Rebuilding Trust, the Currency of an Open Economy and Society

February 24th, 2016 | Serge Ravet

As I was looking for documentation for this post, the top result from Google was a link to “Rachel Botsman: The currency of the new economy is trust” (link) followed by an OECD forum with a highlight on “Trust is at the heart of today’s complex global economy.”

While Botsman’s lecture, punctuated with examples of the emerging collaborative economy, is worth viewing, what I challenge is the idea that trust is a new currency or that trust is more important in today’s economy than it was in previous ones. With the exception of war and predatory economies, trust has always been at the very centre of the economy. If something has changed in the economy it is how globalisation has affected trust, its currency.

Trust is at the heart of the economy — and open societies!

In Adam Smith on Trust, Faith and Free Markets (link) Jerry Evensky writes:

In a constructive society, trust and security are based on mutual respect among citizens and between the citizen and the State. It is the maturation of the citizen and of the State together that makes the emergence of a commercial free-market society possible. It is the trust engendered by this maturation of civic ethics and institutions that makes it possible for individuals to enter the market system with confidence that the competition will be a game played by just rules.
When trust is shaken, individuals pull back and the system contracts. Where trust grows, individual energy and creativity are unleashed and the system grows. In Smith’s vision of humankind’s progress, trust is the central theme.

In Top Economists: Trust is Necessary for a Stable Economy … But Trust Won’t Be Restored Until We Prosecute Wall Street Fraud, the Washington Post (link), quotes a 2001 study by Zak and Knack (link):

Our analysis shows that trust can be raised directly by increasing communication and education, and indirectly by strengthening formal institutions that enforce contracts and by reducing income inequality. Among the policies that impact these factors, only education, … and freedom satisfy the efficiency criterion which compares the cost of policies with the benefits citizens receive in terms of higher living standards. Further, our analysis suggests that good policy initiates a virtuous circle: policies that raise trust efficiently, improve living standards, raise civil liberties, enhance institutions, and reduce corruption, further raising trust. Trust, democracy, and the rule of law are thus the foundation of abiding prosperity.

As indicated in a previous post (The Deleterious Effects of Mistaking Security for Trust), there is also a vicious circle, and I am afraid that we are living it: trust in each other and authorities is depleting, creating social problems; as a response to those problems, security policies are implemented that further reduce the trust in each other and the society, leading to ever more stringent security policies. This is the story of France, where the Government with the support of the Parliament has decided to introduce into the French Constitution the state of emergency (“état d’urgence”), i.e. the ability for administrative and police power to take precedence over the judiciary! Not only the French government does not trust his citizens — not exactly fresh news! — but it does not even trust judges — not exactly fresh news either!

Far from being a characteristic of the “new economy,” trust has always been the fuel of open and democratic societies and economies. One change brought with the modern economy and its globalisation might be a greater abstraction of trust: before I could trust my butcher for offering the best meat, now I am asked to trust a label stuck on a package, based on undecipherable standards designed by an agency most likely under the influence of business lobbies complacent parliaments and the very Council of the European Union.

A Transparency International report (link) on 19 European countries and 3 EU institutions shows undue influence on politics across the region and in Brussels:

Moreover, there is a high risk that conflicts of interest can sway decision-making processes. In France, parliamentarians are permitted to carry out lobbying and consulting work while holding office — a situation that is similar in Portugal and Spain.
“Unchecked lobbying has resulted in far-reaching consequences for the economy, the environment, human rights and public safety,” said Anne Koch, Director for Europe and Central Asia, Transparency International. The research highlights problematic lobbying practices across a wide range of sectors and industries in Europe, including: Alcohol, tobacco, automobile, energy, financial and pharmaceutical.

It is interesting to note that the Council of the European Union ranks antepenultimate worst, just before Hungary and Cyprus as institution prone to corruption — for an illustration of the influence of lobbyists one can read Tobacco lobbying warped EU law, British scientists ‘prove’ or Big money and close ties behind Big Pharma’s Brussels lobby efforts.

While, according to an OECD study (link), it is difficult to establish a direct connection between corruption and GDP:

corruption affects other important indicators of economic development such as the quality of the environment, personal health and safety status, equity (income distribution), and various types of social or civic capital (“trust”) — which impact significantly on economic welfare and, in the case of trust, also a country’s development potential […] Recent empirical work by Aidt (2009) shows that the negative effect of corruption on sustainable wealth formation, which adjusts gross fixed investment for resource depletion and human capital formation, is statistically significant and robust. This research also shows that, within the context of such an enlarged definition of growth, no significant “grease effect” of corruption is discernible.

