11/5/21 ATARC: Blockchain technology for voting in elections can deliver benefits

The Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) provides professional development and collaborative forums for Federal government, academia and industry to identify, discuss and resolve emerging technology challenges.

The Blockchain Working Group has recently completed a White Paper which explores how using blockchain technology for voting in elections can benefit the United States by creating more efficient, transparent processes which increase both voter participation and overall trust in government.

Don't miss this great session covering a voting solution using blockchain

The Working Group team:

• Michael Bailey, Assistant Professor of IT, Utah State University
• Lindsay Ellsworth, ATARC Blockchain Working Group Advisor Chair
• Bill Rockwood, ATARC Blockchain Working Group Government Chair, Rep. Soto
• Frederic de Valux, VP,  Prometheus Computing
• Jim St. Clair, Chief Trust Officer, Lumedic
• Eric Burger, Senior Technology Advisor, Georgetown University
• Nicole Mandes, Working Group Project Manager, ATARC
• Gabriel Irizarry, Executive Security Architect, IBM

White Paper: Enhancing Democracy and Strengthening Governance Using Blockchain Technologies 

Great (robust0 research study on
Blockchain Compliance with Federal Cryptographic Information Processing Standards

ATARC - Working Groups

This session video: Blockchain technology for voting in elections

10/8  Connect ID 2021 Conference - Identity Technology Updates

recording link

pssig-211008-discussion-ConnectID-conference-new-identity-technologies.mp4

Speaker  Jim Mason

Attended Connect ID 2021 for 2 days 10/5 and 10/6.

Many vendors, sessions on identity, recognition ( biometric, facial ).

Government officials shared challenges they have now on threats, risks, technologies, integrations

Connect-ID 2021 Conference Link

7/30 NFTs - Non-Fungible Tokens: What, Why, Use cases, Legal concepts

Recording link

Agenda

Join us for an open discussion on key NFT  concepts, use cases and regulations

• NFT concepts
• NFT use cases - what's yours?
• Governance concepts
• US regulation of Digital Assets and Tokens
• State of Wyoming Digital Asset Regulations
• Liechtenstein Digital Asset Regulations
• Bring your ideas on implementations and examples to add to the discussion

Speaker Jim Mason

Blockchain, Data Services Practice Leader: Paramount Software, Sky Web Team

Jim is a leader of the Hyperledger Public Sector SIG and a Member of Expert Panel at EU Blockchain Observatory & Forum

Jim's experience covers roles as Practice Leader, Product Manager, Architect and Director at Paramount, Citizens Bank, Fidelity and IBM

Meeting recording:  

Meeting slide deck: NFT-US-legal-notes-v1-jmason.pdf

7/2  Liz Tanner - Rhode Island on track for digital government with identity blockchain

Meeting recording:  _pssig-210702-Liz-Tanner-Digital-Governement-RI.mp4

Meeting slide deck:  pssig-210702 Blockchain presentation July 2 2021-FINAL.pdf

Session Overview

Better government is built on digital government. A core foundation for digital government is digital identity and credentials.

Liz Tanner, Director of the Department of Business Regulation in Rhode Island, leads the drive for efficiency and digital government for the State.

Liz's session will cover

• How we got here in State government
• How she found digital government opportunities and strategies in the State
• The POC project she led delivering identities and credentials for individuals and businesses driving efficiencies and building trust
• The enabling technologies: Self-Sovereign Identity, Hyperledger Indy & Aries
• The roadmap and next steps

Key takeaways include: understanding a digital government transformation process, Self-Sovereign Identity and blockchain value add

Liz Tanner Bio 

Elizabeth Tanner was appointed Director of the Department of Business Regulation in November 2017 under Governor Gina Raimondo. She oversees the regulating and enforcement of all Financial Services, The State Fire Marshal’s office (including the Bomb Squad), The State Building Office, Office of Cannabis Regulation, Gaming and Athletics and a wide variety of professional licenses. She serves as a board member to Rhode Island Housing and is believed to be the only female Boxing Commissioner in the United States.

Known as a problem solver and a fierce advocate for governmental efficiency, Liz is well recognized for her efforts to make it easier to do business in Rhode Island. Liz began her governmental career in 2015 with the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation where she worked closely with small businesses. She was known for listening to and working to resolve the concerns raised by businesses in hundreds of events and meetings she attended or hosted.

