[Video begins with a powerpoint slide, then moves to screen shares of vaccine documents, then a screenshare of an iPhone demonstrating the functionality of the Verify Ontario app.]
[Title: Verify Ontario: Ontario's official app for verifying COVID-19 vaccine certificates.]
[Spencer Daniels voice-over.]
Spencer Daniels: It's my privilege and honor to be sharing Verify Ontario with you folks for the first time today. I'm going to share my screen here and provide you with a live demonstration of Verify Ontario in action. So before I do that, though I'm going to be moving around between a few applications. So I'm going to start just by showing an example of a test case of what one of Ontario's enhanced vaccine certificates looks like.
[A PDF File showcasing the Ontario’s Enhanced COVID-19 Proof of vaccination certificate. Certificate includes information such as issuing province/territory, Country of issuance, name and date of birth of certificate holder, a SMART Health card QR code, the number of vaccinations administered, date of administration, and the product names of vaccines administered.]
So what you see here is a test certificate for a fake person John Doe and you will notice that the QR code that's on this enhanced certificate is, as Tim mentioned, a smart health card— and that means that it contains more information than your average QR code. It's not just a web address. It contains all the information you see on the certificate: the type of vaccine, the date it was issued, the lot number, etc. That means there's just a little more information in here, it's a little denser. Which is why when we scan it, that's important to know, because it does need to be somewhat larger than your average QR code. And when we do show you the application you'll see how this quickly scans and validates, that this is indeed an Ontario enhanced certificate. That it's digitally secure, it's signed by the province of Ontario. That's what we call the private key, and our app has the public key which allows us to access it and decode it [the private key.] So why don't I show you the app now and we'll walk you through what the onboarding screen looks like in just one moment.
[An iPhone home screen, with Verify Ontario app.]
Okay, so what everyone should be seeing now is my iPhone 8, this is my Government issued iPhone with Verify Ontario all cued up and ready to go.
[Verify Ontario app opens is opened, the first screen is titled What this app does.]
So this is what the onboarding looks like when we first open the app. You can see here what this app does. We want to be really clear with you folks what our application is doing. And that it's for only for businesses and organizations. This isn't a patron or customer app. it's intended to improve the safety of specific places such as restaurants, gyms, and movie theaters. Privacy is embedded in our app by design, it only reads those trusted QR codes. They are secure in the sense that that QR code is securely signed, and it cannot be altered, and the end users (your patrons and customers) are in possession of their enhanced certificate and they decide when and where to share it. There's no Internet connection, there's no servers in the background, it's all contained within the application, as well as within the QR code that it's scanning. And it will only show a visitor's name and date of birth when they're verified. We're not going to be passing along the vaccine type, that's not important to you as a business, and it might not be something that your customers and patrons are comfortable sharing. So it just gives you the information you need to verify their identity. And, as I mentioned, it works offline, it doesn't need an ongoing Internet connection, but, like all apps it does need to phone home occasionally. And the reason it would do that is just to get updated rules about what it means to be vaccinated in Ontario. And if there's new keys from other provinces that are added, that will all happen invisibly, in the background. You won't even notice it will just happen on scan it just a couple of bytes here and there. If the app does need a more fulsome update, that can happen within 14 days. It will probably update it in the background, when it's plugged in at night, like most of our apps do on our phones. But that's you know totally up to you, when you choose to update it.
[I understand button is pressed, and app moves to new screen titled This app does not.]
I'm going to click 'understand' here, and also, we want to be really clear as well, what this app does not do, and that it does not allow the Ontario government or businesses to track or save personally identifiable information. On the previous screen we suggest it does collect very basic information, such as really basic Google analytics, not even the type of Google analytics we use for marketing and advertisement. But an even more stripped down version of it that doesn't store anything that could possibly associate personal details with a business or a location. We only share simple information that is needed to track the number of times the app is started, how many scans and results that we're seeing. And we never share more information than what is needed for entry.
[I understand button is pressed, and app moves to new screen titled Terms of use.]
There is a terms of use that we asked you to accept. A lot of that you can review in your own time, with full terms of use and a privacy statement you know all that good stuff. But it does contain some standard bullets, such as: we don't want you to be using screen capturing devices, or copying people's personal health information by any means. be it video screen captures, anything like that. And we do ask you to opt into this explicitly here. Before we continue I'll do that.