What is the state of Trust in our societies?

An interesting document published by Our World in Data (link) collects a number of data sources related to trust. The figure below represents the interpersonal trust levels as measured by international surveys. It shows a high level of discrepancy between countries. For example, France, the country where I live, the level of interpersonal trust is closer to what is experienced in Uganda and Nigeria than Denmark…

Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey — Inglehart & Welzel (2010)

While the difference of perception of interpersonal trust across countries can be striking, there are also differences across generations. According to an Ipsos Mori study (UK) while 73% of the pre­war generation say other people can be trusted to tell the truth only 46% of generation Y agrees. While the cause for this generational disparity probably rests on a wide range of factors from massive youth unemployment (youth unemployment rate is at its worst for 20 years in the UK) to the difference in the perception of politicians impotency and wide spread corruption, notwithstanding the lack of trust society has in the younger generation (the educational system is becoming a gigantic test and accountability machine), we are far from the conditions elicited by Zak and Knack for the initiation of a “virtuous circle” developing trust.

Interpersonal trust levels across generations — Ipsos Mori 2015

The distrust in each other is matched by the distrust in institutions. According to Eurobarometer, a public opinion service of the European Commission, in 2013, sixty percent of Europeans tended not to trust the European Union. That compares to the 32% level of distrust reported in early 2007 before the onset of the 2008/2009 global financial crisis and the ensuing euro zone debt crisis (source).

Intrigued by those statistics, I went to a colleague, Pierre Perot, a sociologist, who recommended reading La Société de Défiance, Comment le modèle social français s’autodétruit ( The Society of Distrust, How the French social model self-destructs), a study by Yann Algan et Pierre Cahuc (link). This book reports a number of studies, in particular the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) and the World Values Survey (WVS).

People responding to the statement “To reach the summit, you need to be corrupted” -Source: International Social Survey Program 1999.

While very few will be surprised to find Russia ranking so high in the corruption scale, I had to understand why France ranked so high. It is when I found another damming statistic: France is penultimate, just after Mexico when being asked whether it is acceptable to buy something known to have been stolen (c.f. chart below).

People responding to whether “buying something you knew was stolen” cannot be justified — Source: World Values Survey, 1980–2000.

People responding that “someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties” cannot be justified — Source: World Values Survey, 1980–2000.

While the figures in the previous charts refer to a 1980–2000 wave of World Values Surveys, more recent data (2010, c.f. annex) confirm the gap between countries and France’s position… I have to testify that those figures confirm my own experience and reflect the level of apathy and sense of disempowerment I can observe.

How can trust be rebuilt?

If governments have demonstrated their inability, and often their unwillingness, to address the causes of increased distrust, then who should take the lead? Last week I got from Carla Casilli (@carlacasilli) the news about a meeting organised by Citizen’s Initiative Review: “Rebuilding the Public’s Trust Begins with Trusting the Public” (link). How true! How dare politicians ask for our trust when they themselves do not trust us?

While bringing “representative groups of citizens together to fairly and thoroughly evaluate ballot questions and give voters information they can trust” is certainly a worthy effort, the problem of trust goes far beyond ballot issues. Moreover, the lack of trust might be caused by the institutional framework itself, and providing information one can trust might not be enough to bring people back to the ballot stations.

As an educator, my first reflex when defining an objective, here rebuilding trust, is the definition of success indicators: how shall we know when trust is being rebuilt? What are the criteria? How shall we proceed to collect the data? The way trust has been measured until now is through polls and surveys based on a small sample of the population. Is there a means to involve 100% of the population, to obtain a rate of participation even greater than the percentage of the population going to the polling stations?

While the measure of the absolute value of social capital is probably a very complex if not an impossible task, one might be able to measure its relative value, whether it increases or decreases in its different constituents. For example, the trust in political parties could decrease while the trust in fellow citizens increase,s the trust in industrial food decreases while that in local food and fair trade increases.

The power to trust!

