Low-entry government adoption of blockchain technology
Government organizations were not built for collaboration. They were built for, well, governing. Governmental organizations themselves are usually managed quite efficiently, but an overarching structure and clear lines of communication with external parties, even within the government itself, are usually lacking.
This is especially the case when private organisations enter the stage. Consider the overhaul of the city of Amsterdam’s North-South metro line where the national railway, the municipal public transport organization, and a dozen private sector parties needed to collaborate towards achieving one communal goal. Originally set for a grandiose opening in 2011, it only just opened its doors in 2018 having achieved spectacular budget overruns along the way and exceeding its original deadline by almost 7 years.
This is of course a very eye-catching example where other factors were at play as well. Nonetheless, inefficient communication on day-to-day processes remains one of the biggest frustrations of governmental bodies worldwide. Due to a substantial lack of data automation between (legacy) systems and a lack of real-time process insights, these government related processes often come with high operational and communicational expenses.
Usually, a lot of offline communication between institutions, departments and private parties is required, and often data has to be re-entered in separate, non-communicating systems. This is not only very inefficient, but also highly error-prone due to its reliance on human action. In many government processes, separate actors use old, cumbersome ways of communication, utilizing little to no automation: fax, telephone calls or emails at best. Each request then has to be communicated, performed, communicated back, and verified.
LTO Network aims and promises to leave all these inconveniences in the past, ensuring efficiency through unparalleled low-entry adoption of blockchain technology by governments.
The current state of blockchain and GovTech
While (blockchain) technology has already put many industries upside-down, governments and public policy makers have been hesitant to adopt new technologies. Opportunities with these new technologies, however, are seemingly endless. Citizens and private counter-parties demand high-tech, effortless and transparent delivery of public services. Through GovTech (GovernmentTechnology), governments can not only meet these expectations, but also reduce their operational costs by a wide margin.
Historically, most government IT-systems have been developed by large suppliers. These systems have often been built from scratch on government request and still hold up as the majority in IT-divisions. Development costs for these unwieldy systems have often been extremely high, especially when taking into account the high ongoing maintenance costs.
Modern solutions, on the other hand, are often SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) or even PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) based. Due to their scalability and low maintenance, up-front costs for these types of systems are a often a fraction of those of legacy systems. Consequently, governments can be more agile in searching, piloting and selecting IT systems, and maintenance by the software vendor is always part of the PaaS or SaaS solution through service level agreements. Yet, the non-interoperable aspect of these systems remains…
The LTO Network Solution (simplified)
LTO Network aims and promises to solve all these aforementioned issues at once. With LTO Network, governments instantly eliminate the pain points of inefficient communication and endless data re-entry, with blockchain technology in a supportive role. Supportive, instead of the disruptive role that is often attributed to blockchain. LTO Network ensures instant efficiency gains on governmental processes while operating on the existing legacy systems that employees are familiar with.
Collaboration on the blockchain is achieved through predefining any given government process as a decentralized workflow. In these workflows, which are based on day-to-day operations, every stakeholder needs to fulfill a certain task at some point in said operation.
These stakeholder tasks related to government processes often consist of filling out or checking documents, factsheets or forms. Using LTO Network, every task of every stakeholder on every process is extensively enriched with data that has been added to the process in an earlier phase or pulled from other (internal or existing) systems. This decentralized collaboration and re-usage of data ensures that for each task, only the bare minimum of data needs to be filled in by the stakeholder. This makes governmental processes less labor-intensive and less error-prone than ever before, eliminating all unnecessary, paper heavy and time consuming forms of communication.
Governments benefit from LTO Network for its productivity increase, automated compliance and data driven decision making. With LTO Network, governments can finally go paperless. 🌳
With LTO Networks’ hybrid blockchain solution, each workflow forms a miniature private blockchain. Only the nodes selected by the parties involved have access to this chain. To safeguard the integrity of these miniature chains, each event that takes place on these processes is anchored on the LTO Network global public blockchain.
For a technological deep-dive on our blockchains, click here for our technical white paper. Worried about GDPR compliance and blockchain incompatibility? No need to with LTO Network. We covered that in this article.
