Employment Credentials on PRISM

[IMPACT]

IOHK and Cardano community are building high quality tools and Dapps to utilize Cardano in real world applications. Atala PRISM can be used to create DID's to issue and verify credentials which shows a lot of promise. The tools that are being built are technologically advanced but don't fully address the complex environments that people, who are supposed to benefit from these technologies, live in.

The idea of issuing "proof of"-credentials to blockchain for people to leverage and gain benefit in their daily lives is still quite unknown in the west as it is in the developing markets as well. Most businesses and service providers don't understand the concept and actually have no idea how to address these technologies.

Proof of Employment -credential is one of the most interesting use cases of this technology and also noted by IOHK in the creation of Atala PRISM. PRISM has the technology in place to issue and verify Proof of Employment -credentials. These credentials can then be leveraged to gain better credit score for insurance and banking or maybe find a new job or apply to a university. The real challenge is to find the businesses willing to engage in the use of these technologies and who would be willing to apply them to create Proof of Employment -credentials for their Employees. The services currently provided to businesses don't make this process simple and more importantly, don't offer an incentive to issue credentials. This is because the businesses responsible of issuing these credentials are not primarily benefitting from the process.

This is where Fairway steps in. We create and pilot user-friendly SaaS-based software applying Atala Prism to issue Proof of Employment-Credentials. With our approach issuing of credentials becomes easy and mutually beneficial for both job-seeker and employer. We provide recruitment SaaS to Ethiopian market that can take the credential issuing process and conveniently include it as a part of the complete recruitment process and user experience. As our software is designed to handle the complete recruitment process and interaction between a job seeker and recruiter. Once the recruiting business and the selected job seeker both sign a contract, our software has the ability to use this information to issue a Proof of Employment -credential (See a diagram attached). Our product is currently run on private demo and will go public in Ethiopia around the end of Q2 this year.

Our goal is that , businesses with low incentives to issue credentials and no skills to do so get to participate into the credential issuing process with lowest possible barrier. By this Fairway becomes the credible issuer of these Credentials. There are, of course multiple approaches to solve the business adaptation challenge and the best practices for other more developed markets might be different. For the developing countries the level of digitalization is usually still not very high and to accelerate adaption innovations are needed. This approach provides the best solution for all the parties included. For the employees the ability to own their data as a verifiable credential and to leverage it in other aspects of life. And for the businesses the easiest possible way to participate in the process of issuing and verifying Proof of Employment -data from the decentralized network. In a country of 115 million people we believe this will be a big step towards the use of decentralized identities and VC's on a massive scale.

In the future Fairway is interested in expanding this solution in two ways:

1. Issue "Proof of"-credentials on various other things that can be used or created through recruitment process such as referencing and skill matching for job seekers as well as compliance records and reputation scoring for businesses

2. Creation of blockchain based legally applicable contract management platform where the legal documents signed by the parties are directly signed on a blockchain

Ethiopia is tumultuous market, where have been wars and lack of digitalisation for some time. That means that there is certain aspect of chance of surprises to the nation as a whole, that would affect the project. However, so far all the advancements are going in to the right direction with digitalisation and politics and peace seems probable within the the current political turmoil. Fairway is still fully focused on Ethiopian market and confident with the progress our team will be able to achieve. The piloting of the software is done using same processes and connections as any other development within our company. In the future we are keen on expanding to other African markets as well and these developments can be utilized wherever there is digitalization and growing adoption for Cardano.

The main risk of the process itself is making sure the model for issuing credits is securely built and has correct incentives in place. Our software has the ability to check that the person owning the DID is the same person that actually get's the job. This happens via KYC-type process where during the physical interview of the candidate the user account is validated to be the same as the interviewed person themselves. Once the candidate selction is made, both parties need to agree on the recruitment for the credentials to be issued. However, a process like this always has potential holes for fraud and that is why a Pilot Project is needed. Fairway will address all the potential hazards that come up during the pilot before launching on Mainnet.

In some settings the recruiter might not have incentives to "issue" (or to help to issue) credentials. The clever solution we have come up with is to gather most of the important data needed for the credential already during the recruitment process as part of recruitment. This information does not need to be inputted by the recruiter later because it already exists, but only validated to be correct once the agreement has been made. The needed data and the validation of agreement already exist in our platform as part of the recruitment process and therefore don't require much extra work, only validation after which the credential can be issued by Fairway.

