Beyond Pilots: Scaling Digital Trust with Ecosystem Design

Themes: Policy Design, AI and beyond, Design & Service Leadership

Digital credentials are an emerging technology, but every potential use case lives within an existing service landscape with its own policy, processes, and people.

This session explains how service design principles shifted British Columbia's digital credential strategy from technology-driven pilots to sustainable ecosystem-building. It introduces the ecosystem approach, clustering use cases together rather than treating them as isolated implementations, and shows how it creates more sustainable pathways to adoption.

Through case studies including digital business licenses, age verification, and land title services, the session shares how co-design workshops, ecosystem mapping, and governance tools helped stakeholders incorporate digital credentials into existing services.

Participant Takeaways:

• How to identify and map digital trust ecosystems to create sustainable adoption strategies
• Practical frameworks for bridging policy requirements and service delivery
• Methods for translating technical concepts into human-centred approaches
• Examples of successful implementation across diverse government service areas