A SELECTION OF LTO NETWORK GOVTECH USE CASES
LTO Network is a blockchain solution that is in active use, or currently being tested by (a.o.) the Dutch, Flemish, German, Spanish and Catalan governments.
‘ZSM-zaken’
In The Netherlands, LTO Network has developed a framework for the District Attorney’s office to optimize so-called ZSM-zaken. ZSM-zaken stands for zo snel mogelijk-zaken, which is Dutch for ‘as soon as possible’ or ASAP-cases. This framework ensures GDPR compliance and the highest level of data privacy compliance for all parties involved on the process.
These common criminal cases are often simple, administrative processes for petty crimes, in which a perpetrator needs to pay a fine or perform community service. Further legal action, such as a court hearing, is not taken by the authorities in these cases.
More than 100.000 ASAP-cases (DA’s 2017 report, in Dutch) are processed yearly in The Netherlands. With LTO Network, each ASAP-case, such as a shoplifting or possession of a small amount of (hard)drugs, would create its own, predefined miniature ad-hoc private chain, in which certain stakeholders have to execute certain tasks in a certain workflow, based on the type of criminal offence.
This novel way of operating ensures regulatory compliance and horizontal scalability. Moreover, it highly speeds up processes. The system allows all parties involved to participate in the process with their own systems. Meanwhile, information and process states are automatically exchanged. This prevents status bubbles, errors, deadlines and high lead times on files, while ensuring transparency and immutability through anchoring on the LTO Network global public blockchain.
All stakeholders within a process, such as the District Attorney, the Dutch police, victim-care, child protection services, rehabilitation services and lawyers can participate on ASAP-cases in real time. Through government-supplied mobile applications, accessible with DigiD (Dutch government e-ID), victims and suspects can be kept up to date on their processes, on a need-to-know basis.
The data is reused and verified by all participants of the process. This ensures a safe process and almost completely removes the administrative burden. As a result, an ASAP process could be dealt with in mere days, instead of multiple weeks.
For a sneak preview on what we’re going to do next for the Dutch Ministry of Justice, see: https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2018/03/12/minister-grapperhaus-to-reduce-administrative-burden-of-investigations.
Waste transports in the European Union
The Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (‘ILT’) of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure commissioned LTO Network and its partner Capptions to reduce the supervision costs related to European waste transportation, after winning the first EU-blockchain tender. This winning pilot oversees over 600.000 waste transports in the European Union.
By combining blockchain technology and existing IT-systems, the inspection authorities can automate a significant portion of their tasks. This frees up knowledge and expertise for other important tasks that cannot be performed without human assistance (yet). The tender is meant to demonstrate that blockchain technology can be used to improve efficiency and transparency within the cross-border waste transportation process in the EU. After successful completion of the pilot, the solution will be rolled out to numerous other EU-member states.
Future use cases with LTO Network
The simple premise of eliminating unnecessary communications and enabling fast and secure data-exchange on processes between systems and organizations is applicable to many government related use cases. This makes LTO Network the easiest entry point for governments into working with, and benefitting from blockchain technology.
A selection of projects that are already planned for 2018/2019 and other possible LTO Network use cases cover:
- The secured, decentralized distribution of medical, proxy re-encrypted patient data (learn more here).
- Making the process of land registry and ownership immutable and more transparent.
- Facilitating multi-stakeholder initiatives towards the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Agenda.
- Creating regulatory frameworks for cannabis production in the USA & Canada.
- Regulated Initial Coin Offerings (ICO’s) and Security Token Offerings (STO’s).
- Eliminating bureaucracy and administrative burdens on refugee admission processes.
We make adoption happen here and today!
Is your governmental organization lacking efficiency in day-to-day processes? Do you want to know if your current issues could be resolved by using blockchain in a supportive role? LTO Network is here to help you solve these matters, one step at a time. We use blockchain for its true purpose; a highly valuable tool to establish trust, tackle corruption, distribute resources, highlight major leverage points and streamline regulatory burdens.
About LTO Network
LTO Network is a blockchain toolkit for creating trustless workflows, while maintaining data privacy and GDPR compliance. Developers, governments and enterprises can use the LTO toolkit to create new, or integrate existing solutions — and run them in a transparent, secure and decentralized way. For more information on how to effectively incorporate blockchain technology in your organization, get in touch with us through support@LTO.network!
