# NOVA for Governments: Electronic ID Document Vaults

Citizens securely upload their national ID document **once** to a personal, decentralized vault powered by NOVA. They retain full sovereignty, granting temporary access to public servants or government services as needed, and revoking it afterward, ensuring privacy, self-sovereignty, and revocable consent without centralized entity.

## Use Case

In a national electronic ID (eID) system, citizens upload a scanned or digitally issued national ID document **once** to their personal NOVA group (e.g., `myID`). The document is encrypted client-side and stored on IPFS, with metadata logged immutably on the NEAR blockchain.

When accessing a public service (e.g., tax filing, benefits application, or permit request):

* The citizen temporarily adds the public servant aas an authorized member to their personal group.
* The servant retrieves a TEE-secured group key via nonce-based authentication, decrypts the ID locally, verifies it, and provides the service.
* After completion, the citizen revokes access by removing the servant from the group, triggering automatic key rotation in Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs)—rendering any prior keys useless without re-encrypting or re-uploading the document.

This enables secure, privacy-preserving digital identification for government services while complying with principles like GDPR data minimization and user control. No permanent access is granted, and all actions are auditable on-chain.

## How NOVA matches the needs of government administration

* **User Sovereignty & Privacy**: Citizens control their own personal groups—no central authority holds keys or plaintext data. Encryption is end-to-end, with keys managed securely in TEEs (Shade Agents).
* **One-Time Upload**: ID documents are uploaded and encrypted once; access is managed dynamically via group membership changes.
* **Revocable, Temporary Access**: Add/remove members instantly; key rotation on revocation ensures forward secrecy without expensive re-encryption.
* **Verifiable Integrity**: File hashes and access logs are stored on NEAR for tamper-proof auditing and compliance.
* **Scalability & Low Cost**: NEAR's sharded blockchain handles millions of personal groups efficiently at minimal transaction fees.
* **Decentralized & Resilient**: No single point of failure—combines IPFS storage with blockchain logging and TEE key distribution.
* **Extensible for Selective Disclosure**: Future enhancements can split ID attributes into separate encrypted files for zero-knowledge proofs (e.g., prove age > 18 without revealing full ID).
* **Integration Ready**: Works with NEAR wallets for seamless citizen/servant authentication; suitable for web/mobile eID apps.

This approach transforms traditional centralized eID systems into a self-sovereign model, reducing risks of data breaches while streamlining public service delivery.

## Running the Demos

* Set .env file
* Rust: `cargo run --bin eID-demo.rs`.
* JS: `ts-node eID-demo.ts`.

Expected output:

```
Successful group creation, one-time encrypted upload, temporary access grant/verification, and clean revocation with key invalidation.
```


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://civictech-ou.gitbook.io/nova-docs/use-cases/government.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.