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Month: May 2018

Creating a Digital Fingerprint

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In this week’s episode, we explore how blockchain technology can help you create a digital fingerprint. Blockchain technology can help secure that personal information and empower users to control their own identity and share it between trusted entities with meaningful consent. Innovators in Canada are leading the way in building digital identity solutions on the blockchain. Blockchain can change the game in a digital age where many believe the notion of privacy is dead.

 

Our guests on this week’s episode are:

  • Andre Boysen, Chief Identity Officer, SecureKey
  • Joni Brennan, President and CEO, Digital Identity and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC)
  • Franklin Garrigues, Vice President, Digital Channel, TD Bank

 

Views expressed do not necessarily represent those of Navigator or its affiliates. 

A portion of our discussion with Andre Boysen is transcribed below. Subscribe here to have the Navigator’s latest insights delivered right to your inbox.

Clare: Andre could you tell our listeners a little bit about your companies origin story and how you first got involved in this space.

Andre: Yeah. SecureKey’s been working with banks to solve the online delivery service challenge for quite some time. And so what we started in this program is we’re helping the Government of Canada solve a problem they had and the challenge that the Government of Canada has is they have very important services to deliver online. The challenge is that Clare and Andre and everybody else who comes to their website doesn’t do it very often. And so the challenge is you can’t remember your password. And so the Government was locked in this challenge where they have a high value service that Canadians want but people can’t remember the password and so people are getting locked out which was frustrating, it was also very expensive for the government and so working with the banks so they came together to build a service that allows Canadians use their bank account to get to the government and that service has been quite successful and I can take you through some of the key elements.

One of the key reasons those service was adopted and accepted by Canadians is because we introduced in the service the notion of triple blind privacy which says when I use my bank account to get the government that the bank doesn’t get to see the online service I’m trying to access and the government in its place knows I came from a Tier 1 bank in Canada but they don’t get to see which bank I came from and certainly not my bank account details. Our company SecureKey which operates the network, we don’t know who they are we don’t have any personal identical identifiable information.

Clare: SecureKey has done a lot of good work with the government of Canada and IBM to build a digital identity network. But the goal of helping citizens access e-services. Could you tell us a little bit more about how that works and what types of services it covers.

Andre:  Sure. So The challenge today is for high value services things like government, getting a new bank account, or a new cell phone, or health care insurance. The challenge we have today is we can’t deliver these services on the Internet. We require you to come in for a counter visit to get to the service the first time and then we make we give you a user id and password. So the challenge with that is that as we try to grow the economy and make it more digital these in person visits are one not convenient for consumers and two they’re very expense. Any given counter visit for one of these industry players would be you know half hour to 45 minutes at the counter to photocopy your documents and sign the papers and whatnot. And that’s expensive depending what industry, that’s 50 to 75 dollars. And so the opportunity with a network like this is to take the cost down from 50 to 75 dollars down to two or three dollars. And you know a bank or a telephone company is happy to see that reduction in cost but more importantly because we can do this online now we can take the cost down but even better we can automate compliance. We can demonstrate the documents are real. We can demonstrate they belong to the person who’s presenting them and we can verify they haven’t altered since they were created. So this creates a level of integrity we can’t even do in person today. And so that’s the opportunity for business. The opportunity for Canadians is to allow you to prove you who you are and get the services you want online.

NAFTA Clock Is Ticking

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Colin MacDonald and Sally Housser join CTV News’ True North Politics to weigh in on NAFTA as high level talks resume in Washington. Plus: Trans mountain pipeline poll reveals how many Canadians support the expansion.

Aired on CTV News on May 7

Toxic Trump A Long-Term Threat To The Presidency

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In the early 20th century, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the office of the President as a “bully pulpit.” Many have described the ability to speak to the nation from behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office as the most significant power a president has. Trump has, in my view, put that power at risk, writes Jaime Watt.

The daily outrages have grown tiresome. What was once shocking has become less and less interesting.

U.S. President Donald Trump‘s behaviour and the craziness surrounding his office – porn stars, law enforcement raids on his personal lawyer’s office, the bald-faced lies – have become the “new normal.”

But even as we all grow numb to the chaos, serious, long-term trouble lurks.

The seriousness, respect and responsibility that comes with the Office of the President of the United States is being eroded by the day.

According to Gallup, trust in institutions and the political process is at an all-time low. In fact, all American governmental institutions now experience trust levels below 50 per cent.

And Trump and his antics are not helping.

It’s important that the public has trust in public institutions. According to the World Economic Forum, “strong institutions empower economies by ensuring a stable operating environment,” whereby confidence in the institutions of civil society is what differentiates advanced economies from developing ones.

The president’s behaviour puts this balance at risk.

What’s more, there is no reason to think anything will happen to prevent all this from continuing.

First, Trump was elected as a direct result of the diminished trust Americans have in the institutions that govern them. Trumppromised to be different, and that he certainly is.

Second, Trump is delivering to his supporters exactly what he promised them. He has railed against Washington elites, spurred job growth, cut taxes and protected workers from trading partners everywhere. He may also have scored a diplomatic victory in Korea, something that, shockingly, has put him, according to the pundits, on the Nobel Peace Prize short list.

If Trump‘s behaviour and, by extension, the chaos surrounding his administration is giving him the desired results, why would he change?

Furthermore, why would an eventual successor to the office of the presidency change course? The U.S. must confront the question of whether a president can lie, tamper with the justice system and meddle in criminal investigations without consequence.

James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States and its fourth president, famously said that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” And while I don’t believe for a moment Madison ever imagined a President Trump when he wrote that, it does highlight that the presidency was designed by the framers of the Constitution to withstand strong headwinds.

I agree with Madison. I believe that the institution – and America itself – can withstand a rogue player. That said, I remain extremely concerned about the long-term consequences of this pattern of behaviour.

In the early 20th century, U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt referred to the office of the president as a “bully pulpit.” A place where, when the president spoke, the country and, in fact, the world listened. A place from which to chart the nation’s agenda.

Many have described the ability to speak to the nation from behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office as the most significant power a president has.

Since Roosevelt, the bully pulpit has been used to bring the nation together in times of challenge. Think 9/11, the Challenger disaster or the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. At times such as those, the nation coalesced around the bully pulpit to hear their president.

Trump has, in my view, put that power at risk.

The ability to appeal to the greater good, to the country’s better angels, comes not through the exercise of brute power, but through moral suasion. Without a moral compass, that is not possible.

In the short term, it may look like the president has had several successful weeks in terms of domestic and international policy. In fact, his antics may be giving him the short-term wins his supporters and admirers seek.

Yes, in the short term, such a politician can be portrayed as a welcome bull in the china shop filled with china that needs to be broken, someone who can finally get things done, a “different” politician.

But the long-term damage tells a different story; allegiance to this kind of politics will take us to a very unhappy place.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.