John Phillips
John Phillips July 20, 2022 Digital Trust Government

Sezoo and Identity Woman in Business to release joint posts for Government Agencies

July 18, 2022

Sezoo and Identity Woman in Business are planning to publish some joint posts that we think will be important to government agencies looking for digital transformation using open standards and decentralised models of trust. Here’s why…

For the last few months, we have been discussing our experiences and shared interests in the growing global demand being shown by government agencies around the world for better ways to provide and enable digital services for their citizens and organisations.

As independent organisations based in the US and Australia, we have been asked to support several of these initiatives at various stages of maturity, from initial considerations to procurement and execution. Given our expertise, reputations and shared passions, most of the engagements have involved strategic implementations of digital trust services leveraging open standards like Verifiable Credentials and Decentralised Identifiers, both defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). (If you are new to the concept of open standards, here is a podcast explaining it simply by Kaliya Young, one of our co-authors.)

One of the emerging patterns that we see is that more and more government agencies will be exploring the use of these standards for the government’s own digital interests as well as providing tools for commercial solutions. We think this is a good thing. We also see that this will create a demand for good advice, and good solutions, and risk of poor or ill informed advice and ill-fitting and/or mis-represented solutions.

Technology is too often presented by a vendor or a vendor community anxious to make sales as a panacea to a problem, typically that means the presenter doesn’t understand the technology or the problem, and sometimes both.

We believe that there are sensible, practical approaches that make use of global, open standards that will work well now and into the future and that will enable privacy, agency and security for individuals and organisations and protect government agencies and their citizens from vendor lock-in and solution regret.

Both of our organisations are committed to enabling a better future for all peoples. Understanding, choosing and using the right technology in the right way is one critical element in making this future possible.

So we decided that we will jointly publish a series of blog posts to help people in government agencies who are considering how they might better enable digital trust in the lives, society and economy of their citizens using open standards and related digital technologies.

Our plan is to publish these posts in what we see as a logical order: start with the why, then explain the how(s). There is much to write about in this area, and we’re happy to hear your thoughts on order and priority for content.

John Phillips, Jo Spencer, Kaliya Young, Lucy Yang

About the Author
John Phillips
John Phillips John believes that there are better models for digital trust for people, organisations, and things on a global scale. He sees verifiable credentials, trustworthy communication, and trustworthy identifiers as a disruptive force for change for good, and wants to be a catalyst for that change, helping people and organisations navigate their way to a better future.

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