Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm your host, Derek Hudson. Essential Dynamics is a framework that I've developed I'm developing to help through think through tricky situations. And the Essential Dynamics podcast, we explore these ideas with, deep conversations with interesting people. I'm really excited to have Chris Labossiere here back on the show.
Derek:Chris is the CEO of We Know Training. And, last time we talked about his business and today I want to talk about the future. And Chris's organization is uniquely positioned to help us, to teach us a little bit about what one aspect of that future might contain. So first of all, Chris, welcome back. Thanks for being with me today.
Derek:So Chris, let's let me let me just set it up by asking you to run run, run, I don't know, explain We know training just a little bit, and then we wanna talk about what digital ID means to, to you and to all of us. So we know training.
Chris:We know training is a technology enabled company that delivers training in regulated industries. So we would issue hundreds of complete or, sorry, hundreds of thousands, probably close to a million completion certificates a year of people that are taking training from everything from health and safety training, to a real estate license training, continued education for an insurance sales rep, and hunter license for someone getting their hunting license or, somebody that just wants to become a server. They're 18, and they get their alcohol server certificate. So we basically facilitate online training across a whole number of different, industries across hundreds of websites. And at the completion of those training, we issue credentials, proof of competency.
Chris:And, and that's largely how we've become quite aware of what's happening relative to what we're gonna talk about, which is digital identities and digital verifiable credentials.
Derek:So my, my daughters in high school, worked as servers in restaurants. So they took the training. And so twenty years ago, what was that process like? They they would, get a card or something like that that they could show their new employer?
Chris:Yeah. The process, no different in most parts from what it is today. I mean, today, you have a maybe a digital version of that card, you know, which is really just a a modified image that has data attached to it. Back then, it would be a print print off wallet card or it'd be literally a wall certificate, or a diploma or certificate of completion. You know, so the analog version of those is still how it's done today.
Chris:Even if the training's digital, it it all almost always leads to a credential that you have to physically, you know, provide to demonstrate proof. And because we're in a digital age and digital credentials can be created and issued, you know, easily and, and and frauded and counterfeited easily, we have this problem of, real proof. In other words, real proof meaning the issuer of x certificate standing behind and verifying that that person is who they say they are and that they have met the standards for competency, whatever that is for their program. So so it's kind of a digital proof. And, you know, I don't wanna get into the technical components of it, but this is gonna be required for us to operate in the world as we go forward.
Chris:The world's gonna quickly start to ask for digital proof of things
Derek:and Sure.
Chris:So machines talking to machines.
Derek:So, almost four years ago, I completed my chartered accountant training and I got a certificate that I framed and, it's, I hang it on my wall sometimes. I have never been asked in all that time, are you really a chartered accountant? Now you can check with the which is now CPA Alberta. You can check with them and I think they have an online list where you can ask them, is so and so still a member in good standing? But I've never been asked for job applications or whatever.
Derek:I've never been asked. But you need to demonstrate it. And I think employers have increasing obligation to do their diligence to find out that an individual is certified to operate that piece of equipment or be in that kind of dangerous place or serve people alcohol. Right?
Chris:Yeah. So, you know, the the there always was a way to ultimately verify your competency and your license if there's a good standing because there's a regulated industry. But if you can think of, well, I could probably think of a hundred use cases. There'd be millions of use cases where it's not just proof of competency. It's proof of address, proof of driver's license, proof of, we all become accustomed to, vaccination status, a number of different things where, like, in parts of Europe, but I I think I wanna say Finland, but in some of the Scandinavian countries that, you know, children have had a digital identity.
Chris:Ultimately, and this is in the context of a citizen identity, so, you know, like our social insurance number and accumulating everything, in these the digital record of of their life, from education, obviously, academic performance to work experience to then things like credentials or, you know, certain skills that you have that become credentialed or, you know, require proof, but also just the ability to prove your identity in a situation where you wanna open a door or where you want to, you know, go we we do it now. You go to Starbucks. You take your Apple Wallet, and you open it up, and you use your phone to pay. Well, that's a verifiable digital credential, and it's been you know? So people are understand that use case, but it's gonna spread very, very rapidly.