[FEASIBILITY]

We propose a feasibility study to utilize Atala PRISM based solution to create Proof of Employment -credentials in a real world recruitment

We propose following milestones for the project:

A research on different requirements and needs for Proof of Employment -credentials in the Ethiopian and international market. As a result we will create a framework for Proof of Employment -credentials that matches all the important requirements and needs of that market so that the credentials can be leveraged to their full potential.
Integration of PRISM to Fairway Platform and development of the user interface for recruiters to create payload for Fairway to issue credential once the job agreement is signed. The credential is received by applicant's personal DID. Fairway becomes issuer of credentials in this process.
Organizing a private pilot project with our customer and recruited applicant to create first ever Proof of Employment -credential in Ethiopian market. The credential will be issued on applicant's DID on Atala PRISM.
Going live on Mainnet (once Atala PRISM goes on mainnet)

Milestone 1 – Build a framework to issue Proof of Employment-credentials. The framework ensures the credentials are as applicable as possible when interacting with following entities:

General industry standards and best practices supported by IOHK and W3C <https://www.w3.org/community/credentials/>
Labor information standards of Ethiopia supporting the digitalization and management of labor information and labor law
Local business standards of creditors, banks and insurance companies. Maximizing the the benefit of users when interacting with these entities
Local and international standards for employment when referencing previous experience to a new employer
Local and international standards docusing on government-related activities such as Visa Applications requiring proof of employment

Attached below is a picture of our team with Dejene Bekele, the Director of Labor information in Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in Ethiopia. We became close contacts with him last October in Addis Ababa while visiting the Ministry. Mr. Bekele was very willing to help us providing local resources, knowledge and data in our attempts on building a better recruitment opportunities for Ethiopians. As one of the key factors in credential Framework creation is following the Labor Information Standards of Ethiopia, being the expert of Labor information and data, MR. Bekele will be our connection and source of information in this matter.

Milestone 2 – PRISM integration and the creation of UI. The integration requires connecting PRISM to our software Backend with the use of PRISM SDK Toolkit. The integration will be done by developers from our team including a graduate from PRISM Pioneer Program. Additionally Fairway needs to expand the existing UI to accomodate these tasks.

Once finished Fairway software can be used to issue credentials once certain conditions are met within the software. These include correct recruitment procedure and KYC-verification done to the candidate during the process and a selection of candidate confirmed by both parties. Once the conditions are met within the Fairway software the recruiter creates payload for Fairway to issue a Proof of Employment -Credential to the selected candidate's personal DID.

Milestone 3 – Proof of Employment -Credential issuing Pilot Project. The pilot project consists of creating an agreement with one of our existing customers to test out the software in practice. During the pilot project the customer does a full recruitment process utilizing our software and proceeds to the credential issuing process with us once the suitable candidate for that position is found. The selected candidate is instructed to create their personal DID on Atala PRISM (unless they have one already). Once the legal agreement on the job position has been reached both parties confirm this in our platform and Fairway issues Proof of Employment -Credential to the selected candidate.

During the pilot Fairway tech team checks different steps individually and issues the credential manually. After finishing, feedback and data is gathered and adjustments as well as risk analysis made before launch. After the launch all of the parts of the process are handled automatically

Milestone 4 – Mainnet. Once Atala PRISM launches on Mainnet, this service launches as well. The problems and risk are addressed before going live.

Milestone 1 - creating a Credential Framework 2months:

Devoting two of our Strategy and Product Management team members to studying Industry standards of Ethiopian Labor information, Credit issuing standards for 1 month = 1 x (5200$ + 3800$) = 9000$
Devoting two of our Full-Stack developers with combined experience in Cardano and Ethereum ecosystems as well as graduation from PRISM Pioneer Program to study W3C standards and implementing them on industry standards for 1 month = 1 x 2 x 5 200€ = 10 400$

Milestone 2 - Integration of software and creation of UX:

Devoting one Full-Stack developer on our team to build Atala PRISM integration with previous DID experience development experience for 3 months = 3 x 5 200$ = 15 600$
Devoting one Frontend developer to build the fronted and UX for businesses to set a payload for Fairway to Issue a credential 2 month = 2 x 4 750$ = 9 500$
Devoting 50% of another one of Fairway teams developer's time to help with the integration for 3 months = 50 % of 3 x 4 800$ = 7200$

Milestone 3 - Pilot project and running costs for Fairway team: 5 000$ (Covered by Fairway)

Pilot project Account manager to handle the pilot businesses that test the software for 1 month = 4 000$
Devoting one Full-stack developer to fix all the problems that arises from the pilot for 1 month = 5 200$

Milestone 4. - Going live *not budgeted

Total: 60 900$

This is a detailed explanation of which team members will be mostly responsible of different actions. All the listed team members have at least minor tasks regarding this project.

