Employment Credentials on PRISM

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

IOG and Cardano community are building high quality tools and Dapps to utilize Cardano in real world applications. Atala PRISM and other tools can be used to create DID's, and 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 or verifying "proof of"-credentials on 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 IOG in the creation of Atala PRISM. ProofSpace’s implementation of PRISM means the technology is in place to issue and to verify Proof of Employment -credentials which 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 to use them to create Proof of Employment -credentials for their Employees. And on the other hand there are no tools that make it easy for ordinary businesses to read proof of employment (or experience) credentials in the recruitment process. The services currently provided to businesses don't make this process simple and more importantly, don't offer an incentive to do so, as the businesses responsible for issuing these credentials are not primarily benefiting from the process.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

This is where Fairway steps in. We provide recruitment SaaS to the Ethiopian market. Our product is currently run on private demo and will go public in Ethiopia later in Q2 this year. As our software is designed to handle the complete recruitment process and interaction between a job seeker and recruiter, it will also be used when the final candidate selection is made. 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 the diagram below).

With our approach, employees can access Proof of Employment Credentials despite the fact that businesses might have no incentives to issue credentials and no skills to do so. The proofs and validation required to issue the credentials is already handled by our recruitment and business onboarding flow. 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 developing countries the level of digitalization is usually still not very high and to accelerate adoption innovations are needed. This approach aims to provide 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.

The technological output of this proposal will be a workflow, integrated inside Fairway SaaS recruitment platform, for issuing, receiving and verifying employment credentials. The diagram below provides a summary of the proposed output. The PRISM SDK is integrated into ProofSpace, who have wrapped this SDK with their no-code tools to make it easy and fast to build workflows and ecosystems using PRISM credentials. This also brings a lot of features to PRISM which are not currently natively available to PRISM, and will support the success of this proposal.

In regards to the SSI workflow in particular, there will be the following outputs in this proposal:

1. Fairway will have a ProofSpace Dashboard, in which their workflow will be configured using the credential schema, definition and interaction editors. The workflow will look as follows:
2. Employees use deep linking in the Fairway platform to download their ProofSpace App and SSI OAuth to link their credential wallet to their Fairway account.
3. When an employee is matched with an employer, that fact is issued as a verifiable credential to the employee through the Fairway platform.
4. Future employers looking to verify those credentials can trigger a verification request via Fairway, which sends the verification request to the employee.
5. Fairway’s ProofSpace Dashboard will be integrated into the Fairway SaaS platform with webhooks so that:
6. PS Dashboard can refer to the Fairway backend for issuing employee account credentials via SSI OAuth. 
7. Issuing and revoking proof of employment credentials can be initiated from the Fairway platform, with the actual issuing event taking place in the background through ProofSpace.
8. Requests to verify the credential can be initiated from the Fairway platform, with the actual verification event taking place in the background through ProofSpace.
9. SSI OAuth interactions can be configured in the Fairway platform for access controls.

In future proposals we may work to further decentralize and scale this approach by:

1. Creating a Fairway Trust Registry, so that employers in the trust registry are able to issue credentials based on Fairway proof of employment schemas and verifiers in the Fairway network are able to rely upon credentials based on those schemas.
2. Provisioning every new employer on Fairway platform with a ProofSpace Dashboard wherein issue/verify events can be managed from the Fairway platform. This would result in employers themselves completing the issue/verify function, instead of Fairway.
3. Extending the range of credentials and interactions for Fairway employees and employers.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Ethiopia is a tumultuous market, where there have been wars and lack of digitalisation for some time. That means that there is a 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 the right direction with digitalisation and politics and peace seems probable within the current political turmoil. Fairway is still fully focused on the Ethiopian market and confident with the progress our team will be able to achieve. The piloting of the software is done using the 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 gets 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 selection 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 approve the issuing of credentials. The clever solution we have come up with is to gather most of the important data needed for the credential is gathered already during the recruitment process, and additionally, make the credential issuing part of the validating employees to an organization inside Fairway SaaS. 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] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

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:

1. 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.
2. Integration of ProofSpace 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 the applicant's personal DID. Fairway becomes the issuer of credentials in this process.
3. 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 ProofSpace’s implementation of Atala PRISM.
4. Going live on Mainnet (once Atala PRISM goes on mainnet). We can start testing on PRISM testnet before then.

