As we head into the last month of 2020, this most extraordinary year, we’re delighted to announce a new partnership focussed on empowering work. VELA Solutions¹ has selected Meeco to power their workforce digital credentials platform.
Together, Meeco and VELA have created a secure digital credentialing platform to help individuals and businesses adapt to the changing work environment and modernise their HR practices.
The post COVID-19 world will be more digital. Whilst many digital technologies already existed, to support working from home, telemedicine or signing a contract, necessity accelerated adoption this year.
Now, as we look to 2021, with the promise of being able to work together again, there's an opportunity to rethink the way we seek and start work in a more trusted and digital way.
New technical standards are emerging which focus on establishing trust in the digital world. One such standard is Verifiable Credentials, the method by which credentials can be issued, verified and exchanged. This includes the ability to cryptographically prove that a credential is authentic, valid and trustworthy. The benefits for people and organisations of this technology include:
- Faster and more convenient to verify education and training records
- Reduced risk and fraud
- Credential portability and re-use
- Verification and revocation
- Improved compliance
- Increased safety
- Privacy management
Founded by Andrew Scott and Michael Derwin, VELA Solutions is the culmination of their extensive experience across workforce management, organisational development and HR Tech. Their motivation to build VELA draws on their personal stories.
For Andrew, the importance of identity was something he learnt at a much younger age. In his late teens whilst living away from home to study, the share house he was living in was destroyed by fire. He escaped only with the jeans he was wearing and with no way to identify himself. Without proof of identity, he was not able to access basic things like health services or his bank account. Living rough was the only option until he could get back on his feet. This experience has shaped his desire to ensure people can benefit from decentralised identity, also referred to as Self Sovereign, Self-Managed or Portable Identity.
“We believe that this technology will fundamentally change the way businesses and employees work together — it's just a matter of time.” – Andrew Scott, Director – VELA Solutions
Michael has always had a passion for making technology work for people. He is no stranger to pioneering the change he wants to see in the world. His first foray was in the 1990s, using the early internet to support the education of Australian outback students using "School of The Air" – something we now know as open learning. More recently he co-founded the talent management software company, Adepto, which was successfully acquired by Degreed earlier this year.
“We are now in the age where we can connect hardware and software technologies and truly empower individuals to take charge of their digital self.” – Michael Derwin, Director – VELA Solutions
The maturing of decentralised identity solutions underscored the decision to find an experienced partner. Enter Meeco. We have been pioneering the collection, protection and exchange of personal data and identity since 2012. The decentralised credentials technology developed for VELA draws on our expertise and uses the W3C Verifiable Credentials Standard, which means, we will deliver workforce solutions that are interoperable and globally supported.
“This is a significant achievement towards empowering people to securely collect, verify and share their workforce credentials. The mutual benefits of risk management and value creation demonstrates the power of human-centric technology. Adopting this approach gives mutual control over the collection and use of personal data, and give workforce eco-system partners a competitive edge.” – Katryna Dow, CEO & Founder, Meeco
“The changing landscape around data privacy is putting the individual in charge of their data — this will fundamentally change the way companies need to operate.” Michael Derwin, Director, VELA Solutions
VELA and Meeco are united by our vision to get trusted workforce data into the hands of people so they can use their verified work data to get work, utilise their skills and experience, and progress their careers.
To support these workforce challenges, we have developed a secure platform with verified credential portability making it faster and easier to recruit, onboard and maintain employee and contractor professional credentials.
Our differentiator will be the ability to configure implementations to support both decentralised wallets and integration into existing enterprise systems. This is achieved with Meeco's patented vault technology. Meeco's suite of APIs, SDKs and documentation are available to our eco-system partners to ensure integrations support corporate governance, risk tracking and reduction, improved safety and compliance outcomes, whilst always empowering people.
The VELA solution can be applied across a range of sectors such as health, mining, education, aviation and government. To find out more and register to keep updated on our progress, visit VELA Solutions¹.
Also stay tuned, in the coming weeks Meeco will announce our distributed ledger partner, along with our commitment to co-developing tools to support the issuers, verifiers and enterprises in this exciting new workforce eco-system.
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¹ Vela Solutions can now be discovered via Vela Digital.