Prior to civic duty, Liz owned and operated her own law firm focused on real estate and corporate law. She was also a part owner of a title clearing business which was acquired by its national competitor and served as an auditor and trainer in the title insurance industry while she raised her two children.

A graduate of the University of Rhode Island and Western New England University Law School, Liz has also received training from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

May 21st - Indicio - Cardea: a Verifiable Credential for Health

Meeting Link 

https://zoom.us/my/hyperledger.community?pwd=STZQd0xMZU9xRVVOVnpQM3JNQ2dqZz09

Cardea is a complete, open-source ecosystem for the exchange of privacy-preserving digital health credentials, which recently became a project at Linux Foundation Public Health. SITA, together with Indicio.tech and the Aruba Health Department, are trialing the Aruba Health App, a pilot built on Cardea that makes it easy for visitors to share a credential based on their health status privately and securely through their mobile device.Join Indicio for this AMA style event where we describe what Cardea is, why we open sourced this technology, and the growing list of use cases, including public health authorities, governments, organizations, and industries that can use Cardea to interoperate with one another. We will also demonstrate how this technology enables people to maintain their privacy while holding and using an easily verifiable, trustworthy, unalterable proof of a health test or vaccination.

Heather Dahl, CEO of Indicio

Heather C. Dahl is a widely-respected thought leader in digital identity technology and news media with over 25 years of strategic leadership experience in newsrooms, multinational corporations, and high-tech startups.

As the CEO of the professional services firm Indicio.tech, Heather brings with her a deep knowledge of decentralized and self-sovereign identity and go-to-market strategy from her time as CEO of the Sovrin Foundation.

With graduate degrees from Columbia University and Johns Hopkins Business School, she is a committed advocate for privacy-preserving cybersecurity technologies.

Ken Ebert, CTO of Indicio

Prior to Indicio.tech, Ken was the Sovrin Foundation Software Architect and Open Standards Engineer providing improved functionality and interoperability, such as rich schema support for the Sovrin ecosystem, while also editing community efforts to build and deploy the software. He was focused on open standards, such as the Verifiable Credentials and DID specifications, and promotion of the adoption of and compliance with standards at Sovrin. He is currently working on Verifiable Credentials standards work and Architect for rich schemas.

Ken formerly held positions as Chief Technology Officer, Perfect Search/IMAT Solutions, Senior Manager Software Development/Senior Software Architect at Symantec, Founder/Director of Engineering for Senforce, Consulting Engineer at 3COM, Senior Software Engineer for Vinca/Legato, Senior Software Engineer at Novell, Consulting Engineer for IBM/Ford Computing Center, and Member of Technical Staff for ITT Advance Technology Center.

Ken holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Brigham Young University.

May 5th - Alastria mission to promote the digital economy with the Hyperledger community

Hyperledger In Depth: Alastria– Understanding their mission to promote the digital economy and how the Hyperledger community is involved

May 5 @ 9:00 am - 10:00 am PDT

Register here: https://www.hyperledger.org/event/hyperledger-in-depth-alastria-understanding-their-mission-to-promote-the-digital-economy-and-how-the-hyperledger-community-is-involved

Alastria is a non-profit association that promotes the digital economy through the development of decentralised ledger technologies/Blockchain. During this session, you will get an overview of Alastria, learn about the work the Alastria consortium has been doing since 2018, the benefits of using the Alastria networks, learn about production use cases and see how you can get involved. You will also get an overview of their platform agnostic approach, and specifically Network-B (Hyperledger Besu released Feb 2020) and Network-H (Hyperledger Fabric release March 2019) that is available to Alastria members.

Brian Behlendorf, Hyperledger Executive Director will moderate the Q&A session- so please come ready to ask your questions!

Register Now.

May 7th - Good Health Pass Overview - Todd Gehrke - ID2020.org

Good Health Pass Collaborative ( GHPC ) is an open, inclusive, cross-sector initiative, bringing together leading companies and organizations from the technology, health, and travel sectors. Our members are creating a blueprint for interoperable digital health pass systems and building a safe path to restore international travel and restart the global economy.