Chris:And what's changed and what set this up to happen quickly now is the world agreed on certain standards. So the w three c, which is the standard setting organization, for the Internet. So they essentially create, manage, and maintain the protocols that the Internet works regardless of what country and what device you're on. You pull up a web address. It's got a unique protocol.
Chris:And and what you're gonna see is now that protocol has been agreed to, around digital identity and digital credentials. And, that that's been agreed to by countries, massive software organizations, the Apples, the Googles, the Facebooks. And now you're gonna start to see that protocol used for millions of things in our life. And, you know, as a trainer that issues credentials, you know, it's really important that our credentials meet this standard because the the of digital verifiable credentials, infinitely more secure and, safe and, you know, harder, impossible to counterfeit. And so for us, we just you know, we when we issue a credential, we expect it's gonna need to be meet the scrutiny of, of these standards.
Chris:And and it literally means, like, a machine to machine or machine to human relationship. And so when you get things like AI and you know, you're gonna have computing systems, protocols, determine, what you can if you can get in and out of a building, if you can take money out of your bank account, when you get your paycheck, how much should go to, you know, CPP and EI and you and and all those things are gonna be digitally programmed into accounting software, payroll systems, hardware, security systems. I mean, it's it's, it's almost almost limitless, and it's quite fascinating, and we're not ready for it. I mean, the world has not society in general has not prepared itself for what this will mean in terms of new opportunities, business opportunities, to probably the complete elimination of certain types of fraud and crime. So, depends on how far you wanna look at it.
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's let's talk about the society stuff, and then maybe we can move into our friend, the business owner. So some of this sounds like, the kind of thing that people who have maybe a little bit of a bent to, to conspiracy thinking is like, that's how they get you. They're gonna they're gonna, like, put a number on you and that's how they get you.
Derek:And I don't know as much about this as you do, but my response is in so many ways, they already got you. You've got a you've got a social insurance number. You've got a Facebook account, you've got a cell phone number. Somebody knows where you are all the time. And if you don't want that to happen, you'd opt out of a lot of, services and conveniences.
Chris:Society. You opt out of society. I mean, I I I think you you you could survive in the woods if you can kill your own food and somehow entertain yourself, I suppose. But the the point is you're right. Society is based on hundreds of years of, organizations, government, companies, institutions that manage databases.
Chris:They didn't do it electronically in the past. Now we manage databases electronically, but everything is in a database. And those are ultimately centralized databases based on the mandate of that organization that has that information. So if you're sharing your information with Starbucks to have your Starbucks card, you're doing that willingly. And then if your your government keeps track of your social insurance number, your tax records, your health database, this is not to replace that.
Chris:It it will dramatically increase the security of that by essentially creating a protocol for who has access to that information. If you are an owner of that information, how you manage it, and then how you will, you know, allow an individual to maintain their sovereignty in terms of their private information. So, essentially, all these old databases will, you know, eventually evolve to be, I will take my digital identity. It will be verified to be me, and this is happening across the world right now. It's happening in provinces.
Chris:If you're in Alberta where we are, you have my Alberta health ID. You have these things where they verify your identity. They send you something to your home. They use you know, you got a PIN number. So they they've made made sure that once they've connected that digital now that digital instance of you in that case is a login for that website, and they verified my ID.
Chris:Well, that's one example of a digital ID, but there'll be others. And and and and and and and what what the what the change is coming is going to dramatically, improve will be the interoperability of how this works. So, you'll have a digital wallet on your phone with digital wallets like your Apple Wallet or like your, you know, we use micro we're the only training company in the world right now that's publishing credentials into Microsoft's authenticator, which is a digital wallet that if you are in a workplace that requires Microsoft to authenticate your identity or two factor authentication, we're pushing credentials in there based on the new standard. And this standard is essentially a set of encryption, that allows this information to be shared between point to point, so between the government and and and a company or between, a company like Starbucks and, at its store, the point of sale machine that's, you know, checking your phone to see if you have enough points to to buy or money to buy that coffee. It's it's all it's actually a standard set of encryption in the way that these things talk to each other that actually is encrypted and and virtually impossible to, you know, to corrupt and to attack.
