In their webinar Wallet.services explain that their DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) platform enables multiple organizations to create secure workflows for cross-enterprise collaboration.
They explain that current digital transformation projects mainly concentrate on digitizing only the ‘front end’, the web UI experience for users, while the back-end fulfillment of those processes still relies on manual, paper-based processes.
Their SICCAR product offers a designer tool for creating cross-party workflows, in the webinar they walk through an example of the PVG Check – a certification for staff working with vulnerable adults and children, that are formed of actors, workflow steps and public data that are published to the ledger.
Actors would be the relevant approval bodies, such as Police Scotland, with process steps including for example the Identity validation of the staff member, with the designer making it quick and easy to build the required workflow forms. This is then configured with security permissions so that each organization can only view the data relevant to their required input, simplifying the process for each user as well as ensuring privacy compliance.
CivTech
A key point to highlight is that Wallet.service is one success story example of the Scottish Government’s CivTech program, a dynamic, entrepreneurial approach for matching difficult public sector needs to innovative solutions through a more agile approach to procurement.
The ScotChain17 presentation from Wallet.Services is introduced by Alexander Holt of the Scottish Government’s CivTech Accelerator.
Alexander describes the challenges of slow and bureaucratic government procurement, and how their initiative is intended to speed things through a more innovative approach. Working around a number of shared challenges they then award contracts to for the best ideas.
CivTech works across the public sector to offer them this more dynamic procurement approach for agencies that know they need this new approach for key challenges.
Alexander also describes how CivTech has enabled the government to act quickly on its Digital Strategy goals – For example one being an intention to explore and master Blockchain technologies for public sector benefit. As part of the CivTech Cybersecurity challenge pitching Wallet.Services presented this opportunity and were contracted around a developed government requirement for a Blockchain Strategy, then procured through the Digital Marketplace.
Digital Native Public Services
Peter Ferry of Wallet describes how despite the hype of the tech market we still live in a mostly analogue world, where government digital services are most just the ‘web page lipstick on the paper process pig’.
Highlighting the Equifax personal data loss Peter describes how we’re still at quite an immature state of online security for digital services, and asks the basic but fundamental question of why this is still happening despite our technological advances.
He arrives at the very nature of Government IT systems and their implementation models, in short how each department operates their own silo and at best they offer web interfaces to these applications. These silos are the same cause of why there is so still so much paper-based manual procedure, it provides the “middleware” that exchanges information between them. The financial and customer experience consequences of this manual bureaucracy are as ever huge for the public sector, and so major leaps in joining up systems offers massive potential for efficiency savings.
The core idea at the heart of the solution and thus Wallet.Services concept is the use of DLT (Distributed Ledger Technologies, like Blockchain for example) Smart Contracts and Oracle technologies to facilitate new models for secure data exchange.
Like the public sector makes use of ‘Private Clouds’, and other different permutations of Cloud Security model, Peter envisages a similar approach to DLT platforms, where governments deploy hybrid combinations of open and private features, to meet their regulatory needs while also enabling the critical sharing functionality that addresses the root issue.
Become a Blockchain Builder
A tremendously powerful effect that Scotland can cultivate is one of an accelerating ecosystem, as CivTech is intending to build. New venture ideas and digital government apps that build on these existing investments and capabilities will start to engender a ‘network effect’, an amplification of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
Not only would Scotland enjoy more efficient public sector IT systems but this adoption would finance a sector with massive global growth potential – All governments globally experience the same root issues and will adopt the same Blockchain solutions to address them.
❗Our report made in collaboration with @scotgov is now released! We cover how #DLT can be used to combat issues in digital public services. 📰🏴
Sign up here to get it: https://t.co/BXspWgtBHE #blockchain @digitalscots @Cointelegraph @coindesk— SICCAR (@SiccarNet) July 31, 2018