And if the solution to re-building trust was to provide every citizen with the means to express their trust, giving citizens the power to trust? Until now, we used ballot papers to invest our trust in representatives, money to express our trust in goods and services. While this might be sufficient in an open society and an open market, we have to recognise that both political life and the market are rigged. If people do not go to polling stations, it is not unreasonable to imagine that this might be connected with a feeling of disempowerment, a disability acquired through repeated experience…

The recent history of the Open Badges is an iconic illustration of how rigged the system is: while Open Badges are trust tokens, the infrastructure has been designed in such a way that it is almost impossible for ‘normal’ individuals to issue Open Badges — unless one is a geek or ready to pay for access to an issuing platform. Of course, it is clear that at no point in time the designers of the Open Badge infrastructure stopped their work and asked: “how shall we make it as difficult as possible for the average punter to create Open Badges, so that only institutions will find the will and strength to issue them.” They probably did not say either “and to make it even easier for the institutions, they will not to have to prove their credentials, therefore institutions will not need to have a Backpack.”

If the infrastructure is designed that way, it is not because of a faulty design nor the will of wicked designers. It is simply the manifestation of the power of the superstructure, the pressure of institutional frameworks and mind-frame. The current Open Badge Infrastructure was designed competently to instantiate in a piece of software the asymmetry between authorities that have the right to trust and the vulgum pecus who has the right to beg to be trusted. This superstructure is also reflected in the numerous narratives where institutions are glorified as the natural credentialing authorities and individuals as those in need of being guided through pre-digested pathways to reach the Valhalla of formal recognition!

It is a fallacy to pretend that individuals are “empowered” with Open Badges when it is the institutions that are in control and are the main beneficiaries. That does not imply that individuals are “loosers”, and do not gain any benefit, but that individual benefits are ancillary to institutional benefits. The brilliant presentation of David Leaser during last week’s community call (c.f. etherpad, recording and the picture below) is an impressive illustration of the beneficial impact of Open Badges have had on IBM and its employees. One of the main benefits is probably the creation of a level playing field by making visible information that would have been previously kept hidden within human resource information systems silos. By making it public, new processes have emerged to plan and recognise development and organise teamwork.

Yet, the Open Badge system presented during the call is clearly asymmetrical with the organisation defining and issuing the badges while employees collect and exploit them. It partially reflects how businesses operate and how employees’ interests are subordinate to those of the organisations paying their salaries. Employees might not have (yet) the power to trust by issuing and endorsing their own badges, but a community has many means to establish trust networks — trust networks existed long before the invention of Open Badges! And the power to trust using digital technology might come sooner than expected, starting with the endorsement of Open Badges then with the adoption of the personal ledgers, a means to record and value even more granular data to create an intelligible life log, a path pioneered by Steve Mann.

Impact of Open Badges at IBM source

The BoT economy

In previous posts I introduced the Bit of Trust (BoT) a “currency” representing an elementary trust bond between two nodes in a Web of Trust (WoT). Imagine a network where every entity (person, organisation, product, service, etc.) is represented by a node and each node has a public distributed ledger recording the BoTs received and issued, we would have:

  • BoTs I have issued: my trust capital investment — a credit lent to those I trust
  • BoTs I have received: the trust invested in me — a debt owed to those trusting me

We could define the individual’s trust capital as the sum of the trust received and trust issued and the social capital as the sum of the investments in others.

  • Individual (Trust) Capital = debts + credits
  • Social (Trust) Capital = ∑debts = ∑credits

Contrary to currencies, there is no need for a “central bank of trust” to control the number of BoTs issued, as every node in the network should have the ability to trust and therefore to produce BoTs. While increasing the number of banknotes leads to inflation and sometimes to the collapse of an economy, trust works the other way around!

NB: The time is long gone where money was created by central banks. 97% of the money in today’s economy is created by banks (through loans), whilst just 3% is created by governments (link). The Web of Trust just pushes the logic one step further: every node is its own trust bank and produces as many BoTs as required!

The value of the BoT will be relative to a context of interpretation. It is the glasses through which the reader visualises a collection of BoTs across multiple ledgers that a value can be assigned. While a BoT is a generic construct, it is the account where it is invested that transforms a general meaning (trust) into something more specific such as “I trust that you are a competent cook.” This is done by “investing” the BoT in the “competent cook” entry of the personal ledger. But that information is of little value if there is no contextual information, such as recent endorsements by other members of the Web of Trust, collection of recent evidence of cooking-related activities. It is an opportunity to explore the potential of moving from an analytical approach (against a competency framework) to an analogical approach (against the position of a subject in relation to other subjects in a domain or community of practice.)

Conclusion (provisional)

With distributed ledgers and BoTs we would have the means to establish a new kind of generalised trust index, based not just on a sample of individuals but on all the participants in the Web of Trust. This index could be exploited through different contexts providing different communities with a mirror to reflect and improve their trustworthiness. Just like the Bitcoin did not wait for the approval of monetary and regulatory authorities, there is no reason to wait for the approval of policy authorities to implement the means to rebuild trust, bottom-up, bit by bit, using the Bit of Trust as the 21st century’s ballot e-paper for building an open society!