Chris:And so what what I mean by this will be more secure is I'll own my digital identity. Every Canadian, every person on the planet eventually will own their digital identity. There's three roles to this system of a verifiable credential. There's the issuer. That would be in our case, we know trains an issuer because we sell train, and we issue credentials.
Chris:But an issuer could be a driver's license authority. It could be Hunter education. It could be, you know, someone decides that, you know, the security company is gonna be an issuer for people that have a security badge. The issuer will just stand behind at the credential. The person meets the standard to hold that credential, whatever that is.
Chris:And then there's the holder of the credential. That's the, you know, the second person that's that's usually an individual, but where it gets weird is it could be a machine. And and, really, it's just a holder of the credential. They are the person who has that credential. It's been issued to them, and then you have the verifier.
Chris:And those three things make a framework. And all that's happening is now the world's agreed on the communication protocols for how I could take my digital badge, which has my sorry. I could take my digital wallet, which has my credentials in it, and it's already verified to my identity. And now I'm, you know, I'm just the wall just holds all the credentials I've been issued. And but if I tap a machine, like, where we're going with this is, you know, without a doubt, I'm gonna get a credential when I'm an employee at OuinoTraining.
Chris:I'm gonna buy a a security system from a local security vendor, and they're basically gonna require that that credential just taps the door to let somebody in. And the machine in that case will be the verifier of that credential. It's all based on encryption, and it's connect and, of course, now if you're if you're a central if you're the owner of a database, so let's say you're an insurance company and you have customers that buy insurance products from you. Well, you're gonna be responsible under new legislation, and it's coming to Canada very quickly, bill bill 27, I think it is. That's similar to the legislation in Europe right now, GDPR, which is meant to strengthen and dramatically increase the way people's private information is treated.
Chris:So if you're that insurance company, you're gonna have all these customers in filing cabinets. Well, now you're gonna have to digitally store that information in in a way that has to meet this standard. And then when you share when that insurance company maybe sends me what was my pink card back in the day, now it's gonna be a verifiable credential that nobody can steal my private information off of, and I'll simply just use that as a proof. And so a verifier in that case might be a police officer on the side of the road. So, you know, it's really about how machines talk to each other.
Chris:That that's actually what's happening here. It's it's it's a way for machines to interoperably communicate with each other, and but my personal information, my training record, maybe my credentials, let's say I have a NexSys card. Well, I can go through different things at the airport with a NexSys card. Well, not everyone has that credential. If I have it in my digital wallet, I'm gonna be able to, you know, hopefully, transverse through the the airport ecosystem without ever gonna pull that out.
Chris:And for the person that's accepting me as a nexus cardholder, they're relying on the issuer, which in that case would be the border services agencies that says, yeah. Chris is good. And so, it's almost an infinite amount of use cases that we're gonna see happen here, but when it comes to proof of training, it's obvious. Like, I want I want someone to have real digital proof verified electronically by the issuer that Joe Smith has his hunting license before Joe's walking around in the trees with a gun in his
Derek:hand. Yeah.
Chris:And and and the public safety aspect of this is huge, but but I think where we're gonna see the real things will be savings and the way it automates certain things in the workplace, the way it automates certain things, in society that we're used to, having to kinda go back and forth through this old catalog process to prove that we're competent or prove that we are who we say we are.
Derek:Yeah. The way the way I think about it is you can't go too far before you have to tell someone your address and your date of birth. And, now they have your address and their date of birth, and they don't need it, but they need to know that you're a different person than someone with a similar name.
