Can technology governance and technical standards be stifling or enabling

In this episode of “Better Innovation,” Global Tax Innovation Leader and host Jeff Saviano interviews Shelia Warren, Head of Blockchain, Data, and Digital Assets at the World Economic Forum

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In this episode, Jeff talks tech governance with Shelia Warren, Head of Blockchain, Data, and Digital Assets at the World Economic Forum.

While tech leaders often think that governance hinders innovation, Warren argues that a basic governance framework can help solution developers think more deliberately about their products and build more inclusive experiences for users, which ultimately translates to higher adoption. Warren also posits that good governance practice increases public confidence in new technologies, in sharp contract from the negative aspects of largely unregulated technologies or crypto assets (think, bitcoin).

Jeff and Sheila also discuss the implications of “self-governance” in decentralized systems like blockchain, and the need to align tech developers and policy specialists. Join us for an in-depth conversation that just may change the way you look at governance in tech.

For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is also available.

Jeff Saviano

Hey Better innovation. It's Jeff. We're back. Our first episode of season four. This is definitely the shortest off season we've had better innovation. We just finished season three. I know we went really long last season. We just had to get in this special crisis innovation series. Here we are, about a month later, starting season four. If you're a fan of the NBA basketball fan, you'll know that the NBA off season is only 71 days.
You think that’s short? We're about half of that. So, we know that there was a fast start to season four, but we're so excited to get right back at it.
Here we go. Episode number one, Sheila Warren in our virtual studio with us today. Sheila is the head of blockchain and data policy and a member of the executive committee for the World Economic Forum.
She's a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School. She started her career as a Wall Street attorney and then she turned to philanthropy and non-profit work about a decade ago. She's such a key leader in the global blockchain community. When we were last together just this January in Davos, alongside the World Economic Forum, she helped us launch our Prosperity Collaborative, and that's our collaboration with MIT, the World Bank New America and the Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation.
We're so proud of our Prosperity Collaborative and there's so much that we're going to do to bring advanced tech development around the world. I have to say, I'm going through a bit of a technology governance phase. I'm so fixated on the importance of governance and the role of government policy in emerging tech development and proliferation for technologies like blockchain. We're going to unpack that today along with the new Technical Standards Mapping Initiative that Sheila, the World Economic Forum, alongside the Global Blockchain Business Council, launched just this past month.
I think you're going to really like this one. Sheila is terrific. Enjoy.
Sheila, welcome to the show.

Sheila Warren

Hey, Jeff. Thanks so much for having me.

Jeff

Well, this is round two, isn't it? round two of the podcast extravaganza.

Sheila

I love it, yes - Home and away.

Jeff

And for the benefit of our of our audience, what I'm talking about is that Sheila is also a podcast host, a new podcast called Money Reimagined with Michael Casey from Coindesk. Tell us about that.

Sheila

Yeah, so this is a podcast that Coindesk and our forum decided to collaborate on. We were really interested in exploring many and new ideas of money.
And so we started off just by talking through some of the kind of cultural or anti biological significance of money. We intend to do a bit of history and a bit of sociology and culture and things like that. But we're also really getting into some of the new models of money and how they relate to governance and other things. And so the episode that you were so gracious to be on with us was really talking through those issues of governance and specifically talking about taxation systems, but also voting systems and democracy and how some of the underlying governance mechanisms of things like cryptocurrency can be really informative, instructive in these other spaces.

Jeff

It's happening so fast, isn't it? So fast in the world. And so many of these changes with Central Bank digital currencies and so it was great fun to join the podcast. I'm not sure what I like better, asking the questions and or answering them, but it was nice to be on the other side of that.

Sheila

Yeah, well, I'm feeling the same way right now, so thank you so much for that and really looking forward to this.

Jeff

And where can our audience find money reimagined, I imagine? Is it on all of the podcast platforms.

Sheila

It is indeed. So Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever, you normally listen to podcasts. It also ties into a column. If you're kind of more of a visual person and you want to get a quick scan on what the what the podcast might be about.
Michael puts out a column every week also called Money Reimagined on Coindesk. And so that often is the starting point, although we go quite far afield from what's written there, but that you can find the links there as well.

Jeff

It is such a great forum. We love doing this and want to thank you again for coming on today.
I feel like, Sheila, we've been traveling in some of the same circles and I just want to publicly thank you for helping us out earlier this year in Davos, in the World Economic Forum. Can you even imagine that it was the same year like it was 2020? So, it seems like it was lifetime ago.

Sheila

A decade ago, right? Like a lifetime ago, indeed. Can't believe it.

Jeff

You helped us launch our Prosperity Collaborative, our great collaboration with organizations like New America and MIT the World Bank, Michael Dukakis Leadership Center and so thank you for that.
We got a great reception at the Global Blockchain Business Council site, but we love the blockchain community, and it was so great to have you help us launch that initiative.

Sheila

Well, it was such a pleasure for me to be there. I really it was so interesting kind of to hear what the GDC focused on this year and to get a sense of what frustrated Klavan is all about when you guys kicked it off. I've certainly been following that with great interest.