The session includes: 

• Short Overview of ID2020 organization and digital ID concepts
• Review the collaborative work and the 8 drafting groups. 
• Focus on the trust framework and trust registries
• What GHPC needs from the public sector, the need for regulation 

Speaker: Todd Gehrke, Chief Architect at ID2020.org 

 Chief architect at ID2020, Todd is an experienced software engineer and solutions architecture, specializing in Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) & Privacy; Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

Meeting recordings

SLIDES 210507-Todd-Gehrke-Good-Health-Pass-Hyperledger-Public Sector SIG.pdf

RECORDING _pssig-210507-Todd-Gehrke-Good-Health-Pass.mp4

If you're interested in becoming a Trust Over IP member:

https://trustoverip.org/members/join/

April 23rd -  DLT and Business Eco-System - Aleksandar Zelenovic - Publicis Sapient

Building distributed ledger is an interesting undertaking, but creating business value is a much higher priority. Blockchain/DLT should be viewed as part of the comprehensive digital transformation and one of the potential building blocks. The session will explore blockchain eco-system, creation of bus. value, networked bus. processes and user experience.

Come learn great ideas for delivering real business value for all parties in your ecosystem.

Aleksandar Zelenovic - Digital and Business Transformation Executive

• Aleksandar focuses on creating long-lasting value at the intersection of technology, innovation and business.
• He holds an MBA from MIT Sloan and has over 20 years of experience in the global commercial and government sectors. He is an industry expert in business and digital strategy, blockchain, AI and emerging technologies, DevOps/Agile, modernization, voice of the customer, and organizational design.
• He is the founder of Sapient's Strategy University, a powerful and interactive learning program, that educated 1,000+ professionals across the globe in maximizing business value.
• Aleksandar pioneered the blockchain ecosystem concept for the federal space that focused on "connected intelligence" and the ways that emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, work in concert to increase benefit to organizations. Realizing blockchain's potential to increase efficiencies, while also ensuring security and transparency, he makes emerging tech within reach - not only understood but doable.
• His work won him a FCW Federal 100 Award, a prestigious recognition for industry and government leaders who had significant impact in advancing federal IT.
• Ensuring the value of blockchain is thoroughly understood, Aleksandar's approach, ideas and work are highlighted in print and on stage including the MIT Enterprise Forum, World Bank, 4A’s- Vision 2020, GCN, AGA, FCW, AU Blockchain Hub, Developer Week, Chamber of Commerce, Energy Innovation Day, Cryptolina, State Investment Finance Authorities, IQPC, Inter-American Development Bank, ACT‐IAC and others; including co‐authoring the first ever blockchain federal primer paper and blockchain playbook for the federal government, published by ACT-IAC. He has also authored and published pieces on strategies for how government can maximize blockchain. Aleksandar is a prominent industry leader who is often invited to speak and consult to a large number of government and commercial organizations, entities and associations.

meeting recording

_pssig-210423-aleks-zelenovic-DLT-business-value.mp4

April 16th - The Open Mobility Network (OMN): An infrastructure for a new economy of movement

Don't miss this session on the future of transportation as it happens -- integrated mobility networks with infrastructure, cities, vehicles and more !

The Open Mobility Network (OMN) is a community built and operated business automation network that helps mobility stakeholders and related businesses with an open & inclusive infrastructure. Members of the OMN will have a neutral platform for multi-party application development enabled by a joint core services infrastructure and be able to offer next-generation mobility service to their end customers. Accordingly, the OMN supports MOBI’s vision of a world where users around the world are willing to share transportation data, manage mobility service transactions, and exchange identity and usage information within a trusted service network.


The lecture will outline the business model and value proposition to develop a community-built, automated business transaction network for mobility and transportation services for a new economy of movement

Speaker: Robin Pilling

Robin is an expert on distributed technology solutions and applications. Just recently, Robin started Dis3bute, a specialized IT consulting company that helps connected industries with their digital transformation journeys by utilizing distributed technologies. 

As part of his activities, Robin works for MOBI as a Technical Lead to help connect MOBI’s Working Group efforts with the deployment of the Open Mobility Network (OMN), a joint service infrastructure for future mobility services initiated by MOBI last year. 

Before joining MOBI, Robin together with four European blockchain startups jointly developed the Mobility Blockchain Platform (MBP). Robin started his career as a development engineer at Daimler Mercedes-Benz Vans, where he was part of developing an autonomous vehicle for future transportation solutions. 

