AAMVA is pleased to announce the release of the newly revised 2009 DL/ID Card Design Standard (CDS). The work was carried out by a Special Task Force made up of jurisdictional and federal government members. The CDS provides for the design of driver licenses (DL) and identification (ID) cards and its intent is to improve the security of the DL/ID cards and the level of interoperability among cards issued by all North American jurisdictions.
The following is a brief summary of those areas of the new CDS document that are considered to be the more significant/remarkable changes:
- Information has been added that relates to DHS programs such as REAL ID and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) (enhanced DL). The way the information is referred to has been intentionally changed from “REAL ID” to “DHS” in light of pending changes from PASS ID and potentially other programs. This impacts both the human-readable and machine-readable aspects of the DL/ID cards and covers those items that have been identified as either requirements or recommendations (data, compliance mark, Machine Readable Zone (MRZ), etc.).
- Also added to the revised document is name guidance that is more harmonized with the pending new standard emerging from the Commercial Driver's License Information System (CDLIS) modernization work – this includes truncation guidance.
- An area that the task force received several comments on were physical description fields and opted to make those more 'representative' for the fields used for height/weight (feet and inches for human readable vs. just inches; and, weight in pounds or kilograms vs. a range).
- Another area of concentration has been the one that deals with card testing. The task force saw this as being a critical component of the plan on how to move towards compliance. This reflects a new more encompassing/holistic approach to testing – with the relevance of recommended tests being clearer now.
- The print quality requirement for two dimensional bar codes has been adjusted to bring it into line with the reading equipment standards – previously the AAMVA standard had been unnecessarily high.
- Lastly, errata from the 2005 v2.0 document have been fixed and areas like the one that addresses the AAMVA OVD (Optical Variable Device) have been changed from a mandatory component to an optional one.
Contact: Geoff Slagle, Director, Identification Standards
Statement Regarding DL/ID Samples
AAMVA does not provide sample DL/ID documents/specimens/exemplars from our principal membership - for questions related to such requests please contact the issuing authorities directly.