Jeff

We get really great feedback. Yeah, that's awesome.
And it's great to launch. And as you said, lots has happened in the world since January of 2020 when we were together in Davos. But making good progress on that and we'll be talking more about the Prosperity Collaborative with our better innovation audience in the weeks to come. We always get really good feedback Sheila from our audience.
They love it when our guest gives us a bit of their background of where are you from? Where'd you go to school? How did you end up where you are today? Maybe that's a good, good place to start. We'd love to hear from you a bit on that.

Sheila

Sure. So I started off I went to law school, so I am a lawyer by training.
And I started off at a Wall Street law firm where I represented you know, banks and hedge funds and PE and all these kinds of things. But really, you know, prior to that, I had been very focused on civil society, civil service. And so I quickly pivoted into non-profit taxation and I kind of moved out to the valley longer ago than I will say, to really focus on innovative models of philanthropy.
And so how can people think about giving money away and so some of the early clients I worked with there were, you know, some of the last generation of tech giants had started all these different foundations and other initiatives. And I set up a lot of those. And so we really thought a lot about governance, like how do you give away money efficiently?
How do you kind of set up systems of governance that are going to really ensure that there is not overly an emphasis on administrative overhead and things like that. From there, I became an expert on cross-border giving. So how you how you give money away assertively across the border is actually shockingly complicated. And people don't really realize that. And from there, I left the law for a little while, and I built a SAS product called NGO Source that was focused on streamlining some of the diligence required to again get charitable dollars across the border. From there, I went back into the law. I became general counsel of an enterprise, social enterprise called TechSoup. We focused on digital divide issues and really supporting civil society organizations using technology regarding technology resources. We had an e-commerce site that was really focused on providing donated resources from big tech companies to civil society organizations. Under my tenure there, we expanded our reach to 230 odd countries, different countries, which is almost everywhere.
Our goal was to get ever that wasn't sanctioned by the U.S. government or back and then from there, that's how I got into blockchain. That's how it all started. It was, yeah.

Jeff

You can see that is a really interesting path and see how that comes together with your role, not only the blockchain part of your role, but also the data aspects as well.
So maybe, maybe talk a bit about your role at the forum and and I know that there's been a somewhat recent change, right? An expansion of your responsibilities included, including some data as well.

Sheila

Exactly. So in 2017 in the Spring, the forum opened an outpost in San Francisco, as we call it, which is called the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and it focused on emerging technologies and blockchain, AI, IoT, drones, etc., and how we actually think about effective governance in these new technologies.
You know, how do we mitigate risk and how do we kind of accelerate the benefits? And so I came on board to basically inaugurate the blockchain team that is now become blockchain digital asset because we kind of shifted, you know, as the city shifted, we shifted to make sure we had up to the inclusion of digital assets in that space.
But I also took over our data policy team earlier this year right after Davos actually. And so they're I'm focusing a lot on what data policy and data governance and really new ways of thinking about, you know, data, data as an asset, human data models data intermediaries, all these kinds of things that were, I was really dealing with a lot more when I was at TechSoup, but also in other kinds of endeavors that I that I was working on over the past, previous point in my career.
So yeah. And I think the intersection between the Blockchain Digital Assets Team and the data policy and data governance team you know, to me it's very, very clear. I don't know that a lot of people think about that as much as they think about the fintech implications or currency. You know, there's lots implications, right, of the technology.
But I actually got into blockchain from the data space. That's what attracted me to it first. It wasn't actually, like Bitcoin was a totally separate thing that I was kind of, you know, bought a little and forgot all about it kind of thing. I was really interested in how blockchain technology, a decentralized ledger, is basically it is a general idea.
Ledgers can actually really help enhance security for civil society organizations and prevent things like hacks of that data through the new methods of encryption that we're kind of enabled. Yeah.

Jeff

I'm really curious about, Sheila, your point of view on this really fast-moving issue of technology governance. And I think most people, when they think about governance, they think about it in terms of teams or organizations, how organizations are structured, how decisions are made.
But the notion of technology, governance, I feel like it's in our travels as we talk to companies and governments and civil society, that some people have a hard time getting their head around what do we mean by technology, governance? Do you find that as well?

Sheila

I think everyone has a hard time getting their head around it. And I would say even those of us who, you know, who are making their livelihoods, focusing in a space, you know, have a have a hard time coming to a really concise definition. It is an area that is everyone kind of agrees intuitively that it's essential, but no one really knows what the ‘it’ is. You know, what I mean?
So part of what I think we focused on at the forum is less about how do we define it, but more what are the gaps that are really preventing wider scale adoption or are enabling kind of riskier methods of adoption. Right. Than we would that would be necessary if we had effective governance in place. But yes, I think you're exactly right Jeff. It's one of those things that people kind of know when they see it. But it's very hard to define.

Jeff

I think, of governance in terms of decision making and the authority and how it's exercised. That's an overly simplistic terms. But what's so interesting about the governance question for blockchain is the very decentralization of blockchain in and of itself.
And some may look at it and say, isn't that ironic? Isn't that interesting that we're talking about the governance of a decentralized system? How would you answer somebody that poses that question about the link of a decentralized system and governance to many connotes something happening in the center?

