Blockchain in Canadian public sector: Success Criteria
Field of Dreams is a movie with Kevin Costner, not a growth strategy
Co-authored with Ken Saloranta, Chief Technology Officer, Public Sector, IBM Services. This material is our own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
In our first two posts on successfully delivering blockchain solutions within Canada’s public sector, we laid the foundations and talked about establishing value chains. This article talks about the ten criteria we see as essential to successfully moving a blockchain solution into production in the public sector.
These criteria should be used in advance of starting a blockchain initiative to see where the challenges lie and where the strengths are. Inadequate
- Governance — It’s easier to build on and extend an existing governance model than to create a new interoperability model across a value chain from scratch. Look for an existing governance structure between governmental and non-governmental participants that can be leveraged.
- Contracts — Similar to governance, pre-existing contracts reduce barriers to moving blockchain solutions to production and extending them. If there is a vendor such as IBM which has pre-existing contracts with the participants in the value chain, this can ease production deployment of blockchain solutions.
- Procurement — Government procurement is necessarily rigorous. It’s more exposed to scrutiny than private procurement and spending taxpayers’ dollars is a public trust. But the downside is that it can slow rapid adoption across jurisdictions. A procurement framework with a common vendor or vendors can ease adoption by some jurisdictions, and hasten production deployment and value.
- Business case — While blockchain is being explored right now due to its uniqueness and potential, that doesn’t mean that fundamentals should be ignored. The proposed solution must deliver quantifiable benefits to governmental stakeholders including citizens.
- Relationships — Blockchain solutions are business solutions based on technology. Where governmental agencies already spend considerable time in discussion and there are common vendors, blockchain solutions have a greater likelihood of delivering value. In some cases agencies will lead and in some cases it will be easier to have the vendor lead.
- Growth strategy — There’s a certain amount of ‘field of dreams’ happening in blockchain solutions at present. This isn’t a strategy as much as a wish list. Being clear about what the starting position is, what the next possible steps are, what the potential paths are and being able to articulate stakeholders and likely funding and political support models will ease movement from POCs to MVPs to expanded production deployment.
- Innovation resources — It’s critical to have fast-moving, experimenting resources who can rapidly create POCs and MVPs, exploring potential use cases with stakeholders through design thinking approaches. These might be governmental staff, educational institute teams such as Mohawk College’s MEDIC team or vendor Garage staff.
- Production resources — Just as early-stage resources are important, teams whose role is to deliver rigorous production solutions and teams whose role is to maintain solutions are key. Identifying the path to production early through delivery resources will reduce barriers to success.
- Poor or no solutions — Governments and their partners have been automating governmental processes and programs for decades. Existing solutions that meet the needs of the business and still have value will be hard to justify in the business case. To make the path to blockchain success easier, look for existing solutions that are nearing end of life, do not provide substantial elements of value or just don’t exist at all.
- Right technology — Blockchain isn’t the solution for every problem — note its position on the hype cycle right now. There are multiple technical flavours of blockchain with different strengths and weaknesses. IBM alone is a major force behind Hyperledger Fabric and has global partnerships and focus on the token- and exchange-oriented Stellar and the identity-focussed Sovrin. How to select between different types of blockchain technologies will be explored in future posts.
Subsequent posts will explore different governmental use cases in the Canadian context to see how these factors apply in real-world blockchain solutions.
Ken Saloranta, Chief Technology Officer, Public Sector, IBM Services
I’m passionate about learning my client’s businesses in depth, gaining insight into the challenges that face them on a daily basis, and applying solutions and technology to overcome those challenges. I provide technical guidance and oversight to the IBM Public Sector consulting practice in Canada serving government and healthcare organizations.
Michael Barnard, Executive Consultant — Cloud, Blockchain and Health, IBM Services
Focused on helping clients with their strategies related to Cloud transformation and on blockchain solutions in the Health and Public Sector. He has over 20 years of delivery, innovation, transformation and consulting experience, covering a wide span of business and technical domains. Specialties: Healthcare, grid transformation, blockchain, Cloud portfolio transformation strategy, complex program startup.