Milestone 1 (2 months estimated by the mid October) – 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 IOG 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 focusing on government-related activities such as Visa Applications requiring proof of employment

We will also publish our findings with the framework we will create for issuing Employment Credentials. We’ll “open source” this framework”. Basically other projects can issue employment credentials in Ethiopia by copying our framework.

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 (2,5 months simultaneously, estimated by the end of October) – ProofSpace integration and the creation of UI. The integration requires connecting ProofSpace to our software Backend. The integration will be done by developers from our team, including a graduate from PRISM Pioneer Program, in collaboration with the ProofSpace team. Additionally Fairway needs to expand the existing UI to accommodate these tasks. Specific ProofSpace integration tasks include:

1. Configure draft workflow in PS Dashboard
2. Create Fairway Proof of Employment Schema
3. Create Fairway Proof of Employment Credential Definition
4. Create interaction sequence for required/issued credentials
5. Deep linking integration between Fairway and PS App
6. Webhooks integration between Fairway and PS Dashboard
7. Configure SSI OAuth with Fairway Account Credential

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 a payload for Fairway to issue a Proof of Employment -Credential to the selected candidate's personal DID.

Milestone 3 (2 months finished by mid November)– 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 via the ProofSpace App (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 risks are addressed before going live.

Managing the workload of this and other proposals:

Fairway:

We have an ongoing project from the Fund8 and another proposal in the Fund9. These projects are planned in a way that the critical development and piloting phases for different people won’t overlap. Piloting is always something where the scheduling is not only limited by the resources but also by the results and achievements with the target customers and negotiations. These projects are mirroring development and piloting projects that our business does also outside of the Catalyst proposals.

ProofSpace:

Here is a link explaining workload management.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xkE9MMoJGXWKLl9Lkdh7c-R3hH1nn7XdMsZzRSE9LCY/edit?usp=sharing

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Milestone 1 - creating a Credential Framework 2 months – total of 15 000$:

• 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 (5600$ + 4200$) = 9 800$
• Devoting one of our Full-Stack developers with combined experience in Cardano and Ethereum ecosystems as well as PRISM to study W3C standards and implementing them on industry standards for 1 month = 5 200$

Milestone 2 - Integration of software and creation of UX – total of 32 832$:

• Devoting one Frontend developer to design the user experience and to build and test the fronted for employees to sync their ProofSpace/PRISM Dashboard with in the workflow and to build payload for Fairway to Issue a credential 1,5 month =1,5 x 4 950$ = 7 425$
• Devoting one Frontend developer to design the user experience and to build and test the fronted for businesses to set a payload for Fairway to Issue a credential 1 month = 4 950$
• Devoting one backend developer on our team to build ProofSpace integration with previous DID experience development experience for 1 months = 5 200$
• Partnering with ProofSpace to handle the the integration of Fairway Backend to Proofspace API Ability to issue credentials on ProofSpace system with Fairway User interface = 15 257$
• ProofSpace workflow design: 5 103$
• ProofSpace Workflow implementation 5 777$
• ProofSpace Subscription 1y 2 277$
• Proofspace Support 1y 2 100$

Milestone 3 - Milestone 3 - Pilot project and running costs for Fairway team – total of 17 100$:

• Strategy planning for the pilot project + after the pilot forming a plan on how to expand after piloting 1 month 5600$ 
• Pilot project Account Manager to do sales and prepare a pilot with customers to test the implementation for 1 month = 4 300$
• Marketing and use case study for the pilot with the employees. Costs = 2000$
• Devoting one Full-stack developer to fix all the problems that arises from the pilot for 1 month = 5 200$

Milestone 4 - Going live 

• Preparations and studying for going live. Estimated costs = 2500$

Total = 67432

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

This is a detailed explanation of which team members from Fairway will be mostly responsible of different actions. All the listed team members have at least minor tasks regarding this project. Complete list of team below. First five pictured with John.

