The CIO Strategy Council, Canada’s national forum that brings together chief information officers and executive technology leaders to collaborate on digital priorities, has approved the development of a new series of national standards for enabling customer-directed finance — or open banking — framework for Canada.
At the end of 2020, the federal government’s Advisory Committee on Open Banking held a second series of consultations on this subject. The latest discussions included standards to the series of digital trust and identity standards, specific to digital credentials and digital wallets. The CIO Strategy Council is actively collaborating with stakeholders, including both the Open Banking Initiative Canada (OBIC) and the Financial Data Exchange (FDX), to advance a new suite of national standards for consumer-directed finance in Canada.
“Canada’s competitiveness and prosperity demands that we develop a more agile regulatory review process that allows incumbents and new entrants to take advantage of new technologies and business models,” Senator Colin Deacon said in news release. “The CIO Strategy Council’s approach to developing standards, and specifically those needed to create a minimum viable Open Banking ecosystem, holds the promise of illustrating the value of positively disrupting regulatory review and development in Canada.”
The CIO Strategy Council views these standards as the groundwork to establish accepted practices, technical requirements and modernize, at times, complex policies. The CIO Strategy Council’s mission is aimed at engaging thought leaders, policy makers, commercial interests, academia and civil society groups from across Canada to the publication and development of critical standards for data governance, digital identity, and cybersecurity.