[Checkboxes for “I have read and accept the Terms of Use”, and “Read the Privacy Statement” are checked, the continue button is pressed, and app moves to new screen titled Automatic updates.]
There is a quick prompt to say automatic updates, that will keep your venue safe and your visitor safe.
[I understand button is pressed, app moves to a new screen titled “Ready to scan”.]
Understand that you will be asked, when you first boot it up, to provide access to your camera. And you know really importantly here, this screen, as I mentioned, you're seeing all these screens that only happens the very first time you use the app.
Every other time you open it you're going to get a chance, just to jump right in here and get to scanning a certificate. So without further ado let's take a look. I'm going to scan John Doe who we just saw when we started the demo. So press this button here, you see the scanner pop up.
[Next button is pressed. We see the scanning screen. The screen displays the iPhone’s camera with a square in the middle to line up the QR code to be scanned. There is a button at the bottom labelled flashlight.]
It's using my camera. You're going to see John Doe with his two doses, one of Pfizer, one of AstraZeneca. John will be verified. I'm going to show you that.
[The camera is pointed at a computer display that has the previously shown QR code from the enhanced vaccine certificate.]
So there you go. Right away it comes up. I get a helpful little buzz on the phone, which says, that it is verified. The prompt is to confirm that person's name and date of birth.
[The app moves to a new screen titled Verified with a large green checkmark, it shows the name and date of birth of the visitor and asks the user to confirm with a piece of identification.]
And you'll see here that very clear, big, bright, green screen with a checkmark. When we tested this with businesses we heard from a lot of folks: make it clearer, make it bigger, make that checkmark front and center. And we did that, so we hope that that's a really clear distinct result. Okay I'm gonna try another one, to show you what that might look like as well.
[The app moves to the Verify Ontario main app screen.]
A great little feature too, you might have just picked up on here with the screen, is that it actually will reset to the home screen if you leave someone's verified result up. That's by design. So you're not leaving John Doe's information. You know, maybe it's a busy restaurant and iPads up on the host stand, you scan someone in walk them to their table, and you forget to turn the iPad screen off. So you don't have to worry about John Doe's information being visible, it'll disappear and reset to that home screen. Just another way that we're respecting privacy and building it in by design So I'm going to show you, in this case, another verified example, which is Jane Doe. And I'm going to show you Jane Doe just on a piece of paper for fun.
[Scan a vaccine certificate button is pressed, iPhone camera is once again displayed, and the same QR code from the PDF file earlier is scanned, except this time it is on a piece of paper. The verified screen appears.]
You know this is just off my mediocre ink-jet printer, Jane Doe, with her two doses of Pfizer’s quickly verified. I can do so again, verify her on a screen.
[The narrator repeats the actions of scanning the QR code from the piece of paper.]
You can just see how quickly and easily our scanning software works. We spent the time to really develop, I think, an excellent scanner that works in a variety of settings. You'll also notice, you have a flashlight setting if it's dark in a restaurant. Again I can just turn that on, quickly verify Jane Doe again.
[The scanning screen is displayed. The camera is pointed at the trackpad of the laptop, the narrator turns the flashlight on and off from the within the app. He then scans the QR code from the piece of paper.]
Okay, so that's so that's the happy path with a couple of positive green results. But I think it's also important to show some of the other results you might see.
[The main Verify Ontario Screen appears again]
So I do have another example to show here And this is going to Jean Doe, and Jean Doe only has one dose of Pfizer, which is not valid in Ontario to be fully vaccinated. That will give us our red X result. I'm going to show you what that looks like.
[The scanning screen is displayed. The narrator scans another QR code off his display.]
There we go.
[The iPhone moves to a new screen with a big red X titled Invalid certificate. It advises the user to inform the visitor that the presented certificate is not valid for entry, to display a new one if possible, visit Ontario.ca/verify-results or call 1-833-943-3900 for extra help.]
