Re: [projectvrm] Trunomi and doing more with VRM than monetizing data

[Kevin Cox < >]

Yes scaling across organisations is one of the objectives of the Welcomer Framework.  The mantra is enter it once and use many times no matter where it was entered. We expect there to be applications built to do this.  In our proposals to organisations we say that each user when they come to the organisation will see a tailored individualised portal. Typically it will show all the applications the person has previously used and show the person how to connect to other applications. We see other applications being written to do the coordination across organisations for users.  Coordination tends to be different for different applications.

When an organisation becomes Welcomer Enabled they do it application by application.  At the time an application is introduced the rules surrounding what data can be transferred to a third party is specified if the data originated in the organisation.  This is to take into account the question of commercial in confidence data.

For example bankA does not wish Bank B to know the balance in the customers account and so wants to prevent the customer telling Bank B this fact.

A super market does not wish a competitor to know the price they actually charged a customer for bread this week.

Unless you allow the data originating with the organisation to be "private" between the person and the organisation, if the organisation wants it, then the organisations will not cooperate.

In other words if we want to have a peer to peer relationship then both parties have to be equally protected.   

As the rules are context dependant and as the context is defined by the application we have defined the rules to consider the data, the application, the organisation, the individual, third parties and the applications that the third party wishes to use.  This is why we have constructed Welcomer using CloudOS ideas.  For each application there is a "pico" or its equivalent connecting to the organisation. There is a "pico" or its equivalent connecting to the personal cloud. 

The individual can connect their picos across applications and across organisations without referring to the organisation's picos (unless it is part of the rules).

All this sounds complicated but in reality it isn't too bad because it happens one application at a time and most applications have the same sort of rules.  There are a limited number of applications and there are a limited number of restrictions you need for most applications and most restrictions apply to the roles people have. Also organisations have processes when they introduce new functionality like new applications. The Welcomer rules are part of the process of introducing an application.

The reason why it is much much easier to deploy than other approaches is that existing applications can be integrated simply by providing an API. Other than the API the existing application does not have to change.  All the rules go into the Welcomer Framework and they can all be tailored once and rarely need to change.

This means we do not need to get organisations to agree to use standards.  (Although we will use them where appropriate).

It means we can go to an organisation one application by one application and introduce personal clouds step by step.

I have been responding to a Request for Proposal these past couple of weeks for a system for our local government where, amongst about 400 things, they want to have a "government id" so that a resident does not have to enter the same data time and time again for all the different agencies and continually have to fill out the same information for every separate application they use.  It is a challenge responding to their formal processes which have a different model of deployment than we are suggesting built into the Request for Proposal.  We are quietly confident as we are in a consortium with three large multinationals.  We are there because there is a weighting for local suppliers and because the lead organisation in the consortium believes in our approach to user engagement.  Unfortunately the process will take at least six months before we know if we are successful.

Here is my introduction to our part of the response.  It is likely to be changed by the other members of the consortium.  However if the response succeeds and we get to deploy it will be a big win for VRM.   (Suggestions for improving what I have written and/or fixing up my twisted syntax would be appreciated:)

The first of 93 theses in the best selling ClueTrain Manifesto (1999) is "Markets are Conversations".  For governments the equivalent statement is "Governing is Conversing".  The ClueTrain manifesto has been a catalyst for promoting the idea of user engagement in online systems. This approach contrasts to the client server (master/slave) approach of many online systems where the user is treated as an object rather than a person. Much of the work in turning online interactions into conversations is recorded in ProjectVRM hosted by the Harvard Berkman Centre. The ClueTrain Manifesto called for the builders of Internet Tools to create scalable tools for conversations. Online conversations only happen when applications are enabled for conversations.

The Open Source Welcomer Framework is a tool to build scalable user engagement, conversational, systems and realise the ClueTrain ideas.  This is achieved by giving the individual electronic access to their past transactions to assist them in their dealings with the organisation.  It does this by making a copy of the personal data transferred between the individual and the organisation.  The data is made available for later use by the individual. This means if an individual enters data once then it is available for other applications. It means that the record of engagement becomes the individual's electronic memory of transactions, which in turn is a person's electronic identity. This idea is expressed in this video from the MIT project IDCubed.org.  

The Open Source Welcomer Framework achieves, in an iterative evolutionary way, the same objective as the IDCubed.org Open Mustard Seed project of creating an electronic identity with the records of past interactions. The interactions are with any application that uses the Welcomer Framework.

On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 12:50 AM, Doc Searls < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Is it possible for customers of Welcomer-equipped businesses to relate to each of those businesses the same way? Rephrased, can a customer scale across multiple Welcomer-equipped businesses?