Chris:Correct. Yeah. So if you think about the impact just of creating accounts on websites and logging into certain things, that's a nightmare. Right? We have hundreds of passwords we have to remember that are ultimately verifying us.
Chris:And if there's two factor authentication, we've already maybe answered or verified something in an email. You won't it won't be very long before none of that will be necessary. You you won't have to remember passwords. You won't have to create an account. You'll simply just share your encrypted digital identity through a key, and and you you that is how the database will see you.
Chris:And that's that's why it's significantly more private than the conspiracy theorist big brother stuff, which is, now these organizations are gonna have this all this information on me. It's quite the opposite. There'll be a day where a bank won't have your private information, but you'll be able to bank because you'll have the key. And that key will be yours, and you'll be total sovereign in what they call self sovereign control of your digital identity. And, now it's going to eliminate a lot of things that bad people in society, loopholes and gaps that they can defraud and take advantage of.
Chris:That's gonna disappear. It's gonna be very, very challenging to cheat on your taxes. And that's probably got a bonafide social conversation behind it about, you know, how much should the government, you know, be able to prevent me from cheating on my taxes. But I think that we can see that, you know, that there's not a lot of empathy generally for that. I mean, I think it's it's it will make life harder for people trying to defraud or, you know, navigate the system in an unethical way.
Derek:So are there any as you thought about this, are there any things that, individual consumers, individuals should be preparing for or thinking about?
Chris:I, you know, I I I think there's gonna be a wave of awareness that has to occur. We're working on a big project with one province. I won't say which, where we issue about 80,000 credentials a year for a training program on behalf of the government. We will be issuing digital verifiable credentials. I think it'll be the first use case of that in Canada, at least for a province.
Chris:And, you know, we recognize and the province recognizes that we have to really focus on awareness, education around what this is and what it means. So I think people that can educate themselves, that's that's an important first step. I think data integrity or, you know, just the hygiene of data, like, you know, starting to really think about, how you how you're aware of and you kinda organize or, I guess, your personal information and data. So it's it's consistent and and it's clean and it makes sense because we all know computers aren't perfect, but they just do everything exactly as they would expect to do. And if you have a capital here and you don't have a capital there and the way you spell your name or something like that, that could be so I think data will be important.
Chris:And I think just generally being aware of the fact that virtually everything you do will have a, a digital entry, a binary encrypted digital entry that, you know, to think about the use case of all those things, I guess, just making sure that you're you're conscious to that. But, I I don't think you know, I'm I'm being a bit bold here to say, I don't think the general public's gonna know this is happening tonight because I generally don't think like, they accept these things. It's happening. We've been doing this for for decades. If you think about using your credit card to pay for something, it's been probably three decades since that was a real time query of a database.
Chris:Yeah. You know, before then, it was the paper slips. And if you were like me when I was 18 and you're kinda getting by and paycheck to paycheck and you're like, oh, there's no computer here. I could use my credit card, and I've got three weeks to before they figure out I don't have the money to pay it off so I can so I can, put some money in my account. Well, you know, we've been living for at least, I'm sure, twenty five, thirty years where there's a database that tells us in a microsecond if I have the money or not, so give me the product.
Chris:So we're we people will just not realize that it's gonna be it's gonna become, based on these new standards of, digital and encrypted data as opposed to a record that goes to a central database that you know, those are unsecure. Those these data we hear about data breaches all the time. Organizations have to manage people's identities. For whatever reason, the risk of a data breach there is massive. So that's why this is happening is because eventually, those databases won't actually have data that you can read or understand.
Chris:It'll just be it'll be data that is anonymized and encrypted in a way that it's just it's just a string of text that, that says yes or no. Is it binary? And and that's why this is important for machine machine and AI instances we can't even imagine today.
