[OpenID] OpenID Chance II

[Bob Wyman]

On 2/1/07, Mike Johnson <johnsonmx at gmail.com> wrote:
> we manually confirm through requesting academia-hosted
> CVs that there's a good chance editors are who they
> say they are
Ideally, once Citizendum establishes to their satisfaction that some
individual properly claims the qualitative attribute "Holder of PHD from
University X" or "Is professor at X", then Citizendum would create a signed
claim recording their belief. That claim should then be useful to others who
may wish to establish the same fact or to the individual involved who might
wish, in the future, to say: "Citizendum has accepted my claim to have
attribute X".

In this specific space, (Certification of profession qualifications) there
is a growing industry of companies that validate statements made on CVs and
Resumes. Just a few months ago, I went through the process of having to
present proofs of virtually every factual statement on my resume -- it was
fairly painful given that a number of my ex-employers are either no longer
in business or where merged with other entitites long ago.  Throughout the
process,  I couldn't help  thinking how convenient it would have been if
whenever I was hired by a company, granted a degree by an institution, etc.
I was given a little pile of bits signed by the relevant institution that I
could later use to "prove" any claims that I might make about my past.

Today, the "fact checkers" work for employers or those wishing to verify
claims, not for those who wish to establish claims. The result of course, is
waste... Apply for 10 jobs and you might find that the same company is
charging 10 times to certify the same fact... There is, I think, the
opportunity to turn this around and create organizations that, for a fee,
"certify" claims made by those wishing to establish them. So, I should be
able to pay someone some amount of money to establish that I did, in fact,
work for Digital from 1979 to 1991. Once I had that certification, I should
be able to reuse it with any other organization that was willing to accept
the reputation of the group that I paid to create the certification.

Certification of facts is, I think, a business that will grow massively and
in interesting ways once we have something like OpenID running...

bob wyman
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