The purpose of Made-in-D is to create a label on products that fulfill certain requirements:
•The product is developed in democracies.
•The product is assembled in democracies.
•90% or more of the value of the Bill of Materials (BOM) comes from democratic countries.
•The manufacturer has self-certified the above using a standard software.
•A certifying non-profit organization (D for Democracy) supervises and audits products worldwide to make sure standards are upheld.
The idea for how to improve things started with one simple question:
What power does the “average-Joe” citizen have to contribute to democratic principles and human rights in the world?
•De facto as a private citizen in a democracy the amount of power is limited, one can vote, campaign and aid to elect an official who (may) represent the promotion of democratic principals.
•One can become active and protest dictators in his own democratic country, for example in front of a given embassy. But these protests are systematically ignored by dictatorships, as they have little direct effect on their hold on power.
•In many cases, the greatest single power a citizen in a democratic country has is that as a CONSUMER. That is by making a responsible choice as to what he purchases or not.
Functionality of self-certification for a product.
•Download a simple software that guides the company through self-certification.
•It registers where the development and assembly of a product are done.
•Documents the BOM of sub-assemblies and the corresponding value as a % of total.
•The software gives feedback on if the product would qualify as Made-in-D or not.
•A detailed report is stored locally which contains confidential information such as vendors and pricing. The report is stored locally but not sent to outside of company.
•A less detailed report with no proprietary information is generated, which can be submitted to D-for-Democracy which is the certification body for the Made in D certification for the product of interest.
•Sensitive information on pricing, vendors and development is stored on local company servers and normally not made available to D-for-Democracy unless audited.
•If the company or product is audited the report would be available to verify if it’s correct.
Principle of self-certification is used in other industries, as an example could be VDA (Verband der Automobilindustrie) which uses an example of an automotive product self-certification tool.
A report is generated in a specific file format and saved on local server, the full report is not transferred outside of the company to respect confidential information and IP.
A simplified report would be submitted to the certifying entity.
The report is a standardized and recognized format for the certification, so its results are understood by everyone.
Why is self-certification the preferred method?
•It uses the principle of trust and verify, or the belief that most companies that will invest the resources needed for certification would do so on a good-faith basis.
•It allows the companies to maintain proprietary information, such as name of suppliers on a local network, limiting potential for information reaching competitors.
•Encourages acceptance by companies as it presents very low costs and risks and important potential sales and marketing benefits.
•Limits costs and need for assistance, thus only small regional teams would be setup for verifications and some IT support.
•It allows to limit costs in early phases of certification acceptance, as the brand grows, allowing to scale up quickly and with lower costs.
An a-political structure of PRODUCT certification authority is essential to its success.
•Countries must be split into democratic or non-democratic, this can be challenging given many intermediate shades of democracies.
•List of countries that qualify as democratic is compiled based on a composite of already existing reports from 3rd party organizations (e.g. Economist Democracy Index ).
•Initially the list would be 100% objective criteria based on above classifications and standardized rules (e.g. 3 of 4 entities must certify a given country as democracy).
•As the list of democracies is based on objective rules and other certification bodies, the certificating entity is neutral. This would allow the certification entity (D-for-Democracy) to be shielded from political pressure.
•The certification entity is in Switzerland, generally considered a (or the) neutral location.
•Ideally, as the organization grows, the external board would be of recognized figures who would be immune from political pressure and would promote the organization.