Written By Justin Davreux

Digital Certificate of Good Conduct

 

How Credenco provides trust in people by digitizing certificates of good conduct, making them easily shareable and verifiable

Download this case study.

 

About Credenco

Our mission is to increase trust in each other by securely sharing and verifying information now and in the future. Our expertise is developing solutions that focus on working more reliably and securely with valuable and personal information.

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Thanks to our extensive experience in the field of organizational advice and implementations of digital solutions, we always tend to go one step further than others. Our passion is developing, innovating and realizing state of the art technology for everyone who needs a safe and reliable solution for sharing and verifying (personal) information.

 
 

The Challenge

 

The idea for this project evolved when Credenco realized that in a lot of situations it is easy for people to falsify official documents, with potentially an enormous impact for society. One type of document is particularly relevant and that is the Certificate of Good Conduct. This certificate, meant to provide details of your criminal records (or prove the absence of it), is especially useful for employers and could be faked and bought for a relatively cheap price via platforms such as Telegram. The increased number of that kind of fraud combined with its high number of issuance in the Netherlands (around 1.8 million a year) makes solving this challenge relevant. 


Nonetheless, after further research, it appears that fraud is not the only problem that needs to be addressed. Indeed, the current pre-employment screening process suffers from significant inefficiencies, costing days or even weeks (time during which the employee cannot start working). A large number of organizations are requested to verify, process and archive these certificates (mostly paper documents). This process is very time consuming, cumbersome and prone to human error, due to all the intermediary steps necessary (e.g. re-entering the data manually from the paper document into the institutional archive systems). Lastly, as the certificates of good conduct are issued as physical papers (or as signed PDF documents), there is no easy way to revoke or automatically process those documents. This means that even if the employee’s criminal record is updated, the physical paper stays valid, making it disconnected from reality. 

 

The Solution

 

Based on these findings, Credenco was convinced that Decentralized Identity (or Self-Sovereign Identity) was the ideal solution for this challenge and that it would solve the issues mentioned above. Digitizing certificates of good conduct using Verifiable Credentials (VCs) enables citizens to have complete control and visibility over their certificates, while improving the efficiency of processes associated with the issuance, verification and revocation of those certificates. 

This solution can be summarized with the following four points: 

  • Tamper proof: Any tampering with data is immediately made evident, which prevents attempts of fraud by exposing malicious actors. 

  • Enable automatic processing of data: Data processing automations lead to shorter cycles meaning that employees can start working quicker which also ultimately saves both time and money to organizations. 

  • Privacy-preserving: Privacy is enhanced by enabling citizens to control which data they share and with whom. Organizations do not necessarily have to store the citizen’s data themselves. 

  • Support immediate revocation: Immediate revocation improves safety and security for the goal and purpose in which the certificate of good conduct is being issued (e.g. a taxi driver being convicted for drunk driving).

 

The Results

 

This project resulted in the creation of a digital certificate of Good Conduct as a Verifiable Credential in order to provide a safer work environment. This solution makes it easy to verify and almost impossible to fake certificates of good conduct. Credentials can be validated on a daily basis enabling institutions to know whether a certificate of good conduct has been revoked, or is older than a pre-defined period (expired). It is also important to note that for data privacy reasons, some data potentially contained in the certificate of good conduct cannot always be directly shared with the employer. This would mean that the employer would know that the certificate of good conduct is not valid anymore without knowing the reason why (the crime) behind that revocation. 

A personal wallet is used to store credentials and share them in a seamless and secure way, through which potential employers can automatically verify their authenticity. As that solution uses open standards, such as the Decentralized Identity Interop Profile (DIIP) extended with EBSI, the credentials can be stored in any compliant wallet fostering interoperability.

Step by step guide

This step by step guide was created using the example of a sport’s club requesting a Certificate of Good Conduct in the hiring/onboarding process of a volunteer. This guide covers the issuance as well as the verification of the digital certificate.

Step 1: The sport club registers a request for a SmartVOG (Certificate of Good Conduct)

 
 

Step 2: The volunteer receives an email with this request

 
 

Step 3: Volunteer installs the SmartVOG app

 
 

Step 4: The SmartVOG is issued (there are no illustrations for this step)

Step 5: Volunteer receives email with the issued SmartVOG QR-code 

 
 

Step 6: Volunteer scans the QR-code 

 
 

Step 7: Volunteer scans the validation QR-code

 
 

Step 8: The SmartVOG is shared and is validated automatically

 
 

At this stage, the volunteer can see with whom he is sharing his certificate within his own wallet and manage his digital Certificate of Good Conduct from the app directly.

 
 
 
 

“With the Walt.id open-source identity infrastructure we were able to quickly build an interoperable solution for issuing and sharing Certificates of Good Conduct. Furthermore the team was really helpful and great  to work with.”

Eelco Klaver

CTO
Credenco

 

Ready to get started?

 

… or simply book a meeting. We are happy to help

 
 
 

Interested to chat with Credenco?

get in touch with Credenco

 

About the organizations.

  • walt.id offers holistic open source decentralized identity and wallet infrastructure already used by thousands of developers as well as governments, public authorities, DAOs and businesses across industries.

    To ensure client’s success, industry-leading experts provide holistic services ranging from conception over implementation of pilots and production systems to support and managed cloud services.

    For more information visit walt.id or get in touch via mail.

  • Our mission is to increase trust in each other by securely sharing and verifying information now and in the future. Our expertise is developing solutions that focus on working more reliably and securely with valuable and personal information.

    Thanks to our extensive experience in the field of organizational advice and implementations of digital solutions, we always tend to go one step further than others. Our passion is developing, innovating and realizing state of the art technology for everyone who needs a safe and reliable solution for sharing and verifying (personal) information.

Justin Davreux
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