Sheila

Yeah. I think there is this idea that governance requires a centralized authority.
You know, we think about it a lot in terms of government. And so there is this kind of central body that sets our laws and regulations and kind of arbitraries or, you know, adjudicate when something has been violated. And what the consequences of that are, you know, etc. We have system of court systems centralized. So, I think people often think about it in terms of government.
But what I first of all, what I find fascinating, what we touched on when you when you were so gracious to come on our podcast, was this idea that doesn't have to be that way. You know, certainly that is kind of the historical norm. But for us, you know, we think of kind of like go answer this question a little bit roundabout. So bear with me here. But we think of governance, really. There's a process component to this for sure. So, it's really about how do you particularly in a very fast emerging, you know, you discuss technologically innovative space. How do you ensure that there is a process for making sure things are inclusive, making sure that you are effectively considering risks?
There's this kind of well-known, you know, philosophical concept, I suppose, called the Congress dilemma, which really says that the problem with innovation is that early on, when you can really make a very cheap intervention and you can kind of like a butterfly effect, right? Like a little tiny pivot is going to have huge implications down the line. That's cheap to do.
But you just don't understand the consequence of the technology and you don't understand why you might need to make those changes. And then, of course, once the technology is fully baked and really at scale, then it becomes deeply expensive. You know what the problems are, but it's really, really expensive to fix them. If you and we're certainly seen as I think with social media platforms and others that I'm sure would, you know, the pivot that they are trying to make would have been very, very cheap and easy years ago.
But now it's really almost impossible to kind of do. And so for us, you know, governance is a process by which you are creating almost checks and balances in your system to say when those changes become necessary, what is the trigger and how do you do that. Now in a decentralized system, the only thing that really changes is that the authority for approval of those changes.
Let me just give you one very concrete example here. You know, these sort of this changes doesn't come from one body. It comes from the collective. And that isn't actually I think is mind blowing as people seem to think. You know, it's kind of like how we substitute trust on a blockchain, how we substitute kind of an oracle.
We use the system itself to provide self-governance. It's the same kind of thing here. And I think that in my mind, it's just a new model for achieving the exact same end point, which is affecting positive changes that are going to make the system as a whole more robust or whatever the outcome is that you're looking for.

Jeff

Yeah. It's a good way to put it. And let's face it, it's hard enough to build technology for one or a very few number of customers. But to think about truly building a multi-stakeholder platform where in a decentralized system there is, there's an opportunity for multiple parties to weigh in on features and functions and risk and security and timing.
And the hundreds, the literally hundreds of decisions that you have to make when designing a system requires some form of order. And I've always found really interesting that that sometimes isn't it? Isn't it less about how those organizations are coming together but it's also equally important that that if you make certain bad decisions in those early governance days; if you make a decision that may exclude a certain segment of those stakeholders, then that could have a lasting effect.
And it does feel like that can have a bit of a chilling effect on teams and groups that are forming blockchain consortia, for example. Because ultimately, isn't it about bootstrapping the networks and getting multiple people to use it, right?

Sheila

Yeah. I mean, I think this is where we really have to talk about equity, you know, so a lot of the recent conversations that have been had around where everything from BlackLivesMatter or other kinds of political movements, but really how do we ensure that we are not taking bias into our systems?
Because, again, you know, teams move fast and there's certain pressures to talk about to start startup, just certain pressures to really kind of get to product and to find product market fit and to really, you know, get to production, you know, but to do that, you're often working with a very small team that's going to have their own biases.
They're baking into the product. And so how do you create a system that's going to accommodate a more inclusive user reference? You know, and there are processes for doing that. And I would call all of those processes, governance processes.

Jeff

Yeah. And it could be more about the economics and the incentive mechanism to get parties to join and the psychology of it, perhaps more so than the bits and bytes of the technology itself.

Sheila

Exactly

Jeff

That is something that right. And not to minimize that, as I say things like that to our technology team, I feel like they want to throw me out the window when we say things like, Boy! the technology is not the biggest part of the problem. But here I do think that the incentive mechanisms, how do you create an environment and the economic incentives for those to join?
Do I have that right? Do you feel like that is a key element of a governance model?

Sheila

I do think that's right. You know, and I think that's one element that's quite critical of governance. And if you don't look, I think the biggest mistake that that team technical teams make is not giving enough thought to governance. To what is underlying the system.
Now, certainly, you know, there's often a lot of thought given to kind of like how you audit code and things like that, which is really, really important, the integrity of that. Right. It's not that different of a process when you think I mean, I shouldn't say process because it literally is different process operationally, but it's not that different of kind of a theory around how you do the same thing around exactly what we're talking about.
It's just a different and equally important layer that has to be built in from the very beginning. So that you understand what your kind of change management would be, how you're thinking about culture, how you're thinking about your users, how you're thinking about everything folds into this. And so it isn't as simple. And certainly we all know that, you know, there's no such thing as unbiased code, right?
We like to think that, like, math is super unbiased. Yes, Relatively speaking. But there are a lot of assumptions that are baked into all of those little tiny changes as bits and bytes, as you said. And so ensuring that we are checking that against a truly representative process is only going to serve us better in the long run because we're going to get that broader adoption that presumably, you know, everybody wants.

Jeff

And perhaps a close cousin of governance is this notion of having a sound regulatory and policy from government.
I'd be interested in your thoughts on the interplay with governance and effective governmental policy to not just promote the adoption of the technology, but also to regulate it where it needs regulating and that difficult balance. How do you incentivize the development and the adoption but how do you regulate where it needs regulating?