This post has hardly scratched the surface of the potential benefits of BoTs as the translation of Open Badges and open credentials with the distributed ledger technology. In a next post, I will explore trust from a micro, meso and macro perspective challenging the value of the dominating interpretation of micro-credentials to advocate the value of “microlevel-trust.”

NB: Salava, the Open Badge Passport Community Edition will soon provide the sandbox to explore new approaches to issuing and exploiting Open Badges for building bottom-up trust networks. We will do so by exploiting the current Open Badge Infrastructure and as soon as possible develop a distributed ledger extension (c.f. #badgechain!).

Stay tuned!

Previously published in HASTAC

Annex

Trust in Others — source Eurostats

People responding that “accepting a bribe in the course of their duties” cannot be justified
Source: World Values Survey 2010.

Data is available through the European Values Study (EVS 2010) accessible at the Leibniz Institute for the Social Science (link).

To the question “Please tell me whether you think that claiming state benefits which you are not entitled to can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between,” only 30.2% of French respondents replied “Never” (they were 40.8% in 1999!) against 62.8% in Finland and 79.8% in the Netherlands and 67.9% in Italy — so much for the French citizens who tend to justify their shortcomings for being a “Latin country” — what could be more “Latin” than… Latins!

The fact that the number of French respondents that would never claim an undue state benefit decreased from 40.8% to 30.2% in 10 years time might be the price to pay for the toll of the economic crisis and the inability of the governments to take adequate measures to resorb massive unemployment and rampant corruption.

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Originally published at www.learningfutures.eu on February 24, 2016.

Digital Portfolios + Open Badges + Blockchain = Personal Learning Ledger

February 17th, 2016 | W. Ian O'Byrne
Image Credit

In our discussions over the past couple of months about what would ultimately become BadgeChain, we’ve been trying to unpack what would happen if we injected blockchain technologies into an open badges framework.

Keep in mind that we started with an examination of blockchain and open badges, but we’re exploring and not entirely sure where we’ll end up.

To evidence this serendipitous learning experience, one of the aspects that has me excited is the possibility to connect blockchain with open badges to re-invent the learning log. This would create what Serge Ravet coined as the Personal Ledger. I’m excited to think of this as expanding into a Personal Learning Ledger in educational settings.

Digital Portfolios

The idea of having students showcase their learning is nothing new. For decades, portfolios have been a staple of teachers’ instruction and assessment. Educators have the opportunity to use portfolios to work with learners to identify and map learning pathways while including learning artifacts. In this process, learners can identify their strengths, focus on learning opportunities, and build up metacognitive skills.

When integrated into an online spaces using digital tools, these portfolios are known as digital portfolios or e-portfolios. The use of digital texts and tools (have the potential to) turbocharge this process by enriching the authenticity and audience of product. Online spaces and learning/content management systems (have the potential to) create a space for capture and presentation of student work over time.

It’s important to remember that learning itself may be seen as the construction of identities as individuals take up and take on different social practices in different contexts with different social communities at different times. In simple terms…to engage in learning is to engage in the project of constructing and reconstructing identity.

Open Badges

Badges are visual representations and indicators of learner accomplishments, skills, or interest. They are symbolic representations that can be easily shared and communicated across varied academic, social, and work-related contexts. For more on digital and open badges, please view our earlier post.

When embedded in a digital portfolio, learners can display relevant digital evidence of expertise and learning trajectory. This curation and showcasing of artifacts and credentials becomes an amalgamation of students’ digital identities as learners.

A challenge in the development and use of badges in an ecosystem is that while badges convey information, there are no standards for the information contained in the metadata of a badge. A badge by itself does not guarantee that the achievement or metadata is recognized as a credible marker of success outside of the individual learning communities.

Blockchain & BitofTrust

In the BitCoin model, peer-to-peer networks distribute and record a public ledger. These transactions and blocks of transactions in the model are known as they blockchain. The public ledger uses bitcoin as the unit of account in the system.

Through the integration of open badges and blockchain technologies, we’re looking to give birth to a BitofTrust. The BitofTrust would be portions of an amount of a skill, body of knowledge, or expertise. In just the same way that a BitCoin is divided into portions and shared out…a BitofTrust would be portions or levels leading up to expertise.

