient graphical representation: to achieve this result a web application has been provided, and a description of its components and how it operates is offered in this document. The second proposal is to provide a new different DCC payload, with less fields, while at the same time being compliant to the verification rules that are given in the official European specifications documentation: a description of the architecture and its software components that have been deployed as Proof-of-Concept is provided.