How Blockchain Made Rhode Island 70% Digitalised
Today the applications of blockchain have moved well beyond cryptocurrency to everything from supply chain management to voting.
And while blockchain applications started in the financial sector, the technology has been adapted in every sector from healthcare to the public sector.
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Blockchain in the Public Sector
The public sector has been very supportive of blockchain, trying to harness its full potential to bring safety and transparency into its operations.
Currently, citizen records are stored in centralised government databases, making them a prime target for cyber criminals. With blockchain, governments can harden the network security, reduce single-point-of-failure risks and ensure minimum data breaches.
Governments and other public agencies have implemented blockchain to improve operations, including:
- Reducing voter fraud — the UN initiative Followmyvote was started to ensure greater transparency in elections and reduce the number of voter frauds. Blockchain also reduced the cost of elections, ensured voter privacy and allowed secure online voting.
- Storing public data — The Estonian government worked with Ericsson to build Guardtime, a decentralised database storage and management system using blockchain 2.0 to store public data securely.
- Storing Federal government data — The U.S. General Services Administration is working to adopt blockchain technology in the federal government, to store sensitive information like federal patents, trademarks, Social Security numbers, visas and passports.
Reducing voter fraud — the UN initiative Followmyvote was started to ensure greater transparency in elections and reduce the number of voter frauds. Blockchain also reduced the cost of elections, ensured voter privacy and allowed secure online voting.
Storing public data — The Estonian government worked with Ericsson to build Guardtime, a decentralised database storage and management system using blockchain 2.0 to store public data securely.
Storing Federal government data — The U.S. General Services Administration is working to adopt blockchain technology in the federal government, to store sensitive information like federal patents, trademarks, Social Security numbers, visas and passports.
How Rhode Island Utilised Blockchain to Become 70% Digitalised
The U.S. state was already making great strides in its digital transformation journey and implementing digital innovation projects.
But the state’s leadership realised that to meet its goal of serving residents, communities and businesses, they would need to double up their digitisation efforts.
Chief digital officer of the state of Rhode Island, Bijay Kumar, says,
“Attaining [digital] success is completely possible in the public sector, even at an accelerated pace. We focused on people, process and technology.”
They partnered with Infosys to create several applications and adopt various disruptive technologies, including blockchain.
Their pilot blockchain initiative made it easier for Rhode Island professionals to establish a digital credential that could be used across an array of government and state websites.
The CRUSH COVID app helped state health officials track virus hotspots, contact trace individual cases and set up and spread the word about testing and vaccination facilities across the state.
Liz Tanner, Director of the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation, says, “It’s essentially a way to hold information in a very secure and safe place so that you can use it over and over again. Think of a data spreadsheet. It’s the ability to organise it and hold it and use it in a safe and secure way.”
The state's leaders worked in tandem to empower more than 100,000 of its small businesses to adopt blockchain and other digital technologies. The state government provided small businesses with computers and other equipment required to make their businesses digital.
This ultimately led to more empowered businesses that were able to get ahead of tech disruptions.
Kumar says,
“We are well on our way to modernisation and to complete digitalisation. Today, we are close to 70% digitalisation.”
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