To make this a bit simpler, imagine you were the world’s expert in making a peanut butter and jelly (PB&J) sandwich. If we could take all of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed in PB&J sandwiches, the total would be indicated as 1000 BitifTrusts. Therefore, if you were the expert in PB&J sandwich manufacturing, your credentials and your ongoing education and practice in all things PB&J would continue to build value in your shares of PB&J sandwiches. Bringing this back to badges as a form of identity…if others wanted to make their way in the world of PB&J sandwich manufacturing…they’d be able to see your expertise, connect with you, and learn from you.

Personal Learning Ledger

In this space between digital portfolios, blockchain, and digital badges, there is a possibility to construct a personal ledger. In personal finance, or accounting, a ledger is a document that identifies an individual’s assets as identified by cash, inventory, and wealth. Through the use of advances in BadgeChain, it may be possible to track individual levels of achievement, and utilize digital credentials in assessment.

In an educational context, this could be integrated into a students portfolio or presented in a manner that is accessible and transparent to provide a clearer picture of the skills and capabilities of the individual. Through BadgeChain and the BitofTrust, this personal learning ledger would be ubiquitous and make transparent the knowledge, skills, and dispositions learners have garnered in and out of school placements.

In practice this might resemble an open version of LinkedIn that would allow individuals to define their own capacities, education, and experience while permitting others to “vouch”(or add a BitofTrust) to aspects of the individual’s ledger. This model would also contain elements of a badging ecosystem in which the ledger would include metadata to indicate when, why, and how an achievement was noted, and who awarded the badge.

Finally, the personal learning ledger could involve a voting system such as the “karma” system in Reddit, or “likes” in Facebook. Friends, mentors, or colleagues of the individual could respond, vet, or approve aspects of the ledger. In this system, individuals could work to value and document their social capital in learning networks as they participate and collaborate globally.

In closing

In bits of this post, I got a bit granular trying to discuss things that seem concrete…but are very fluid. We’re still trying to understand this, and things might change.

The thoughts presented above are my attempt to synthesize our discussions over time, and make sense of the possibilities. Please do not take this as the planned course of action for the group.

I’m sure my colleagues will leave feedback on this post as we iterate over time. We’re trying to think & learn openly. 🙂

Like what you see here? Sign up for my newsletter to stay on top of weekly events in literacy, technology, & education.

Originally published at W. Ian O’Byrne.

The Possibilities of Badges and Blockchain

February 11th, 2016 | W. Ian O'Byrne
Image CC BY-ND Bryan Mathers

In March 2015, I wrote “Peering Deep into the Future of Educational Credentialing” for DML Central. In it, I explored the potential for the blockchain technology (best known for underpinning Bitcoin) to add an extra layer of trust and verification to Open Badges. Now, a year later, we’re a lot closer to that reality than I originally envisioned. The diffusion of innovation has moved so quickly that even government ministers are excited about the possibilities afforded by the blockchain.

Let’s back up a bit first. The great thing about the Open Badges Infrastructure is that it’s a distributed, evidence-based system of credentialing. There are no gatekeepers; anyone can issue, earn, and display badges. Similarly, the blockchain is a distributed, open “ledger” to which anybody can add evidence and information in the form of cryptographic hashes. Long story short, pairing blockchain technology with Open Badges allows for trusted credentialing on a level usually reserved for international banking.

We’re already beginning to see some innovation in this area. For example, Holberton School announced that they were the first school in the world to deliver their certificates using the Bitcoin blockchain. Likewise, Stampery has started issuing certificates using blockchain technology. MIT Media Lab is also exploring something similar.

Using the blockchain for mere digital certificates is like strapping a rocket onto a Model T Ford. It may allow you to go faster in a straight line, but doesn’t afford you any new options. It is perhaps what is usually called a “sustaining innovation.” Using Open Badges with the blockchain is a much more disruptive proposition. What if everyone had the keys to the kingdom?

There are two main ways in which I think using Open Badges with blockchain technology will lead to interesting developments. As Serge Ravet has written one of these is to engender what he calls “bits of trust.” In other words, the levels of authenticity that the blockchain can prove, when coupled with a gatekeeper-less credentialing system, may lead to the disintermediation of educational institutions as we currently recognise them. In plain English: blockchain plus badges equals rocket fuel for verified, trusted credentials. Everyone gets to point to a rock-solid “proof of learning” that they can use anywhere.