Sheila

Yeah, I've been a fan of regulation for a long time.
I'm a lawyer, so it's not surprising. You know, I gave this talk years ago. We love regulation. We love, yay, regulation. It provides clarity. And so I gave this talk years ago and I'm one of these, one of these kind of like conferences that sprung up in the in the 2017 ICO craziness.
And it was to a bunch of, at the time very typical crypto kind of people right to sort of your like snowboarder or winners for kind of dudes right and I put up this slide that was an image of a half pipe and it was kind of a snowboarder it was famous nobody's going down this half pipe or I said would you think of regulation like the half pipe.
So, you have a tremendous amount of flexibility and individual creativity and etc., in terms of how you go down that half pipe. But without the half pipe, how do you know who's winning? You've no idea. And so I kind of framed it that way competitively because that was the environment and the message really loud. And so that kind of got a lot of pick up in this face because it was I think it was for many people the first time that they had this knee-jerk anti-regulation stance, like, why, how dare they regulate us?
But without that kind of the rules of the game in some way being laid down, you don't really know what you're doing. And I also think it's really important to recognize that regulation like we felt we may not like the specifics of regulation and how they affect our business, you know, speaking broadly. But we certainly can't argue that the goals of regulation, generally speaking are sound. Consumer protection, fraud prevention, things like this are actually important to society in the functioning of society and frankly, to development of an industry.
Otherwise, it's kind of this is super wild west, and you're not going to get anybody on speculators and people who can afford to lose their shirts who are going to really enter the space.

Jeff

It's a good way to look at it. And as you so correctly point out, that a lot of regulation may be more of the stick than the carrot, but there's also incentive mechanisms and subsidies.

Sheila

Absolutely

Jeff

I love the famous Reagan quote, something to the effect of if you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it. And yeah, and maybe it's the tax lawyer in me. But I still think that you go back to 1996 I think and President Clinton signs the Internet Tax Freedom Act and it prevents the taxation of the Internet as a central point in the development of that technology to allow it to proliferate tax free and not that you know tax rules the world but I do think that, that was an important Act for that general purpose technology.
And so I'd be interested in this this balance of the regulatory side of it, the stick versus incentive mechanism. Do you think that there's more that governments can be doing to encourage and subsidize the development and diffusion of this technology?

Sheila

In a word, yes. And in a second word, absolutely. You know, I think that one of the reasons we haven't seen more of that, you know, carrot type of regulation or incentive regulation is because I know to be really blunt, is because of some of the early branding, if you will, of Bitcoin as this kind of criminal enterprise.
And, you know, the stigma, blackmail, the stigma. Exactly. You know, the dark money and horrible people doing horrible things and all that. You know, which again, I'd like let's be honest, that was not untrue. Okay. Let's be very clear, right? I mean, Silk Road did not do a lot for the crypto space in terms of getting regulators to think positively about it to say the least.
There was a lag in terms of the willingness, I think particularly in the United States, but other places as well. There was a lag in terms of the willingness to kind of create that freedom that we got with the early days of the Internet. That would have enabled a tremendous amount more of the kind of expansions, what we got was instead kind of the aftereffects where there was a clamping down, there was a huge proliferation peoples kind of doing whatever, and then there was a kind of clamping down that really did create a chilling effect.
Now, I, for one, don't think that that was a bad thing because again, as noted, the reality is a Bitcoin, whether it is a Bitcoin, it was there was an early phase where it was being used for a lot of truly terrible things. And that remains the case. There's no question that people are using cryptocurrencies in addition to positive things for negative things as well, which is free of any technology.
So I don't think it's surprising, but I do think that we would have seen more of that kind of regulation if we had had a different initial use case perhaps.

Jeff

And you think that that as we look forward then and I would agree, I think your assessment of Bitcoin is right on and as we talk to governments in the private sector, I still feel like it's the first conversation that we're having is this separation of when we talk about blockchain, it's not you know, we're not talking about Bitcoin, we're talking about something else.
I still remember we've had great discussions with Stuart Haber. You know, Stuart Haber wrote the article that many credit as the launching points of the idea of a connected block of transactions and this notion that started with this paper and this whole idea of that the value of the technology itself and how to separate that from Bitcoin, we still really struggle with that. Is that is that right? Do you think that that for this technology to proliferate we need to do more as an industry to accentuate that separation?

Sheila

You know, I think that it is yeah.

Jeff

Or have we move beyond that?