Robin got first exposure to distributed systems when he was working on payment mechanisms for intelligent power networks as a graduate researcher at National Taiwan University (NTU). 

Meeting Recording 

_pssig-210416-OMN-mobility-net-Robin-Pilling.mp4

March 26th - Identity and Privacy in Patient Health Care - Jim St Clair - Lumedic

Lumedic is the first commercial decentralized identity platform for healthcare built on the Trust Over IP architectural framework. The presentation will discuss the challenges in digital healthcare, the TOIP framework and the application of Lumedic to patient-centered health data to support the 21st Century Cures Act.

Jim St Clair - Chief Trust Officer

As the Chief Trust Officer for the Lumedic Exchange, the first internationally available patient-centric data exchange platform, Jim leads the development and harmonization of W3C verifiable credential data standards across healthcare and identity use cases. Additionally, as part of Tegria, a services and solutions company launched by Providence, one of the nation’s largest health systems, Jim joins Providence leaders directly contributing to HL7 project teams. Jim works closely to identify opportunities to leverage new developments in data standards and contribute technical advancements back to HL7, ISO, and IEEE standards development.
• Vice Chair, INCITS (ANSI) Blockchain Working Group, US member of ISO
• Member, IEEE P2145 Blockchain Governance WG, P2933 Medical Device WG, P2673 Medical Information Working Group
• Member, ISO TC 307 Working Groups 5/6/7
• HL7 DaVinci, Gravity and PACIO project
• Steering Committee Member, Trust over IP Foundation – Leader, Patient Identity Task Force
• Member, ID2020 Good Health Pass Collaborative

Meeting recording

Meeting Slide deck

Mar 12th 10 am EST - Self-Sovereign Identity in Govtech for Financial & Healthcare Inclusion

Identity is the permission to begin any relationship. With the wide availability of internet digital identity has become the most significant technology trends on the planet. However contrary to so much advancement of technology the authentication and online sharing of personal data models have hardly undergone any changes in last few decades. Data leaks and unauthorized sharing of personal data have raised many security breaches costing billions to organizations.

Blockchain and Biometrics together bring the perfect universal solution that is decentralized, transparent, tamperproof, efficient and highly scalable to help organizations in their journey embracing next-gen authentication. This session would give an insight to the flaws in existing identity architectures and how the nextgen identity solution would give rise to many new business models and use cases especially for financial and healthcare inclusion in public sector.

Speaker: Debajani Mohanty

Debajani Mohanty, one of the top 30 Blockchain Influencers of India (Singapore Fintech news) is a Solution Architect and author of 5 Amazon bestseller Blockchain books some of which are translated to German and Chinese to reach the wider mass. Pioneer Blockchain solutions developed by Debajani in different verticals have attracted global attention. Debajani works as an Self Sovereign Identity expert at EarthId, Honorary Faculty with Amity University and is a keynote speaker at many national and international innovation summits.

Follow her on twitter: https://twitter.com/debimr75

Follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debajanimohantypmp

Meeting recording 

_pssig-210312-debajani-mohanty-ssi.mp4

Slide deck

210312-ssi-D-Mohanty-Self-Sovereign Identity in Govtech for Financial & Healthcare Inclusion.pdf

Feb 12th - NSF-Treasury Grants Payment Proof of Concept

This session will provide an overview of the NSF/Treasury blockchain-based grant payment Proof-of-Concept.  The goal of this project is to better understand the value proposition of leveraging blockchain technology to reduce grant recipient financial reporting as well as the legal/regulatory implications of using blockchain technology to facilitate Federal grant payments.

Speaker: Craig Fisher

Craig Fischer is a Program Manager within the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service who is focused on understanding the impact emerging trends and technologies will have on government finance. Craig leads the agency’s blockchain work where he and his team have carried out four proofs of concept over the past three years. Prior to FIT, Craig held positions with a “Big Four” consulting firm, the Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO) Council, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Government Accountability Office (GAO).Craig holds an MPA from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and a B.S. in Education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Meeting recording

pssig-210212-NSF-Payment-solution-Craig-Fisher.mp4

Slide deck pdf

210212-NSF-payments-Craig-Fisher-FIT DLT Project 2021.2.11.pdf

Jan 29th - Infosys - Solutions for secure digital identity and credentials: 2 government use cases

Infosys Public Services, a U.S. based subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), is a leader in business consulting, technology solutions, and next-generation digital services. We enable public sector organizations in the US and Canada to navigate their digital transformation journey.