The other major development is a reduction in the cost of issuing of Open Badges at scale — effectively to zero. While there is no cost to issuing a few badges here and there using one of the many badge-issuing platforms, doing so at scale requires an “enterprise level” plan, or development of your own system. Both cost in terms of an off-the-shelf subscription, or paying developers. Once badges are on the blockchain, the financial cost of securely storing the data associated with each badge is, in real terms, reduced to zero.

Open Badges is a maturing ecosystem and community. Likewise, although Bitcoin has been around for longer than badges, it is only recently that the true potential for blockchain technologies is being realised. There are many blockchains and approaches to using the technology. Perhaps it is time for someone, possibly a government, group of universities, or non-profit NGO, to step in to offer blockchain badges as a service?

I’m increasingly optimistic about the future of Open Badges when used in conjunction with other emerging technologies. The opportunity for anyone to issue cryptographically-signed credentials with the proof in a public ledger sounds like a geeky thing to be excited about. However, as with many developments in technology and society, some of the most interesting things happen behind the scenes.

Many thanks to Eylan Ezekiel, Oliver Quinlan, Kerri Lemoie and Doug Levin for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Their expertise has been invaluable, but any errors remain my own.

Originally published at dmlcentral.net on February 11, 2016.

Open Badges for Keeps – Now and Near

February 10th, 2016 | Kerri Lemoie
Image by Jun

Open Badges makes it possible for anyone to issue a badge. The badge data or the public keys are hosted on the issuer’s web server. The metadata of badges contains links to where they are hosted. But what happens if the issuer goes away? or the web server goes down? Whether you are new to badges or have been issuing badges for some time, it’s an important consideration. As Open Badges works now, the long-term verifiability & validity of the badges is the obligation of the issuer or issuing platform.

So what are the options? How can issuers ensure that their earners will keep their badges for as long as they need them? Here are some options to consider now:

  • Hosting badge criteria, evidence, and badge metadata on a smaller, cheaper server – There are plenty of free and inexpensive web hosts out there. When first planning your issuing site, consider your short-term and long-term costs. It doesn’t take much room or space to host badges.
  • Coordinating with other Issuers – One thing to consider is collaborating with other issuers on hosting; a server where you share the costs and maintenance of web server. Or you could make an arrangement (with agreement of earners) to transfer badge data to another issuer’s service (while keeping issuing dates intact) and doing permanent redirects or providing earners with the new urls for their badges.
  • W3C Permanent Identifiers – This service is run by the W3C Permanent Identifier Group. It maintains an HTTPS-only, permanent redirection service hosted at w3id.org operating much like a switchboard that can reconfigure entries to point to a new location if the old location stops working. V 1.1 of the Open Badges spec hosts the context file here: https://openbadgespec.org/v1/context.json
  • PURL(Persistent Uniform Resource Locator) – This toolkit is provided by the OCLC and Zepheira. It can be used to create permanent identifiers that point to resources. It’s been around for a long time and seems to work similarly as W3C Permanent identifiers without the SSL support.
  • Amber — The Berkman Center for Internet & Society created this tool to keep content accessible. It automatically saves a snapshot of every page linked to on a website. Initial development has been focused on WordPress and Drupal but they have also started Apache and Nginx modules which may be more relevant for issuers.

With Achievery we went with the first option and slimmed down the platform from badge issuing to just badge hosting on an inexpensive server. Primarily we did this because it was the fastest and easiest at the time and also because we wanted badges to maintain their urls. That said, this also give us the flexibility to pursue other options in the future some of which I’ve been digging into as part of my work with OpenWorks Group and BadgeChain.

I’ve been researching how Open Badges can work on the blockchain and part of that initial research has been investigating the Distributed Web (this post at The Internet Archive does a good job of explaining it). I’ll write more about this soon but for now, here’s a list of projects to look into that I think will play a role in the future of Open Badges:

  • ZeroNet – Peer-To-Peer websites using bitcoin cryptography and the BitTorrent network. Publish static and dynamic websites using their ZeroFrame API or JavaScript using their built-in SQL database. Here’s how to Get Started. I can’t wait to try this and would love to see someone use it to build out an issuing system using it (if you are interested in this – ping me).
  • IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) – Like ZeroNet, IPFS is a peer-topeer distributed file system and it also serves static web pages (that can run client-side JavaScript). Unlike ZeroNet, it cannot work with dynamic data. In order for your files to get distributed, they need to be requested by another IPFS user who will then seed your files. It’s really very simple to install and use.

Other distributed system projects that I’ve come across but haven’t dug into yet:

It’s my opinion that the near future of Badges is a combination of Blockchain (serving as the ledger) and distributed systems. With these systems we can ensure that badges have a permanence and reliability that web hosting can’t provide. Team BadgeChain will continue our focus here. You can stay-up-to-date on our Medium Publication.