Sheila

You know, it’s a great question. You know, I don't know that we've moved beyond it in certain circles. I certainly think that we have moved beyond it with most regulators and legislators, at least the ones I talked to. Now, there's no question that we need a tremendous amount more education advocacy in this state.
For what I actually think we can do as an ecosystem is really start to kind of normalize this. And that doesn't mean that we're pushing adoption. I think there's a big difference between normalizing usage and pushing adoption. So, you know, one of the things that I kind of think about is I'm like, look, back in the day, a lot of people were very nervous about using ATMs.
How is this magical machine giving me my money and how is it diverting appropriately? And I've got to count everything, you know, this kind of thing. Right. And I will know, I think all my family of the generation that were a part of this. So I didn't need them to use an ATM. I needed them to kind of understand that that was a normal thing to do.
And it wasn't just like crazy, you know, outlandish, insane, unsafe idea. Right. So I think we have we are so focused on adoption, and I actually think adoption will come. What we need to do is really get normalization of usage of those of us who are using this to say, you know, this isn't this scary, horrible, ridiculous, absurd thing.
This actually is a normal way of engaging in transaction, store value investments, whatever, whatever the different you know, the angle is. The same way that it took time people to get comfortable with things like ATMs or for that matter, you know, social media platforms. Right. Like not everybody was on the earliest social media platforms.
They all thought it was crazy to put content out there. But because of the nature of what it was, there was this kind of general test acceptance, like, oh, those kids sharing their stories on, you know, these things, right? Whatever it was. And they over time, you got more and more normalization of that and then it became less scary.
So I think that's the path that I see as being much more effective.

Jeff

I think you also hit on something really important that and as we think about our audience, our Better Innovation audience are in the public sector, in the private sector, they're looking at blockchain. How can I improve my organization with this technology? That's something that's running through every, I'm sure every organization of folks who are listening and I'm just so struck by the fact that in those organizations, there are policy teams and there are technology teams.
I don't necessarily think that they're overly connected, I think that perhaps that's an issue that that for a company to adopt it and to have and even within government, that you've got the techies and you've got the policy specialists. But what's so interesting about the space is that there has to be that strong integration. And I'm feeling that with the organizations that we're working with, with clients and others and with governments, the policy folks and the technologist is like left brain and right brain.
And some of this is that we've got to bring them together. Is that a fair assessment?

Shiela

100%. Let me give you an example from our experience. So, so we, when I, I started you again, I began here in 2017 and started the team and so early in my tenure here before I had a team of any kind, what's the Forum gonna do on blockchain? What are we gonna do?" Yeah.

Jeff

A team of one.

Sheila

Team of one. Exactly. So let's talk about small that mighty team, if you will. I have friends at the Fed in San Francisco. Surprising. And so a couple of them called me up and said, “hey, you know, we've been convening this group of Central Bank technologists-- from primarily, you know, G20 countries that are getting together to kind of like learn about blockchain. But we're really having a hard time getting anyone to tell us the truth because the only people that we have access to are kind of like the comms and marketing people at these various companies that are kind of like, you know, we like them, but we don't really know what we're getting as real.” And so they asked me if I would kind of put together a workshop with some of these people.
I'm going to give them a chance to ask some questions. So, we did that. We organized a daylong workshop with these central bank technologists and a bunch of just the kind of like some of the academics and some of the kind of deep layer techie nerds and some of these companies that really understood the technology and kind of have these workshops on, you know, whatever it was.
And then that turned into they then came back to us and said, you know, will you create what you kind of help us do more of this? So, we insisted, I insisted that we basically expand the group of technologists because I've said, number one, the people who are engaging in the most innovation, not the ones you're talking to, to kind of get got to be more global about this and go to some of the frontier economies that are doing more interesting work.
But, you know. Sure. So we created a webinar series where they would come to us and say, you know, we want to learn more about, you know, you can start charting or whatever and we can just pull an expert, somebody we knew would be objective. And we like policed it to make sure they were. And we could kind of do a learning and sharing to really get familiar with you to get these technologies familiar.
So, you know, six months or so into this process, they came to us and sat as a group and said, “look, I mean, we get it now. We feel comfortable. We understand what's going on here. We get the benefit to it and all that. We cannot get our policy people to take it seriously. Can you help us bridge that divide within?”

Jeff

What was the barrier?
What did they say? What was the reason that they couldn't?

Sheila

Part of it was it was just kind of a nonstarter. So on the list of priorities, you know, digital currency, central bank, digital currency was really low in a lot of places. You know, it didn't hit well politically. There was still the kind of Bitcoin taint, if you will, or stigma that came from some of that dark money thing, you know, and well, that led to the genesis of our central bank digital make digital Currency Policymakers toolkit which we issued in Davos this past year and was really designed to help policymakers assess, does a CBDC make sense and be this very objective and neutral source of truth in the analysis to help accompany that investigation by any central bank when it came out of this clear demand signal from central bank technology experts that the policy side needed. They needed to hear it from somebody who was not them because they had ironically become kind of the marketing shills right internally right. And we were we were able to serve that role. So that's happening at central banks, which, you know, many of them are very staffed, but they're not at the scale of like giant corporations. You can imagine how challenging this is for institutions that are global and that are dealing with different jurisdictional requirements. All this stuff.
You can imagine how complex that is.

Jeff

And the message that matters. Right. That's the point, too, is that that it's a great fit for the forum and also want to make sure that our audience understands that that there is just been a great, I look over the past couple of years, Sheila, what's coming out of your group and the White papers and the toolkits and how effective it's been, my favourite I've mentioned this to you in the past October 2019 the white paper issued by your team on global technology governance is terrific, it's the Bible I still go back to that and I.

Sheila

Oh thank you!

Jeff

I looked at my copy the other day and it's nearly every other line was yellow or underlined red from the two times that I went through it. So you know that to me is the test of something that we go to it all the time because it is an emerging area and it's a great opportunity for the forum, a great role that that you and your team play for the community.
So we appreciate that. And it leads me to the next area would want to get some thoughts from you on the most recent initiative, one of the recent white papers you produced along with the Global Blockchain Business Council, a global standards mapping initiative. What is that all about?