Doc

On May 5, 2015, at 8:58 PM, Kevin Cox < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Doc,

Welcomer does not sell to individuals. - but sells to businesses.   Businesses in turn sell privacy, access, more convenience, less time for customers.  The reality is that giving people access helps both business and customers.  

Kevin

On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 7:51 AM, Phillip J. Windley Ph.D. < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

We discussed Utopia of Rules at IIW. 

I see VRM being my defender against encroaching bureaucracy (both government and corporate). 

In that sense, I see tools like 1Password as porto-vrm tools because they make dealing with the increasing bureaucratization of my life easier. I’m happy to pay for them. 

The more these tools will do for me, the more I’m willing to pay. 

On May 5, 2015, at 12:18 PM, Iain Henderson < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Hi Doc, I think part of the problem that we have in this respect is that we have no VRM/ individual-side equivalent to the term 'monetise'.

As I see it, the metric most relevant to VRM propositions is 'save me time'. Make my data more accessible when I need it, stop me having to hunt around irrelevant products/ vendors to find what I want, fill in forms for me all have 'save me time' as their core. Yes there are other benefit types, but I think 'save me time' is both the biggest benefit area and the easiest to measure. Convenience is a good proxy, but less tangible and more difficult to measure.

So what might be the buzzword equivalent of 'save me time' that we could build measures around? Might be one for the glossary fest piece of work. Get that right and we have a very relevant term and metric to pitch into the customer experience discussion.

And let's not go down the route of then converting time into money. Minutes/ seconds saved' is likely a more tangible measure for individuals when it comes to how individuals value what might often be a 'free' service.

Cheers 

Iain

On 4 May 2015, at 23:52, Doc Searls < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Re:

Alexander Ainslie

@AAinslie

@jobsworth @dsearls Are you ready for the "epic battle around the sovereignty of data & consent to share"? medium.com/the-fintech-bo… #VRM #SDH

The link there goes to Why business-led data monetisation is a mere stepping-stone to the consent to share end game. It’s by Stuart Lacey: <https://www.linkedin.com/pub/stuart-lacey/29/b46/585>, founder of Trunomi: <http://www.trunomi.com/>. Anybody familiar with it? (Could be Stuart’s here. Not sure.)

Description at @Trunomi on Twitter: "We transform the use of Personally identifiable info (Pii) and KYC; empowering customers to create, share and manage it at a fraction of the time, cost & risk.” (KYC is Know Your Customer. Perhaps the VRM counterpart would be Know Your Vendor.)

Some pull-quotage from the top link above, with comments:

Financial organisations the world over are clamoring to find ways to mine and use customer data; which, in turn is giving rise to consumers becoming more aware of how their data is tracked and used. Consumers are comfortable trading spending history for a free service,

No, that’s a marketing fantasy. As an Uber customer, I am comfortable with Uber knowing where I need to be picked up and my history of using their service, but nothing more than that. So, while I think it sucks that Uber has a shitty history around abuse of personal data…

http://time.com/3595025/uber-data/

http://www.gizmag.com/uber-app-malware-android/34962/

… I value their service enough to put up with it. But acquiescence ≠ comfort, and it is wrong to assume so.

but are beginning to question why a taxi company such as Uber should have access to family holiday photos.

Yep.

This raised level of awareness will require a whole new business model to emerge to address the use of personal data. The consumer will be at the core of that business model. Yes, consumers will be monetising their own data.

That’s the kind of thing that comes to mind when you stand on the side of the market where personal data is busy being monetized all the time. 

But from the personal side, data is secondary to agency: the power to act with full effect in the world. If we have full agency, we control how we interact with others on the Net. Valving the data we share is part of that, but far from all. Being able to control how we relate to other entities in the marketplace is far more important. Monetizing data only comes up because it’s already being done.

So, the logic goes, “Consumers’ data is being monetized without their involvement, so let’s find ways for them to monetize their data as well.” This is like saying, “There’s a big market in stolen goods, so let’s find ways for those whose goods are being stolen to get in on the action."

(This, fwiw, is where I was going with the vault vs. honeypot post we visited in an earlier thread: <http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2015/04/29/of-vaults-and-honey-pots/>)

Regulation, public policy and consumer demand will soon collide in an epic battle around the sovereignty of data and consent to share. The next trillion dollar industry is one in which new solutions come to market that enable consumers to digitally manage and share their identifying information across a number of industries and verticals.

Yep, that’s cool. And that’s where VRM comes in as well. Maybe some of that ends up monetizing data. But if that’s all we get out of VRM, I fear we will have lost more than we have gained.

Doc

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