Milestone 1:

The two strategy and product management members responsible on studying the credential framework in Ethiopian market are our CEO Henrik and CCO Gemechis who will leverage their contacts and expertise in Ethiopian market to study the local labor and insdustry data standards, and meeting experts about data application in the local market.
The study is continued by Kidus and Mearaf on W3C standards and applying this all to PRISM tools. Credential framework developments are continued by these two memebers.

Milestone 2:

The develompent of credentials and their integration to our backend is done by Kidus and Mearaf
The user interface is created by our UI/UX designer Ermias

Milsestone 3:

Account managing of the Pilot is done by Gemechis with the help of Henrik and Jussi
Bug fixes after the pilot are done by Mearaf and administered by Kidus

The describtion of relevant team members and the complete team describtion is below. First Five included in the group selfie with CH.

Henrik Metsämäki - Co-Founder & CEO, Product Develompent and strategy. Prior to founding Fairway Experience in Digital consulting and tech sales for 2,5 years and leadership experience of 2 years in Non Profit entrepreneurial organizations focused on design thinking. Actively studied blockchain space since 2017. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrikmetsamaki/>

Heikki Ruhanen - Co-Founder & COO, Partnerships, Finance and Operations. Prior to founding of Fairway experience of 2 years in leadership of creative people of Dash Design Hackathon in Aalto Entrepreneurship society. 2 years in B2B sales in marketing companies and 5-years of experience being part of Finlands startup community. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/heikkiruhanen/>

Gemechis Marema - CCO, Customer relationships, Sales and Product development. Over five years of experience in product development, sales, customer relationships and strategic consulting. Worked as engineer in Ethiopia and currently finishing studies on a second degree in business and information technology focusing on software development. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemechis-marema-ba90bb1a9/>

Kidus Wendimagegn Mammo - CTO, MSc in Security and Cloud Computing with a passion for building scalable, reliable, and secure software systems. Experience working as a DevOps engineer. 6 years experience working with python in different domains among which is 3 years of developing web application and API's using the Django framework. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/kidusmammo/>

Mearaf Tadewos - Full- stack development Cardano. Experienced Software Development Engineer with focus on Backend/API Development. Also certified Haskell Developer at IOHK Education. She has been working at international companies in the tech industry with cross team collaboration. Has developed an Ethereum NFT Minting and Marketplace platform. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/mearaf-tadewos-634228174/>

Ermias Bunaro - Head of UX, full-stack Engineer and Designer with focus on UI software. 5 years of experience in various international businesses and leading large software development teams.

Skills - Markup/UI: HTML5, CSS3, Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap. Languages Java, Typescrip, JS Frameworks. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ermias-bunaro-ab4a6b4b/>

Jussi Korhonen - Head of HR and Service design. Developed and executed recruitment and hr services both internally and externally for thousands of job seekers. Led tens of service design projects from variety of fields. Consulted in strategic choice making and human-centered strategy for years. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jussi-korhonen-5845a18a/>

Hiski Ruhanen - Head of information Security. Hiski has worked 5-years in information security and data protection consultation, as well as internal information security expert and currently works as information security team lead at smartly.io. On top of information security knowledge Hiski has IAPP certification as information security professional. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiski-ruhanen-10934716a/>

[AUDITABILITY]

List of KPI's to monitor the success of the project:

#of created DIDs to people getting employed,

#of issued proof of employment credentials,

#of verifications done to credentials issued by Fairway

'After the Pilot and improvements the credit issuing will be found on our platform launching on Q2 of 2022 https://fairway.global

3kk – Research and plans ready to build the pilot
6kk – Recruited applicant to use first time ever Proof of Employment -credential to gain credit or new employment
12kk – Live on mainnet

When succesful, this project will greatly increase real world adoption of Cardano based DID's and credentials and do so in a market that is highly potential to the tehcnology and needs these solutions the most.

This is entirely new proposal

SDG Rating

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

SDG subgoals:

5.5 Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life

5.b Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women

8.1 Sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances and, in particular, at least 7 per cent gross domestic product growth per annum in the least developed countries

8.2 Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors

8.5 By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value

8.6 By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training

8.7 Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms

8.8 Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment

8.b By 2020, develop and operationalize a global strategy for youth employment and implement the Global Jobs Pact of the International Labour Organization

10.2 By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

8.8.1 Fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 workers, by sex and migrant status

8.6.1 Proportion of youth (aged 15–24 years) not in education, employment or training

8.5.2 Unemployment rate, by sex, age and persons with disabilities

8.5.1 Average hourly earnings of employees, by sex, age, occupation and persons with disabilities

8.2.1 Annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person

8.1.1 Annual growth rate of real GDP per capita

5.5.2 Proportion of women in managerial positions

10.2.1 Proportion of people living below 50 per cent of median income, by sex, age and persons with disabilities

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