In Canada, starting a new business can be like navigating a maze with three levels: local, provincial, and federal. A helpful checklist on starting a business in Canada offers 60+ links to explore. All this red tape frustrates entrepreneurs and governments alike.
To lighten that burden, teams from the governments of British Columbia (BC), Ontario and Canada have started an ambitious project to fight red tape using decentralized identities and trusted credentials. They are jointly building the Verifiable Organizations Network (VON), to provide an open source software stack that helps business people establish trusted and enduring digital identities and speed up applying for permits and licenses from government agencies.
The first project to emerge is OrgBook BC, an online directory that makes finding authentic and authoritative data about companies faster and easier. Launched in January of 2019, it is designed to reduce the time to do due diligence on a new supplier or client from hours down to a few seconds.
Of course the path to this launch included a number of key development challenges, strategic technology choices and partnership across governments and the larger Hyperledger community. For more on all of these steps, check out this detailed case study.
Now that OrgBook BC is live, the VON goals are expanding the applications, growing the footprint and encouraging more jurisdictions to use the software stack until the network effect takes hold. To get the larger developer and business community engaged, the team is hosting BootCampBC as part of #BCTechSummit. The Honourable Jinny Sims, Minister of Citizens’ Services and MLA for Surrey-Panorama, will be opening the event, underscoring the government’s commitment to driving the growth and adoption of VON.
BootcampBC, hosted by technology leaders from Hyperledger Indy, Verifiable Organizations Network (VON) and the Sovrin Foundation, will cover the concepts of self-sovereign identity and guide participants through building their own Hyperledger Indy agent to verify and issue verifiable credentials using VON’s technology.