Sheila

Yeah. So the this was a collaboration between the forum and the Google Item Business Council, as you noted, GSMI by the Global Standards Mapping Initiative.
And the idea here is that,we had a global blockchain council that we that we initiated that we it was an inaugural council focusing on the technology and it brought together a very disparate group of thinkers who had very strong opinions, often polar opposite opinions. But the one thing we agreed on as a group were two things we agreed on.
One led to the Presidio Principles which are kind of an ethical set of guidelines on how you could actually build application layer in the space. The other was that there really wasn't a comprehensive mapping of the sands initiatives that were that were happening. And so we decided to focus on technical standards work. It was what our councils like to focus on.
And there was this really great work happening at UBC on the legal and regulatory side. So it seemed to us the kind of like issuing these things together was going to be really powerful and provide this comprehensive overview of what was going on. And sure enough, I think that's proven to be exactly what it is. So yeah, in a nutshell, it's basically and it's the first of its kind effort to kind of look at the current landscape and look at these different outputs, like what is being standardized and where.
And so it looks at 30 different technical stands setting entity using a technical report. It's got 400 different consortia that have emerged and we didn't even know we were tracking consortia kind of like idly but we didn't even realize just how much proliferation there was. Right. So yeah.

Jeff

Let's go back to the what you had said, Sheila, about this was a a partnership with the Global Blockchain Business Council.
What made GBBC a great partner for West to work with on this initiative?

Sheila

Yeah, well, first of all, I mean, everyone over there is super smart and you know, and great like Sandra and her team are just phenomenal. And so, we've been kind of frankly, you know, pulling back the curtain. We've been looking for an opportunity to collaborate with them on something concrete in terms of output for a little while.
So this is kind of a great opportunity. And so that's really about some of the relationships and what they've built over there. They have a great community of members. They pull together on the legal voluntary side, and we thought that that was incredibly powerful. We had a number of people we pulled together on the technical side. It just seemed like there was no overlap from what we were doing, what they were just so complementary.
So, it wasn't so much that you see themselves, which you are big fans, that it was also that the work that they were doing was so aligned. And so honestly, when we realized what the other one was doing, it was just a matter of kind of like deciding on the format, like how are we going to make these things, you know, look compatible, look and feel wise right and that it was pretty easy from there to kind of roll it out.

Jeff

Did you have some key takeaways from the initiative? And I love the work. I think it's my own belief that the focus on technical standards is so essential for this technology to extend around the world. But I'm just interested to know if you came out of it with some different feelings and beliefs than perhaps you had going into it after you've you and the team have done so much work to harmonize and to examine and just understands the extent of the standards and the governance of this around the world.
What did you learn from the exercise?

Sheila

It's a great question. I think that one thing I would say was a validation. So we kind of saw that terminology and taxonomies are really inconsistent. One of the reasons that regulation, because it's kind of linked over to one of the reasons regulation is challenging is because there isn't consistent terminology or tax on our tax level.
Across like, you know, really between the technical standards and the regulatory standards. So that's really challenging. And that also extends out to areas beyond, you know, blockchain qua blockchain technology. So digital identity, you know, as we all know, this is a gigantic space. And once we kind of wrestle that to the ground, we're going to kind of see an explosion but that's challenging, you know, so there I think some of it was kind of validation, validation of that, it was just challenging.
I think other things, you know, there really was this kind of synergy around different activity, like where people kind of focusing their attention. I don't know that any of this was honestly that surprising. Is this helpful to kind of have it laid out so certainly around like security identity? You know, Iot was actually a big area. We actually saw quite a bit more around data management for the devices, how you think about data, Smart cities; there's a lot of conversion building and other activity there. But again, there wasn't really necessarily this taxonomy or consistent terminology. So, until we really dove into it, you wouldn't have known kind of like looking idly at these things that they were as connected as they were because they were using different terminology.

Jeff

What changes are you hoping?

Sheila

That makes sense, right?

Jeff

It does make sense. And it takes an effort like that, doesn't it, to actually do the work that you had lots of great ideas and beliefs and hypotheses about what you would find. But that, you know, sometimes you've got to do the research, right? As we learn as attorney that the research matters into love should embrace it and.
Sure. Yeah. So I just interested to know that if you look out the next year or so, what changes in the world are you hoping will be triggered from the work? And are there some outcomes that now like what's phase two? Maybe is another way of looking at it?

Sheila

Well, I'll certainly tell you what I personally want to see and I think this is true of the forum as well.
And I certainly want to see more coordination and collaboration among some of these organizations. You know, now that we've kind of spotlighted here's where groups are doing, you know, what we call it, like redundant work. They're certainly overlapping work or complementary work, let's say. I hope that there's going to be an easier willingness to coordinate and collaborate than we've kind of seen.
It's been a little bit of a competitive space which I think is really unfortunate because I don't think this is kind of like a one rule them all situation. I think it's like there are so many nuances to this. And so we really do need various groups kind of focusing on kind of a lane and then thinking about how that integrates or connects to other things that are happening.
I also think I've always thought that there are just some places where it's too early to standardize, you know, and it may even be and this is going well.

