“Kudos to the Velocity Network Foundation for trying to make the world a better place.”
New Entrant: When HR meets the Blockchain – The Velocity Network
The Velocity Network Foundation is a non-profit foundation with an open source solution, the Velocity Network, that connects to many major HR technologies, employers, educational institutions, etc. This network can bring a much-needed measure of validation to the world of recruiting. Velocity’s independent, non-profit structure may be the optimal way for this kind of a solution as it lets HR technology vendors design apps that format certification requests/responses and process the feedback. Velocity Network Foundation sets the standards for credential providers & users, how results are prepared and interpreted, and, most importantly, creates the secure environment for this. Educators and employers would only need to work with one set of design standards to provide requested credentials.
According to a Velocity publication:
“Velocity will provide a frictionless experience to exchange trusted employment, professional achievements, assessment reports and educational certification data, using the power of Blockchain; Instantly, reliably and cost-effectively. Velocity is a utility layer that globally connects human capital data processors —the HR Tech vendors, freelancer platforms, student information system vendors and other labor market and education data processors —and allows for interoperability, transparency and portability of that data. The connected data processors form the “Internet of Careers”, running the distributed ledger and acting as the consensus network that verifies records.
Professionals will be able to take ownership of their human capital data, choose whether to share it, decide how that data is used by others, creating an economy around human capital data value transfer. At the same time, employers, education institutions and other interested parties will be able to rely on trusted, immutable and verified human capital data provided by individuals and access this data seamlessly and cost-effectively, minimizing hiring risks and achieving regulatory compliance.”
There’s a lot to this radically-new solution. It uses blockchain to maintain the integrity of the information. It supports GDPR, CCPA and other privacy standards. It doesn’t keep copies of people data and it allows people to remain out of the system, if so desired.
Why is this newsworthy? Employers, lenders, educators, etc. that rely on big data stores (or small datasets like a credit application) need access to verifiable, vetted information. It’s like the recent college admissions scandal where presumably less-qualified individuals got admitted to prestigious schools while better students didn’t. There are professional, personal, societal and economic costs when bad data triggers the wrong business decision.
Kudos to the Velocity Network Foundation for trying to make the world a better place.
Originally published in Diginomica