Credential management over a blockchain powered distributed ledger is relevant for several citizen services provided by governments. Most recently, Infosys Public Services was engaged by two US state governments in developing their strategy for applicability of Blockchain. Infosys completed two distinct projects for two US states: (a) In the first case, we developed a solution covering the issuance and verification of business licenses (for CPAs, CPA firms) on a blockchain network. (b) In the second case, we developed a digital credential management solution for certificates viz., marriage certificates issued by the county to its citizens. These digital credentials are issued to citizens' wallet and can be verified by potential verifiers for authenticity over a blockchain network.

Infosys Blockchain practice believes that the learnings and insights gained from these engagements in the US and many more around the world will be of interest to the participants of the upcoming Hyperledger Public Sector Special Interest Group. We look forward to presenting to the group in the Jan 2021 meeting.

Speakers 

Abhishek Anand Khare, Principal Consultant, Blockchain Practice, Infosys Limited

Research Scholar - Chitkara University, Punjab, India 

Abhishek Khare is a Chartered Accountant (equivalent to CPA in the US) with close to two decades of industry experience in Treasury and Capital Markets domain including Trading, Risk management, Operations, and Compliance. He has led Digital Transformations in the Financial Services sector under the Digital Experience practice of Infosys. For the last three years, he is advising Infosys government sector clients in India and US on the value Blockchain powered networks bring to the several departments and the citizens at large. Taxation and simplification of citizen services are his areas of interest. He has been instrumental in developing Infosys proprietary solutions for e-Governance and Supply Chain Management. Abhishek is also a research scholar pursuing a PhD in the areas of blockchain adoption.

Sri Challa, Global Sales Head, Blockchain Practice, Infosys Limited

An engineer at heart, Sri is passionate about solving tomorrow's business challenges by applying emerging technologies. At Infosys, Sri oversees all aspects of the Blockchain business - Strategy, sales, marketing, alliances, and partnerships. He works closely with the Infosys research groups and academia in identifying challenges with adoption of Blockchain technology and creating innovative solutions for the same. With a global role spanning all industries, Sri has developed a well-rounded perspective on how blockchain is being applied in various industries and geographies. Prior to this role, Sri held several positions in the IT/software industry for 17 years leading business transformation, enterprise integration and B2B for fortune 500 companies.

Sri holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from JNTU, Hyderabad, India, an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA, USA and is a Fellow at the MIT System Design and Management group studying complex systems and its impact to businesses.

Meeting Recording:  _Public-Sector-210129-Infosys-Credentials-Mgt.mp4

PDF Slide deck:   210129-Infosys session - Credential Management using Blockchain - Hyperledger Public Sector gruop v1.0.pdf

Jan 15th - Stephen Curran - Digital Identity in the Government of British Columbia

The Government of British Columbia has been a leader in government digital identity for many years, going back to the early 2000s when digital identity legislation was passed in the jurisdiction. In this presentation, we'll cover the foundational work that BC has done in enabling digital identity, how identity services are made available to citizens today, and what BC is doing in the area of Trust over IP using Hyperledger open source software to scale trust in the digital economy. We'll also cover the open source capabilities that BC has made available for any jurisdiction to use – across Canada and around the world.

Stephen Curran (swcurran@cloudcompass.ca) of Cloud Compass Computing, Inc. is a Software Development and DevOps veteran who dove full on into the identity on blockchain world in 2017. Working with the Government of British Columbia, Stephen has helped define, build and launch a series of production and proof of concept deployments of Trust over IP components using Verifiable Credentials. Stephen is a regular contributor in the Indy and Aries communities, facilitating collaborations and driving interoperability. Stephen is a co-author of Hyperledger edX courses on Indy, Aries and Ursa, a Hyperledger Technical Ambassador and Vice Chair of the Sovrin Foundation. 

Meeting Recording: 20210115 Hyperledger Public Sector SIG Recording

Presentation: BC's Journey Towards Trust over IP

Document mentioned in the discussion: Traversing the Web of Trust