Odyssey 2019 winner VX Company develops the mock-up of the Dutch Digital Consumer Dossier for Real Estate.
Following the Odyssey Hackathon 2019, the Dutch Kadaster hired the winning team VX Company to develop the mock-up of the Dutch Digital Consumer Dossier, the upcoming portal where consumers can find all the available information about their building.
Update June 23, 2020: note that the event formerly known as Odyssey Hackathon has been moved online and rebranded as Odyssey Momentum. More: https://www.odyssey.org/odyssey-hackathon-becomes-momentum/
The Building Wallet for Distributed Data Ecosystems
At the moment of participation, all of the team members worked for VX Company, hence the name. Team member Michiel Wesseling comments: “We’ve already been working on digital identity systems in combination with blockchain technology and we wanted to deepen our knowledge by participating in the Odyssey Hackathon”. The team consisted of a back-end developer, a full-stack developer, a solution architect and a UX designer.
To prepare for the hackathon beforehand, the team was attending the Odyssey Deep Dives and has met with the challenge lead, the Dutch Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency (or simply Kadaster). As Nick van Apeldoorn, ICT Architect of Kadaster, explains, the hackathon was just a part of a year-long journey to prepare for the hackathon.
Nick: “First, we dove deep into the topic and researched what the challenge was really about. After that, we did a few sessions with the teams and with Odyssey to prepare. The experience was extremely positive. Prior to the event, we invited all teams to our office for exploratory talks, leaving them more time to build during the hackathon. We thought that even if nothing technically useful would come out of the hackathon, it would still be a worthwhile experience because of the knowledge exchange.”
At the hackathon, five teams were challenged to find a way to make all information on real estate objects readily available for authorized persons and machines in a distributed data ecosystem (more about the challenge and the solution: here).
At the hackathon
When the clock began ticking on Friday at noon, the team started working on a public identity solution, which was something they were used to doing. At around midnight the team held a long and intense session with the challenge owner. This talk led them to realise they were on the wrong track. “With only 36 hours to go, this made the challenge for the four of us quite daunting,’’ remembers Michiel. “But Kadaster was really happy we went along with their vision instead of pushing our own plans, as it turned out we were more or less working on a system they already had in place. They wanted us to work on the bridge between the permissionless and permissioned layer and envision how the different actors could use the permissioned layer where all information on a building is collected from different data sources.”
At 8 a.m on Saturday, after just a few hours of sleep, the team decided to “go for it”, which essentially meant they would start building a new system they discussed with Kadaster the night before. Building on the permissionless IOTA tangle and permissioned databases resulted in a proof of concept that could demonstrate the working principle. Michiel: “It was very nice that we could show the actual transactions in the IOTA tangle, but not all of our proof of concept worked at the end of the hackathon. Fortunately, we could explain very clearly where the problem was and how we could fix that.”
Nick adds: “The biggest challenge is not just to get the technical part running. The biggest challenge is the collaboration between all stakeholders in the real estate information ecosystem and change management. All teams solved some parts of the puzzle, but VX Company had the most compelling solution to the problem we wanted to solve.”
After the Hackathon: working on the Digital Consumer Dossier
Digitaal Consumenten Dossier (NL. — Online Consumer Dossier) is an upcoming online portal that should contain all relevant documents about the building, from manuals and blueprints to contracts and even instructions for what to do in case of emergency. As of January 1, 2021, every contractor should be able to offer consumers (such as house owners) all information about their building through this portal.
The Online Consumer Dossier will be a comprehensive source of all building-related data. It is developed for the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations by NEN, Kadaster, LTO Network and VX Company. The project has proved to be a good avenue to further test the idea of VX Company.
Nick comments: “During the hackathon, VX Company was the team that demonstrated potentially the easiest and safest way to exchange information about the buildings.This is why after the hackathon we’ve asked them to develop a mock-up [of the portal] for a round of consultations with the Dutch government and building companies, to see if that could be something they could work with.”
“We’ve made a mock-up that shows what kind of a system we could create and what it could be capable of. It also shows how the two main groups of users, the consumers and the contractors, could interact. The portal should be a central point for all sorts of data, such as the type of heating system or plumbing, the location of the CO2 meter, the contractor who built the house, the status of various parts of the house, you name it,” details Michiel.
The mock-up is now being reviewed. At the beginning of 2020, the team will know if they could develop a prototype based on it.
Work with Kadaster in Odyssey 2020
In Odyssey 2020, selected teams will work with Kadaster, FIBREE, and the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations on a challenge to create a “barcode for buildings”. The challenge ecosystem will support the launch of the winning solution.
About Odyssey
Odyssey connects governmental, corporate, and nonprofit partners with innovative ideas to collaboratively address complex 21st-century challenges. We mobilize a global ecosystem of more than 6,000 members, among whom developers, creatives, startups, corporates, investors, governmental bodies, legal experts, regulators, scientists, and other key stakeholders. The past three physical editions of the event known as “Odyssey Hackathon” have drawn thousands of participants from around the world to Groningen, the Netherlands. The next edition, rebranded as Odyssey Momentum, explores the internet’s potential to unlock new levels of online collaboration and next-gen event experiences.