Derek:So so, the thing that consumers can do, I guess, to advocate for themselves is to expect that the government services and the businesses that they patronize, are respecting their data because it's coming, this kind of legislation, and to to, to expect to get the full benefit of that sovereignty over our own data. And then, I think we we talked about sort of for business owner, flip side, you have to do better at data hygiene, protecting individual data, suppliers, customers, employees, because the requirements will be that at some point, there will be auditable standards that the bot can come in and check and make sure you're doing your job. Is that right?
Chris:Yeah. And, you know, this is gonna affect every part of a business and and also just be ready for that. You know, we have a large software application as you know, and millions of people interacting with that, and have accounts on that platform. And, you know, we need to it's not just that our credentials going out the back end meet the standard. It's going to be that ultimately the the standard we use for enrolling and maintaining information about users will also meet that standard.
Chris:So I think it'll come through the form of the legislation that we see start to emerge around privacy and, you know, generally protecting the public's interest. So, yeah, I I it's gonna be an it's gonna be a very fascinating, you know, evolution that will probably just be accepted by most citizens, will be fought by some, but will be probably widely misunderstood by most. And that's why I like talking about it is because, I see the benefit to society as dramatic, for a number of reasons. And, we have but we're an industry where, you know, someone who can counterfeit or, you know, void what's necessary to properly train themselves, so others going around the system in some way or another, we can eliminate that. It can eliminate senseless loss of life and, you know, accidents or, you know, undesirable outcomes with, you know, the in in industries where the training makes a difference.
Chris:So so for us, it's an example of a new standard that we happily endorse and accept because it just makes the quality of everything more impactful.
Derek:Awesome. Well, Chris, thanks for this glimpse glimpse into the future. I'm I'm really fascinated by this. And one of the things I'm thinking of for the podcast is what other future topics should we bring in from time to time because it just kinda gets the mental juices flowing. So I I really appreciate your, sharing that with us from your unique perspective.
Derek:So, Chris, you're at, we know training.ca. Is that the the website?
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm, chris dot laboss here at we know train.ca and then, you know, Twitter or x or whatever it's called at the at this moment in time, chris laboss here at chris laboss here. And I love I love chatting with people about this because it's such a small, tiny subset of the community that still gets this and, but it's gonna come so fast. We we we within a matter of a year, I think we'll be issuing 6 figures worth of digital verifiable credentials, and nobody even knows what that means.
Chris:So it's kinda cool.
Derek:So you've averted one apocalypse and apocalypse scenario I've had in my hand, which is there's gonna be one day when we get up. And because of the new account that we entered into last night, we overload. We can't remember any of our passwords, and everything shuts down. The plane planes fall from the sky because no one can remember their password. So this is gonna fix that.
Chris:Yeah. I I guess you'd have to lose your digital identity, and, obviously, governments will be responsible for making sure that we can avoid that. And you're gonna see this government circle under you know, the federal government has a program underway today for every individual Canadian and every individual business to have a digital, identity. And that's a project that started about a year and a half ago, and it's in pilot. And, you know, we're partnered with a company that's part of that pros process.
Chris:So it's coming, and it's, you know, how it gets used and when it gets used first and things like that. But, you know, I think industry tends to adopt things faster. And so, you know, the fact that we're issuing credentials into Microsoft Authenticator for anyone that's familiar with Office or Office three sixty five, the active directory, and, you know, when I get onboarded in my company, I get an identity. That's where we're gonna see it spread fast. And, so the adoption will be forced upon us.
Chris:And, you know, and, governments maybe will actually be hard and take a long time to catch up in some use cases. Like, they'll probably be in terms of the utility of this, they're probably the last to catch up, but ultimately having to be responsible for this. It's it's them setting the, you know, setting the firing off the start up.
Derek:Awesome. Well, this this has been great. So Chris DeBlass here, Reno Training. Thank you very much. Bring Griffiths in the studio.
Derek:Thank you for your work. I'm Derek Hudson, and, you can find me and and my team at get unconstrained dot com. And until next time, consider your quest.
Chris:This series is proudly produced by the team at Road fifty five. Road fifty five creates content that connects. For more information, check our website, www.road55.