Learning Experience in Devcon: Blockchain to solve real problems in public management
Aweek ago I was in Bogotá attending Devcon, the Ethereum Foundation’s main event of the year. The first impression I had when I heard about this event was that it was aimed at programmers only. Nothing could be further from the truth, I am economist and public manager and I received a scholarship from the Ethereum Foundation (EF) to attend this event.
To be honest, I applied with the sole intention of knowing the process and being better prepared for a next opportunity. Although I am not an expert on the subject, I have always been curious to know how the Blockchain technology behind the most famous cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether operates. Although its application has been intensive in finance, the attributes of this technology allows to go further, at the time of the application I was not sure about it but had a lot of expectations.
The event took place between October 11 and 14 in the city of Bogota in Colombia. It was four days of intense learning and interaction with wonderful and enthusiastic people from all over the world. According to figures from the closing of the event, 6,000 people from 113 countries attended. It was an impressive setting in which various learning modalities were developed (talks, panels, workshops and much more) that exceeded my expectations.
The purpose of this blog is to share a bit of my Devcon experience and, based on what I have learned, explain from a real problem identified in the Peruvian educational system why I consider that the use of Ethereum technology could have been very useful and beneficial to face the problems of public management that arose in the context of the pandemic.
But, What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a type of blockchain, which in simple terms can be understood as a registry system that stores information in a decentralized manner, where digital contracts are executed automatically in response to compliance with a series of predetermined parameters without the need for a third party that gives the order which means that they execute themselves, these contracts are called “smart contracts”. Its decentralized operation mechanism that protects the information in an encrypted network can be consulted from a computer with internet access anywhere in the world.
Real problem: Intention to transfer from private school to public school
The mandatory isolation due to the pandemic generated a negative impact on access to the educational service of households with children of school age, mainly in those who attended private schools; either due to the affectation of their financial capacity to comply with the monthly payment of the vacancy or due to disagreement with the quality of the service in the non-face-to-face modality. To get an idea, the dramatic reduction in income caused 90% of parents to not be able to pay tuition in March 2020. This situation and the weak response capacity of private schools, generated that parents consider transferring their children to a public school as a viable alternative.
The transfer of a student from one school to another is a transaction framed in an enrollment registration mechanism, which can be understood as a contractual negotiation process, in which two main actors interact exchanging information: The parent who chooses the school that best suits their needs and socioeconomic conditions and school principals who have information about the number of vacancies available and the quality of your service. In this process, the role of the government is that of a regulatory agent that provides technological and regulatory tools to guarantee that both actors disclose real information for the signing and fulfillment of the contract.
In a pre-pandemic context, the unequal access to information of both actors caused failures in the execution of the contract, generating the massification of low-quality schools and therefore an unequal development of student learning. In the context of the pandemic, this problem worsened and now it was up to the government to assume a more active role in the management of information on the availability of vacancies to measure the absorption capacity of private enrollment in public schools.
Although public schools are part of the organizational structure of the Ministry of Education (Minedu, by its acronym in spanish), the governing body of national education policies, information on the availability of vacancies is a fact that is only handled by the school principal since he is the only one who has access to the real information of the physical space (number of classrooms and their dimensions, for example) and the conditions of the furniture. There are no administrative records of this information, the only records available are usually statements of school principals in annual surveys or in Censuses with long time slots. This scenario is a clear example of centralization and dependence on a single actor to validate relevant information for the provision of public service. This limited the government’s ability to respond in an emergency situation.
Using the censuses and surveys, an approximate offer of 531,519 vacancies was estimated in public schools, which represented approximately 23% of the total private enrollment. So the identified public offer could only absorb a quarter of students of private schools. It was then necessary to make the information honest and generate an alternative mechanism for the exchange of information between school principals and parents with the intention of moving.
In this context, Minedu developed a web platform to collect the intention of parents to move, in order to have a real dimensioning of the demand for the analysis of vacancies allocation and offer of exceptional enrollments. This platform was enabled in June 2020, the enrollment process began in July and in August, five months after the need was generated, students from private schools could be transferred to the public system.
As expected, the alternative solution resulted in a technological tool for the registration and processing of information. However, the problem of centralizing vacancy availability information in school principals still persists. In my opinion, having a vacancy registry based on the Ethereum ecosystem could have facilitated the government’s information management process to give prompt and timely attention to the aforementioned problem. Below are my considerations based on the attributes of Blockchain technology described in Jolias et al. (2022):
I make parentheses to say that in one of the talks I met one of the authors of the referenced book, Jesús Céspeda, who was kind enough to give me a copy.
- Shared recordkeeping: Share a set of authoritative records between multiple parties
A vacancy is the representation of a physical space in the school that meets the minimum conditions required to carry out the pedagogical process between teachers and students. Having an updated and transparent record of the availability of vacancies in schools is a necessary condition to guarantee access to educational services for children of school age.
2. Consensus between parties: allows all parties to agree on the shared recordset without a central authority
The determination of the availability of a vacancy depends on the infrastructure characteristics of the schools and the educational service model. Both aspects have already determined and regulated parameters, which could well be programmed in a smart contract to determine not only the availability condition of the vacancy, but also its “quality level” based on the degree of compliance with the parameters.
The execution of the parameters through a smart contract in a blockchain system removes the administrative burden from the school principal and automatically transfers it to any computer with internet access that connects to the system (decentralized system).
Scientific evidence has shown that the role of the school principal is very important in the achievement of student learning as long as he plays his role in pedagogical management and not so much administrative.
3. Independent validation: Allows each party to independently verify transaction logs.
The characteristic of the decentralized system would allow all the actors directly or indirectly involved in the educational system to validate each record in the blockchain and make the decisions that correspond to them. In the case of the national government, this information would guide budget allocation decisions for the implementation of improvement or construction of educational infrastructure, prioritizing those of lower quality.
Additionally, it is important to note that each infrastructure improvement action carried out by the government would be part of the historical record of the evolution of each vacancy. This is important for government accountability to citizens.
4. Evidence of manipulation: allows each party to detect any unilateral or non-consensual changes in transactions
Another advantage of the characteristic of the decentralized system is that, being freely accessible, it would become a deterrent to acts of corruption such as charging for vacancies or that the school principal hides relevant information about the quality conditions of the schools with vacancies available
At this point, I consider it important to point out that despite the beneficial attributes of Blockchain technology, for the purposes of public management, it is always much more important to identify and understand the public problem very well in order to adapt the best available technology and not that the problem adapt to technology. In the aforementioned case, the Ethereum technology seems to respond very well to the solution of the problem of agents with information asymmetry identified in the process of registering school vacancies in the Peruvian educational system.
Finally, beyond technical learning, Devcon also left me reflecting on “Subtraction” as a philosophy of life. At the opening conference, EF Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi explained that one of the three key guiding principles underlying decision-making strategies at the EF is apply “Subtraction” to achieve two main goals: to seek the right balance in the ecosystem and to focus on what matters most. This, in her own words, is important to avoid the “natural tendency of organizations to grow and accumulate power” which usually ends in the denaturation of a purpose. I found that very, very inspiring. In her reflection, Aya said that whenever we have additional resources to do something, anything, a natural reaction is to try to add more in the infrastructure in which we find ourselves without thinking that a better option could be to subtract.
So, why don’t we give “Subtraction” a chance?
Jolias, Lucas, Castro, Ana y Cepeda, Jesús-Editores (2022). Identidad Digital Descentralizada — Una guía de implementación de blockchain en gobierno. Bahía Blanca, Argentina: Editorial GovTech Hub.