So what that's happening on my devices is it's buzzing three times. It's saying you know hey something is not right here, this is an invalid certificate. We really want to be clear with with this result that you need to let the visitors know that this certificate cannot be accepted for entry. There's no amount of scanning this which is going to result in a different result. This means that it's connected to our rules, It says, "Okay, we know, this is an Ontario certificate, we trust it. It's just not giving us the adequate amount of vaccines to be fully vaccinated." There could be really logical explanations for this. Jean Doe in this case might have just received that dose of Pfizer, and 14 days hasn't elapsed from their second [dose], they have an older certificate in the bottom of their bag. So the prompt would be hey do you have a newer Government issued certificate that shows both doses. And then you can scan that one. Or if there's another paper receipt that they might have that does show both doses that's totally acceptable as well. As our minister says digital first is not digital only. And we always provide options. Here you can see on the screen to redirect folks to Ontario.ca/verify-results to understand what this means in more detail, and also our fantastic call center, which can support both you as a business and patrons who might be looking for some guidance around what to do next. Because it's, of course the government's job to explain government policy, not your job as a business. And we want to be sure that there's many options here to redirect people to where they can get help. The next example I will be showing is the Province of Manitoba. When they first issued vaccine proof electronically they used a really simple QR code.
[The scanning screen is displayed. The narrator scans another QR code off his display.]
And this simple QR code, it's not a smart health card, it's just a really simple QR code that would need an Internet connection, so we can't read it. But we understand that some folks might show up with this. So I'm going to show you Manitoba here.
[The iPhone moves to a new screen with a big yellow exclamation mark in a yield triangle titled There is a problem. It advises the user to attempt to scan again, review the visitor’s digital or paper certificate and a piece of their ID, or for extra help visit Ontario.ca/vaccine-proof-help or call 1-833-943-3900.]
Really quickly Manitoba has comes back as there's a problem with it. So this is a generic warning screen that can come up in a few situations. If you scan a plain old QR code, your restaurants menu by accident, you're going to get this get this very same screen. But it's also possible for someone from Manitoba shows up, They scan this and then say, this is potentially issued by another province, as is the case here. And you know there's always a prompt to review that person's paper or digital vaccine certificate. Chances are someone's from Manitoba, is traveling with this, they probably know that it's not going to work across provinces and they'll have have paper proof. But again, we do direct you to our call center, or them to our call center if they need some help or online resources. So that's one of our our yellow results if you let the camera just turn on and you're trying to send maybe an old fashioned barcode, or it's not working due to some type technical issue with the camera on your device, you will get that yellow screen, as well as a timeout. You know that's that's a prompt to either rescan or again check a paper receipt. The last one I'm going to show you, is something that we've built in specifically because we know there's some third party Apple wallet proof of vaccination. Or I should say, bootleg proofs of vaccination, that have really spread the province. With the best of intentions, many people have downloaded these and added them to their Apple wallet. The challenges of course that it's not a legitimate proof of vaccination. It's not secure, it's not a smart health card. But for many people, a QR code is a QR code.
[The scanning screen is displayed. The narrator scans another QR code off his display.]
So they're going to be showing up and they're going to be presenting you this option potentially and you're going to be getting a very specific result here that does say it's not a government issued certificate.
[The iPhone moves to a new screen with a big yellow exclamation mark in a yield triangle titled Not a government-issued certificate. It advises the user to attempt to ask the visitor to show a government-issued vaccine certificate, or let the visitor know that enhanced vaccine certificates with a government-issued QR code are available to download at Ontario.ca/getproof]
So you can see here it's a yellow screen, but it's a little bit different. So this yellow screen says, ask the visitors to show a government issued vaccine certificate. So do they have those original receipts? do they have a new enhanced certificate? In many cases, these users might not be aware that this isn't the government QR code. So we want to provide very specific, and clear direction, so they can just go to Ontario.ca/getproof And that will quickly get them either to the call center, if they have a red and white health card to get their enhanced proof, or direct them to our COVID-19 patient portal, Where they can download one of those enhanced certificates which I've been demonstrating today. And again, the prompt is always on us to help them and not you as the business. But we did recognize, especially talking to stakeholders and businesses, like you, that this type of Apple wallet scenario is going to pop up a lot. And we wanted to give a really clear and custom result that helps direct people and get them the help that they need to get proper official proof of vaccination. That's the demo from the large view that you're seeing across the board with many of our key use cases. As I mentioned, we have tested this app in a variety of circumstances. I mean, I even, I've been walking around with a folded up piece of paper. And I'll just pull that one out of my pocket.
[The scanning screen is displayed. The narrator scans another QR code off a piece of paper.]
My last demonstration, I'll show you John Doe coming right out of my pocket.
[The app moves to the Verified screen from earlier.]
That's how easily and quickly it works. We have tested this app with a whole bunch of folks like you, and we're really thrilled that we've been able to engage with such a helpful community. And we look forward to continuing to build it better with your feedback.