Introducing Indicia

A Tragic History of Abuse

Like so many Canadians, we at Confidion were deeply disturbed by the many scandals of wide-spread, reprehensible abuse of children and youth in sports programmes and organised activities by coaches, administers and volunteers that have been exposed over the past few years. As we learned more about the fundamental weaknesses in the structures governing amateur sport and youth activities across the country, we decided that we could and should help.

Confidion was founded 10 years ago to help organisations harness the power of open-source information to manage risks and identify opportunities. Over the following years, and after many projects for clients in the private and public sectors, the Confidion team developed a particular expertise in due diligence research that supported human resources decision-making, such as recruitment screening and internal threat detection and monitoring.

While we knew that we had the right combination of skills, methods and tools to provide governing structures with the ability to screen job applicants and volunteers for reputational issues, our standard consulting project model was too limiting considering the scope of the problem. With this realisation and motivated by a seemingly never-ending stream of shocking cases being reported, we began a development process that has led to a screening platform that we call “Indicia”.

The Indicia Platform

The Indicia screening platform is a new and unique tool in the fight against bad actors attempting to gain access to vulnerable groups. Indicia leverages the combination of a job seeker’s self-reported information, Confidion’s open sources research, and its data management capabilities. The result is Indicia improves the capacity to verify identity, confirm credentials, and monitor for irregular behaviour, and support preventive action, where officials with power and authority may seek to exploit those under their direction. From the grassroots levels of sport to national elite programs, Indicia offers new and more effective protection for the young and the vulnerable.

We don’t pretend to have all of the answers to a remarkably complex problem that poses a multitude of challenges for any proposed solution. Nonetheless, we see Indicia as a major step forward that will help reduce the risks of abuse for children and youth in organised activities. Indicia’s effectiveness is based on a number of critical attributes:

• Open sources research-based risk management
  • providing improved; screening, prevention and detection of bad behaviours arising from power imbalances in sport and leisure activities.
• Data integrity and completeness
  • An Integrity-based data system, driven by voluntary registration and detailed data inputs
  • Standardised and more complete data collection where the motivated registrant is rewarded for fuller disclosure, and the evasive or untruthful can be challenged;
  • A system to test the integrity of registrants and the veracity of their data, using publicly accessible, recognised open sources “indicia of reliability”, and proprietary research data of exploitation events.
• Communication
  • Education for stakeholders: the public, vulnerable groups, and organisations
  • Active web site
    • Including publishing relevant and recent media reported events
    • Monitoring provincial and national publicly reported justice records
    • anonymous reporting opportunities
    • links to crisis hot-lines and professional support to victims
  • Privacy vs “need-to-know”
    • An approach with transparency and accountability assuring individual privacy by sophisticated electronic data protections, but overcoming impediments to sharing by the voluntariness of participation and the open, public nature of researched data;
  • Inter-operability
    • A transparent and accountable screening system with an underlying data structure designed from the outset to complement and support justice-based official vetting programs and systems, such as Soteria;
  • Incentives to participate
    • An incentivised system that encourages agencies and individuals to register, donor certification, rejecting the dishonest and undesirable
    • Disincentives to those avoiding participation

Why Indicia?

The Indicia platform is in the final stages of beta development, but based on our past consulting experience, we expect the platform to deliver positive outcomes in four immediate ways:

• Increased front line protections for those exposed to exploitative, abusive, and harassing behaviours by virtue of power imbalances in sport or leisure activities.
• A system of applied threat and risk management offering real and effective first line protection to youth and vulnerable group, from grassroots levels to elites.
• A national program that demonstrates the commitment of governments and relevant associations to the protection of youth and vulnerable groups.
• A largely self-sustaining program funded through registrations.

Indicia is an innovative, cost-effective solution that leverages cutting-edge technology and proven research methodologies. The aim is to flag applicants who might be unsuitable to working with youth and vulnerable people, if not deter them from applying, in the first place. Forget what you know about traditional risk management in recruiting; Indicia is designed to meet the much higher levels of scrutiny that are so clearly, desperately needed in amateur sport, and so many other sectors.

Indicia is a solution to many of the gaps and weaknesses of the multi-layer response to the ever-growing list of abuse cases that have plagued amateur sport and youth programmes around the world.

We look forward to discussing how this new tool can help your organisation.