Milestone 1:

• The two strategy and product management members responsible for 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 industry 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 members.

Milestone 2:

• Verification process and backend integration to ProofSpace stack 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

ProofSpace is a multi-network identity platform, wrapped with no-code tools for building and scaling decentralized ID workflows and ecosystems. Our goal is to eliminate the barriers to adopting Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and proliferate the range and volume of use cases on production. Our vision is to power global digital inclusion and cross-chain commerce with interoperable verifiable credentials, and in so doing expand use of blockchain as a medium of trust. We are live with Hyperledger Indy, on testnet with Atala PRISM and reviewing SSI protocols on Polkadot, Ethereum and Solana.

Fairway team:

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/

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/

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/

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/

ProofSpace Team working on this project:

• Viktor Radchenko - CTO and mobile dev for ProofSpace. 20-year R&D track record. Skilled in project and product management, solution architecture, science consulting, blockchain, mobile, web, game, and embedded development. 6 publications in peer-reviewed journals. 
• Ruslan Shevchenko, PhD - Solution Architect and BE for ProofSpace. Skilled architect and scientific researcher with 30-years’ experience across blockchain, telecom, advertising and financial services. Researcher in the Institute of Software Systems and Founder of several successful ventures including NBI (an Internet Provider), GradSoft (a software development firm) and UA Scala user group. 10 publications in peer-reviewed journals, co-authored book entitled “Methods of Algebraic Programming” and is an active columnist for the Ukrainian developers' community portal.
• Alexey Hodkov - FE/BE for ProofSpace. Talented web backend and frontend solution architect and developer with 17-years’ experience. Team leader, tech mentor and CTO in complex projects for various companies like Yandex LLC and Megogo.
• Viacheslav Zhelobkov - Senior Mobile Dev for ProofSpace. Software developer with 20 years experience in wide variety of IT areas including embedded, mobile, web, backend, etc. in roles from solo founder to Solution Architect and CTO.
• Olesya Kershaw - Customer Success Analyst. A professional musician, experienced concert pianist and teacher who made a career change into digital technologies. She uses her analytical, relationship building and research skills in her work as a business and customer success analyst, while continuously developing her technical skills.
• Nick Mason - CEO for ProofSpace. Experienced social entrepreneur and venture analyst with a proven track record of social venture funding and of starting and growing ventures in Europe and Africa. Background as Consultant venture analyst at Toniic, Head of Portfolio and Operations at BeyondMe, UK Director for Sierra Leone based education charity and Trustee for Street Child. Co-Founded ProofSpace (formerly ZAKA in 2019).

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

The success of this project does not necessitate further funding. The proposed solution will operate in the market adequately to meet the needs of the market. If the demand for our solution is high and the government and big organizations are interested to utilize the employment credentials as verifiers then we intend to further facilitate their participation together with proofspace as well as to enhance the issuer capabilities.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

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

• Creation of a Tangible framework for issuing Employment Credentials following W3C standards and Ethiopian labor law standards and governmental frameworks. We’ll “open source” this framework”. Basically other projects can issue employment credentials in Ethiopia by copying our framework.
• Pilot our solution with at least 3 businesses who will participate to the credential issuing process with us
• Issue a minimum of 10 employment credentials as a proof of concept
• Standardize the process to make it applicable after piloting

List of long term KPI's:

# of created DIDs to people getting employed,

# of issued proof of employment credentials,

# of jobs gained with using employment credentials

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

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

When successful, this project will increase adoption of Cardano based DID’s in Ethiopia for ordinary people in their professional life and also make businesses and recruiters more familiar with the technology. This project will support the adoption of all kinds of credentials issued and verified in the Ethiopian job market and beyond. As the Ethiopian government is already familiar with the benefits and testing these technologies in the educational sector, this project will be an indicator of its success and offer a natural path to expand the existing deals in the country. Ethiopia has a very young population of 115 million people and the number of potential DID’s and credentials in the network created by this project is immense.

A Public Miro board to track our progress (using the password Catalyst): https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOqLZjLE=/?share_link_id=669512564279

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is enhanced from a proposal that almost went through last fund: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397127

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

Sustainable Development Goals (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