Welcome to BadgeChain

February 10th, 2016 | Carla Casilli

We are excited to announce Team BadgeChain. We’re a small core team of experienced badge enthusiasts working to investigate the next stage of the grand open badges experiment. Our mission: Explore through research, advocacy and development how Open Badges (and related technologies) can be advanced by blockchain.

Our values

  • We’re a democratic organization.
  • We’re committed to working in the open.
  • We’re ecosystem focused.
  • We are learning as we go.
  • We’re building the future of badges.

Who we are

Please use the Twitter hashtag #badgechain

What’s been happening so far

  • We’ve learned that we’re excited about what’s already being achieved with badges.
  • We are convinced that something like blockchain could be an answer to many of the extant badge currency / rigor / verification concerns.
  • We’ve found a lot of heat developing in the blockchain world.
  • We are ambitious and realize that that ambition needs to be fueled with funding.
  • We seek independence from any one funding source.
  • We have different drivers motivating our interests in this new technology.
  • We’re committed to ensuring a future for open badges.
  • We believe that this work offers a window into a new credentialing world.
  • We continue to build our immediate, 3 month, 6 month, 12 month roadmap.

Next steps

  • One thing that is blatantly obvious to us: blockchain is a complex and evolving technology and we still have a lot of investigation to do.
  • We’re building a website so you can know what we’re up to and who’s doing what.
  • We’re establishing a series of subcommittees in order to move our work forward rapidly: technology, product / ecosystem research, funding, communication / support.

Thanks!

We appreciate your interest and look forward to future collaboration

Originally published at medium.com on February 10, 2016.

Valuing human capital and social capital doesn’t need “pretty pictures” — OpenBadges, ePortfolios…

January 18th, 2016 | Serge Ravet

In 2016, Open Badges will encounter blockchains and this will most likely change the way we issue, store and exploit Open Badges and open credentials. This change will also affect Open Badges themselves, or more precisely, we will have a chance to get rid of the dictatorship of the “pretty picture” and move beyond the narratives of the girl and boy scouts’ merit badges.

Open Badges are wonderful and it was a brilliant idea to store metadata within a picture, but let’s face it, there is a time, in fact many of them, where designing a “pretty picture” to recognise one’s achievements or competencies is simply a waste of time or a hindrance — and the use of pre-digested graphics often an insult to our sense of aesthetics! We have now reached the situation where it is the tail wagging the dog: the “pretty picture” is the “need to have” in order to issue any credential in the happy world of Open Badges. No “pretty picture”, no credential! Does it have to be so?

Moving the Open Badge movement from infancy to adulthood needs new metaphors and narratives — the badge for the girl and boy scouts. It is precisely what the blockchain technology is offering. The metaphor on which the blockchain narrative is constructed is the ledger, a word everybody can understand.

A general ledger account is an account or record used to sort and store balance sheet and income statement transactions. Examples of general ledger accounts include the asset accounts such as Cash, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Investments, Land, and Equipment.
Source: www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-is-a-general-ledger-account

A Personal Ledger is a means to account for one’s assets, credits and debts. In the context of open credentials, the credentials received can be considered as debts (one is indebted to someone for the trust received) and the credentials given as credits (the recipient of our trust is indebted to us). A ledger can be further subdivided into multiple accounts, so each entry could store the information contained today in various Open Badges.

And there is no reason to limit the entries of a ledger to represent Open Badges: the ledger is a faithful and trustworthy accounting of all our assets, and our assets are not limited to badges. Recording the evidence used to get credentials might be even more beneficial to an open credential process than the recording of the credentials themselves. In fact, the recording of evidence and associated endorsements (without having to issue a badge or a formal credential) might be just enough in many situations.

Moving the recording of credentials from “pretty pictures” to a ledger would also benefit the fight against OBesity — a possible outcome to OB addiction! Once we are fully able to issue credentials without the need for a picture, we could then refocus our attention for Open Badges to things that really deserve a picture.

But more importantly, moving credentials to a ledger would be an opportunity to establish the foundations for a better representation of human and social capital.