Jeff

Can you give us an example? What's an example of that?

Sheila

I think digital identity is one. There's a lot of talk about standardization there, but I think that we still have some things we have to work out in that space before we lay down.
So there's a bit of a chicken and egg argument to be made here, and I certainly hear that. But I do wonder if we're a little early and we should be kind of thinking more about adoption curves and other things before we really laid down, do more segmentation, before we really lay down, you know, one set of standards and kind of say that everyone has to adhere to them.
But this is a controversial point. You know, I certainly can see arguments the other way as an example. But I think it's important to have the conversation to not just kind of de facto assume that standardization is the answer and it's what's going to lead to mass adoption, because it may or it may not, you know, there may even be places.
And here I couldn't even give you a real example of stuff in my head. But maybe we don't always need formal standards. You know, maybe this actually should come from regulation rather than from the technology and the governance itself. I mean, there's this argument to be made there as well. I just think having those rich conversations is important.

Jeff

Well, and sometimes having as you said earlier, the wild, Wild west is not always so bad for some for some period of time around innovation that you need to spur the activity before perhaps you take a breath and look at additional regulation or governance or here imposing standards.
Some believe it could stifle the development of the technology. I have to ask, though, just big and this is the tax lawyer in me that we're so interested in our advanced tech tax lab at EY and all the work that we do. That it's my own belief that tax is such an important area in the world, obviously, for the fiscal implications and it's driving economies and efficient taxing systems will fuel the sustainable development goals and help governments come out of this pandemic.
Do you feel like that's an area that's ripe for, now we're getting really nuanced, greater standards for tax, fiscal systems, governments, public, private sector together on platforms to better manage taxation. Do you think that that's an area ripe for greater standards? Or is it too soon? Is it is a one of those that maybe it's not it's not the first time.

Sheila

I don't I you know, it's, so here's where I'm kind of battling because I would like it to be the first wave because it provides such a clear signal around things like, you know, there is this sort of back in the day when I when I was representing flatter organization, the very first and kind of a tangent, but bear with me here. So one of the very first attempt to legalize marijuana, I came around the idea of taxing it. And so, I was actually the tax lawyer who was taking to the California you know, the relative body French tax for another. Is it relevant in California authorities? You know, we could tax the sale of marijuana in this way and then that would kind of back into legitimacy.
Right. So I believe in that. I do believe that if you tax something that you are de facto providing it authenticity, you know, legitimacy. I just, I do believe that. But I think it sometimes starts there. So, from that standpoint, wearing that hat, I'm like, well, yes, I would love to see that. From the other standpoint, I'm like, well, how for taxing it as what?
And I think we do have to really get kind of a more global consensus on things. And I don't want to go down the hole like token-type rathole. But, you know, I think that there's something there that I do think is a predicate to it. And I think that that question is really, really important security, commodity, etc.

Jeff

I would agree. I think it's an important question. I love the way that you phrased it. I look at, you know, how there has been some experimentation with blockchain for tax and fiscal systems and in governments like in Estonia, the government of Georgia or some of the U.S. states. And there have been some and in order to advance that and perhaps standards could be an accelerant.
So because isn't that what we're talking about? We're talking about accelerating it. Okay. I would be remiss if I didn't get to the question on this podcast Sheila about, you know, the future with blockchain. And, and if you believe in the Gartner hype cycle and this has been I've been so interested in asking you this, that everything that I read, some believe that we're still in this trough of disillusionment and others feel like we're kind of climbing out of it, you know, where we're on the right side of the slope and we're going up and it's and perhaps the pandemic will be an instigator of that.
Where are you? Do you think that that let's say over the next 12 months, are we are we coming out of the trough? Or do you feel like we've already done that?

Sheila

I think.

Jeff

Is that a fair question?

Sheila

It is a fair question, absolutely. I, I am certainly on the side of we are coming out of the trough. I tend to think the slope is a lot shallower than a lot of other people think.
I think it's going to take;

Jeff

You think the slope.

Sheila

Coming out. I think it's going to take a lot of time to come out of that and put the brakes. I think it's going to take a lot of time to come out of that trough. I do think that, you know, so do I think we've hit the nadir?
We've kind of we're turning around. You know, I do think that I do think we're seeing, you know, progress, if you will, in a positive direction. I think that progress is going to be for most people, painfully slow. So that, I think, is the difference. And so, I would kind of nuance your right answer to your question a bit more than the two kind of binaries I think you posed for me.
Like I don't think that we're stuck in this slide in the bad place, you know, if you will.

Jeff

That's right. Yeah.

Sheila

But I also don't I don't think that we're like catapulting out of the bad place fast I think that we are slowly crawling out of there. And I think that's I am fine with that. To be very clear, I have no problem with that.
For me, I've always felt like when you're talking about digital currencies in particular, you're you have to play a long game here like this. We are talking about serious incumbent.

Jeff

Responsible growth.

Sheila

Exact, responsible growth. I think that because we're talking about money, we're talking people's livelihoods. We're talking about gigantic systems that affect the global economy. The fact political power, it needs to be done thoughtfully I have no problem with, you know, what feels like a snail's pace at times, even though I am you know, I think as fast as I talk and I tend to be a not a patient person, but this is a space where you know, let us try as much as we can to not make the mistakes that have happened with other technologies that kind of blew up before. Let's be smart, but try to try to learn and try to really integrate. So, yeah, it's a yeah.

