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The Australian government in February released a National Blockchain Roadmap focusing on opportunities across the economy that it believed could be captured and enabled by the use of blockchain technology.
The roadmap contains 12 “road signs”, one of which sees the creation of a group consisting of a group of government blockchain users.
Cartel four indicates that the group would be created to discuss learnings from existing government use cases, promote and disseminate these teachings across the government, and identify additional government use cases.
Speaking at the Digital Transformation Agency’s Digital Summit 2020 on Thursday, Chloe White, who is part of the Emerging Technologies team of the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, said that this group has focused on continuing to develop capabilities. in the blockchain within the government.
See also: Blockchain: A Cheat Sheet (TechRepublic)
“Our goal is really to create a network to find out who civil servants are interested in blockchain, what are the lessons learned that we can share with each other, how we can empower each other and make sure we got those good flows of information, “White said.
“The fact that technology is evolving so rapidly, our understanding is changing and there are so many different aspects to the blockchain: having a network to share knowledge with something that’s really a big priority.”
The Australian Public Sector (APS) Blockchain Network is a community of practice for blockchain enthusiasts, the department said. It is open to any APS staff – federal, state, local – interested in technology.
White said the network is one of the first signs the Emerging Technologies team took action.
Elsewhere in the roadmap that the government hopes to execute before the end of 2025 there are plans to create definitions for use cases and then to move forward with work on them. It also hopes to define what blockchain actually is.
“The reason we use a broad definition that encompasses what people in the industry would call DLT, or distributed ledgers, and also blockchain and other types of technologies in this category more strictly is that the technology is evolving so rapidly and our understanding collective of what it is and what it can do is still evolving along with the technology itself, ”White said.
“There was a perception that you could lift a database, transfer it and download it to a blockchain, and it would be your new data store. I think one way the industry has moved from the peak of the hype cycle in 2017. -18 is that we are no longer thinking of blockchain as a data store necessarily, or primarily, so we are also looking at blockchain as a technology that can give you assurance about some kind of signature, identity or authority, so that idea that – one of the best known properties of DLT or blockchain is that it is immutable, thinking of immutability as a service or immutability as a strength “.
The roadmap followed the Digital Transformation Agency over two years ago, giving advice to those lost in the buzz of the blockchain that they should turn their attention elsewhere.
Agency chief digital officer Peter Alexander previously drenched its use, adding to the above that “for every blockchain use you would consider today, there is better technology: alternative databases, secure connections, standardized API engagement.”
“Blockchain: interesting technology, but early in its development, it’s kind of the top of a hype cycle,” he said.
The government agency has even published a questionnaire for organizations to self-evaluate before worrying about something that can simply be stored in a secure database.