Open Badges, ledgers, human and social capital

When addressing the issue of Open Badges and employment, the discussion is generally limited to using badges to get a job (my response: currently “spray and pray”) or to demonstrate continuing professional development. One area that has not yet been explored, is the use of Open Badges as a means for an organisation to account for its human capital. And the reason for this situation is probably due to the very concept of Open Badges, the lack of a holistic concept that would bring all of them together — and the Backpack was probably not the best metaphor to address human resource managers…

By moving our focus from “pretty pictures” to a ledger, we might have a chance to establish a line of communication with human resource managers and the executive management.

Are people an asset or a liability? For decades, accountants have categorised employees as a liability due to their salaries and future pensions. But in an era where more companies offer services instead of goods, and CEOs often talk about employees as their greatest asset, it is time for the 21st century ledger to match current rhetoric. […] Determining the actual value of this intangible asset is a difficult nut to crack. In 1978, 80% of a company’s value was easy to enumerate because it was mostly tangible assets such as factories and equipment. But now 80%of a company’s value is comprised of intangible assets such as brand value, intellectual property and, of course, people.
Source: Leon Kaye, in the Guardian

How could this 21st century ledger look like? What elements should it take into account?For example, how could a company account for the benefits gained from the interaction of its employees with the people that are not on its payroll, like the members of the communities of practices where staff members find support to solve business problems and promote the image of their company?

Brilliant system engineers can be dodgy social engineers!

One could imagine that the people who came up with the concept of ledger for blockchains (or the other way around!) would have worked on some kind of 21st century ledger in the sense discussed in the article quoted above. Unfortunately, after doing a bit of research with Google on blockchains, human resource and human capital I must confess that I was not able to find anything worth reporting, except my surprise that conversations related to organisations in the “blockchain milieu” did not seem to show any interest for the human factor, or when they did, it was to place it on the liability side of the “ledger,” just like with a 19th century ledger! I felt like I was reading a sequel of “Player Piano”, the Kurt Vonnegut’s novel where human work is considered as the main source of non-quality! Brilliant system engineers can be dodgy social engineers! The lessons learned from the Open Badges experience could certainly benefit the design of that 21st century, blockchain-based, ledger!

Another area that has not yet been explored is the use of Open Badges as a means to represent and value social capital — while Cities of Learning and the more recent LRNG initiative certainly contribute to the development of social capital, we are still far away from building any kind of representation of that social capital.

Social capital is defined by the OECD as: “networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate co-operation within or among groups”. In this definition, we can think of networks as real-world links between groups or individuals. Think of networks of friends, family networks, networks of former colleagues, and so on. […] Put together, these networks and understandings engender trust and so enable people to work together.
Source: http://www.oecd.org/insights/37966934.pdf

It is interesting to note that in the OECD definition, trust is the main engine for the creation of social capital. Is there a way to represent trust, and trust networks? Well, Open Badges are precisely a means to represent trust between an issuer and an earner, so the analysis of trust relationships through collections of Open Badges might be a solution. Yet, as we have seen, not every trust relationship needs to be represented by a “pretty picture.” For example, I can decide that I trust someone or an organisation for something specific (honesty, good cook, brilliant data scientist) without having to loose any time finding or designing a “pretty picture” to represent it.

My (provisional) conclusions out of this short journey in the world of ledgers, human and social capital are:

  • Trust is the engine and the currency of human and social capital.
  • Personal Ledgers are a means to keep an accurate record of all personal assets: talents, competencies (skills, knowledge, attitudes and values) people, sharable resources, etc.
  • Ledgers can be combined, so Personal Ledgers, or part of them can be aggregated to create community ledgers, organisational ledgers or a territorial ledgers (e.g. build a representation of a learning city)
  • Personal Ledgers are the building blocks for establishing a representation of human and social capital!

Open Badge Passport and Personal Open Ledger.

Moving the storage of Open Credentials (Open Badges being part of them) to a Personal Open Ledger is an extension of the original ideas behind the development of the Open Badge Passport, one of the laureates of the DML Trust Challenge.

The Open Badge Passport enables the seamless sending, receipt, organisation, display, and search of digital badges. By establishing and nurturing networks of trust, it encourages the emergence of a new generation of services supporting learning, employment (including self-employment), social inclusion, and citizenship.

By introducing the Personal Open Ledger as the means for storing one’s personal assets, of all types, not just Open Badges, the Open (Badge) Passport will act as a kind of Personal Assets manager. Moreover, as the participants in the Personal Open Ledgers / Open Passports ecosystem would be connected through trust bonds (credits and debts of Bitof Trust, BoT) we would have the foundations for achieving the building of a dynamic, ever changing bottom-up trust network, something that will be discussed in a following post.

Originally published at www.learningfutures.eu on January 18, 2016.