ATB mobilized the Open Identity Initiative with best in class organizations from across Alberta (and Canada) to explore identification in the age of the digital self and to encourage self-sovereign identity pilots and adoption.
Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a model for managing digital identities in which an individual has sole ownership and oversight over how, when and with whom their personal data is being shared. Users who subscribe to this model are able to hold and store all of their information directly on their own device and share for verification without the need of a central aggregator of data (i.e Equifax) - which tend to be highly vulnerable to theft and attack.
Each time you interact with an organization to access services or pay for goods, a large amount of personal information is shared with a variety of agents (for example driver's license, Social Insurance Numbers, emails, etc). Not only is this a cumbersome process for you, but the more information you share the greater the risk is for the security of your data.
Redundancy in the software and information domain used to mostly be about the system’s fault tolerance. Fast forward to present day, however, and the increasing availability and affordability of cloud computing has changed many design paradigms and has led to the proliferation of software systems running on cloud providers’ “everything-as-a-service” platforms. The former can no longer be vertically-architected and centrally-managed.
Advancing into the future sometimes means diving into the past. When ATB sought to find ways to extract information from a deluge of analog data hidden in decades’ worth of historical paperwork, we taught machines to read - shrinking down years of work into a matter of hours. In this whitepaper, Rhys Chouinard and Tyler Dauphinee of the ATB AI Guild breakdown the process we undertook to develop and test Optical Character Recognition.
We learn by doing, and Blockchain technology is something we are "doing" a lot of. We’ve changed the way international money transfers leverage Blockchain. Now, we’re building systems for maintaining identity records. But we like to keep it in the community, so we’re also using Blockchain to tackle a very Albertan topic… Oil Settlement Day.
Cryptocurrencies and the companies that create and manage them may seem to operate in a plane separate from the traditional banking sector. But in reality, to run a business, hire staff, buy servers/equipment, rent an office, and pay utilities and taxes, every business needs at least some fiat currency. This means that cryptocurrency ventures in most cases still need to rely on business banking services from more traditional banking services providers.
Our definition of value extends beyond financial success to include growing inclusivity and how well people thrive in our digital world. Grounded in our core values, we know that building products that people love and trust is the only way to deliver sustainable value.