Jeff

What a great answer. It's a rational it's a reasonable way out of this. And it's my own belief that that the pandemic will probably be more of an accelerant than it will be a barrier to coming out of it.
I think there's different ways of looking at it that that perhaps there won't be as much money flowing into blockchain development because of the state of economies, whether it's in the public sector and capital within the private sector, perhaps, you know, the capital infusion may be limited but on the other side of the coin, there are some big problems to solve.
And there has been a bright light shining on institutional fractures that exist.

Sheila

Absolutely.

Jeff

And so can't blockchain be perhaps part of not all of the entirety of the equation, but some of the equation to fixing these bonds? Yeah, institution right.

Sheila

I think that's right. And I think you look at I mean, let's just look at the Biden transition team, right?
Like when you've got people on there that I mean, some of them were at MIT DCI, like they know this face is it their top priority? And of course, it's not their top priority with a lot of other things going on, you know, but the fact that they have a deep knowledge of the potential here, I think is really important.
So, you know.

Jeff

yeah, I think that's important, too. And maybe, just maybe, we'll see greater investment in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where perhaps some of those outside. But wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't it be nice to see that again? Yeah, Sheila, you have made it you have made it near the ends. You're not quite done with this.

Sheila

Oh goodness!

Jeff

You made it so, so close to the end. We have a feature and I'm not sure we covered this in our prep. So here we go. We end our podcast with a lightning round of three fast questions, fast questions and fast answers. There's no wrong answer. This is the fun part. As if we haven't been having enough fun already.
This is, so here we go. You're ready for it?

Sheila

I'm ready. Hit me.

Jeff

All right. Question number one. What book do you have on your nightstand? I will look over Daisy Jones and the six. I love this book. One of my favorites.
Oh, okay, great. I get all my all my favorite book recommendations.

Sheila

if you like Fleetwood Mac, which I do, and I'm obsessed with you will love Daisy Jones and the six. I just love this book.

Jeff

Oh, I love the there's a documentary about a recording studio in California that they recorded at that I remember, which was really good. Told the other side of the story. That's cool. Okay, you ready? Okay. Number two, tell us about a historical figure that you admire.

Sheila

I would say Shakuntala Devi. So for those who don't know her, she was this incredible Indian mathematician. She was a woman. She died relatively recently. And she not only was like a feminist icon, she was a mathematical genius. She was called the human calculator because she did like Katherine Johnson and something she called the not the space movie. Yeah.
She hidden figures. She did that kind of mental calculation at a time in a society where women were not that was not a thing women did. They didn't, like, show off their brilliant mathematical brains. And as it turns out, she actually wrote this really seminal book on LGBTQ rights in India, which, again, at the time was like people didn't even talk about that, but that was not a thing, you know?
So she's just a phenomenally inspiring person. And I've been thinking a lot lately about my kids and math education and kind of like, you know, decolonizing math education and how I can kind of make that take a social justice lens to how I teach them and how they're taught math. And she's just come up again and again and again.

Jeff

Oh, I'm so interested to learn more about her. And I have a my oldest my son is a recent college grad, applied math, and I'm trying to understand more of what he can do and the problems that they solved. But it's I have so much admiration. So much admiration for the discipline. That's great. Okay. Last question, Sheila. You're doing great.
What do you see as the greatest opportunity for us as a society to build back stronger when we come out of the pandemic? How's that for a light question to end the podcast?

Sheila

Yeah, wow. I just don't like where do I? There's so many opportunities. You know, I think our focus is kind of like sitting where I am right now.
The fact that I could look over at my nightstand and answer your first question, I think remote work, you know, I think certainly not all jobs can be remote, but I think we have to really think hard about what we're asking of people when we're asking them in terms of a commute times, in terms of lifestyle. I think that we have a chance to really reimagine, you know, everything from mobility and transit, a lot of these different kinds of systems that have built up around the notion that we all need to be like kind of in a place together doing things together at all times.
And I think we've seen how productive this time can be when I haven't seen in person, I think one person on my team in person over the last nine months, literally, and my team is now scattered all over the world. In some places, they kind of went home, right? So that is not affected our productivity by any means of anything.
It's exactly the opposite. And we always knew that. And there are companies that have been very forward thinking about this and continue to be. But I think there's a lot more we could do with these kinds of things and provide people the ability to help our environment, it'll help our family relationships. It'll help a lot of our different systems.
So that's one thing I hope that we really embrace as a global economy, is this idea that how we define productivity is not predicated on being in a particular place in a particular time.

Jeff

Oh, I love it. That's so well said. And it's, as you so correctly point out, it's not just about work it's about families and communities and how do we balance it all and integrate it all together.
And I think it's that we've learned a lot from this experience and I hope that that we can take that into what tomorrow looks like. Sheila, this has been such a great interview and experience. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And you'll come back again someday?

Sheila

I will Jeff. Such a pleasure to talk to you always. So whether we do it offline or online, I'm always happy to chat with you.

Jeff

I feel the same way. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on.

Sheila

My pleasure.

Podcast

Episode 1

Duration

52m 23s

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