Respect Network chief executive, Drummond Reed.
Aussie start up, Flamingo Ventures, has become a foundation partner of the what is being billed as the world's first global network for trusted private data sharing.
Respect Network claims to be the world’s first standard and protocol for Personal Cloud providers - that's me and you.
The network is aiming to restore privacy on the internet.
The launch of the Flamingo Personal Cloud strategy is an attempt to disrupt the traditional relationships that business have with customers where the business holds or ‘owns’ the customer data.
The customer will now be able to store, manage and permission their own data which includes the experience profiles that detail their preferences for interacting with organisations across communications, product, processes, interaction channels, people and price.
It is hoped, for customers this will provide a fast, efficient and accurate way to let business know what it is they want.
For organisations the combination of Co-creation and Personal Cloud may increase efficiency in the customer retention process by up to 50 per cent and in the sales process rates by about 30 per cent, according to a company statement.
Customers with a Personal Cloud will be identified by having an equals sign (=) in front of their name.
The price of a personal cloud name is AU$30 and this should act as the single digital signature or identity for a customer, that the customer owns.
A business that can operate with a customer’s personal cloud will have a plus sign (+) in front of their business name.
Founder and CEO of Flamingo, Dr Catriona Wallace said it was time customers took charge of their data and started to manage their vendors.
"This is a much more efficient and effective way for both customers and business," she said.
"It will, however, turn traditional models of CRM and big data on their heads," she said.
"Flamingo’s role is to work with business and government to make sure they have the tools and capabilities to enter this new phase of identity sovereignty.”
Flamingo’s current focus is on the banking and insurance sector.
However, the company is also set to invest $2 million to develop a customer-directed healthcare solution by February 2015.
The Respect Network, which launched in Sydney on July 7, and the US and Europe earlier on, defines a system and standards for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to host “Personal Clouds” for any internet user.
The idea is Personal Clouds will host a collection of information specific to a person who has complete control of this information.
This collection will have been populated either manually by the person or as a feed from personal cloud-aware applications.
This could include aspects such as routine stuff like your phone number, postal address.
But it can also include secure information useful for forms like your credit card numbers, passport number, health card number.
Even more detailed profile data to encapsulate the person’s experience preferences: that they like to communicate by SMS, that they prefer organic food, that they prefer German cars.
Then there is App generated data: the person’s search terms on Google, the tracks of the person’s movements from GPS tracking on their phone, the posts that the person has liked on Facebook.
The Respect Network has an extensive set of standards to ensure that the person’s data is secure, protected, portable and they control who can access it.
Businesses can request access to read or write specific categories of data and this will not be granted without the person’s permission.
But in order for the Respect Network data to be interoperable between services there has to be a standard method of defining the semantic meaning of the data.
This is achieved through Respect Network clouds adhering to metadata standards like XDI (https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi
Respect Network chief executive Drummond Reed, said it gave users ownership of their data.
“It puts control back in the hands of individuals and not only gives them the choice of how their information is used but compensates them for their value," he said.
"No longer are people unwittingly the product."
The network, launched in London on June 23, is a collaboration between more than 70 founding partners worldwide, some of which are in Australia.
Other partners across Australia and New Zealand include Crypto Photo, Edentiti, Geddup, MyInfoSafe (NZ), Onexus, Present Group, Secure Value Exchange, WelcomerID, 4th Party, and 1id.
Flamingo will be a business user of the Respect Network and will be a source of, and a user of, personal cloud data.
At the start of a Flamingo session, the customer who has been invited into the Co-creation Lab will be given the option of connecting to their Personal Cloud.
If they do so, they will be authenticated against their Personal Cloud account.
If they don’t have a Personal Cloud, Flamingo can proceed without needing to access any cloud details or can assist with the set up of a Personal Cloud for the customer.
Flamingo will read or write data from the customer’s Personal Cloud.
This will includes standard data for practical purposes such as quickly filling a user’s postal address fields and also more secure information such as bank account details.
Also, customer experience preference data or information that may have been provided by other systems – across communications, product, processes, interaction channels, people and price.
It will include customer experience preference data and information that was saved from a previous Flamingo session.
If the customer has connected to their Personal Cloud, throughout the Flamingo Co-creation session, fields can be loaded from the cloud.
There will be an indication this is possible with a special icon. The customer can select any or all of these questions to have their information downloaded from the cloud.
To support customers who are co-creating in the Flamingo platform and who need to verify their identity Flamingo can validate the customer’s information through its partnership with Welcomer ID.
Similarly Flamingo can validate the verification of a customer’s income through a partnership with Verify http://www.infactdecisions.com.
This means that the customer can permission Flamingo through the Welcomer ID and Verify platforms to easily and securely access data from organisations such as the RTA for Drivers Licence identification or a customer’s employer for verification of income.
According to a company statement, this means they do not have to leave a conversation or interaction with an organisation in order to collect this data to provide it to the organisation.
For the organisation this means they can gather customer data efficiently and continue the conversation with the customer.
