U.S. Federal Blockchain Forum
The U.S. Federal Blockchain Forum was an inter-agency forum hosted at General Services Administration July 18, 2017, for executives across the federal government to learn about advances in Blockchain technology, discuss use cases and set an agenda for working together to evaluate and implement it among our diverse missions.
These rough draft use cases represent initial ideas and moonshots as well as program in development, and should be considered only proposed use cases and concepts unless otherwise noted.
| Forum Participants | |
|---|---|
| Bureau of Fiscal Service | U.S. Agency-International Development |
| Center for Disease Control and Prevention | U.S. Army Research Lab |
| Challenge.gov | U.S. Census Bureau |
| Commodity Futures Trading Commission | U.S. Coast Guard |
| Congressional Research Service | USDA Food and Nutrition Service |
| Consumer Financial Protection Bureau | USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service |
| Data.gov | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services |
| Defense Finance and Accounting Services | U.S. Department of Homeland Security |
| Defense Information Systems Agency | U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development |
| Department of Justice | U.S. Department of Labor |
| Export-Import Bank | U.S. Department of State |
| Federal Bureau of Investigation | U.S. Department of the Treasury |
| Federal Communications Commission | U.S. General Services Administration |
| Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation | U.S. House of Representatives |
| Financial Crimes Enforcement Network | U.S. Library of Congress |
| Institute of Museum and Library Services | U.S. National Archives and Records Administration |
| Internal Revenue Service | U.S. Office of Personnel Management |
| Manhattan - City of New York | U.S. Patent & Trademark Office |
| Millennium Challenge Corporation | U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief |
| National Capital Planning Commission | U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision |
| National Defense University | U.S. Small Business Administration |
| National Geospatial Intelligence Agency | U.S. Treasury Office of Financial Research |
| National Institute of Standards and Technology | Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences |
| Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues | United States International Trade Commission |
| Office of the Coordinator for Health IT | US Department of the Treasury |
| Securities and Exchange Commission | USAID Global Development Lab |
| State Department Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator | USDA Food and Nutrition Services |
| State Department Secretary’s Office of Global Partnerships | USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service |
| State of Illinois, Innovation & Technology | White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs |
| The Export-Import Bank of the United States | White House Office of Management and Budget |
| Transportation Security Administration | White House Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer |
Potential Use Cases from U.S. Federal Blockchain Forum
1. Transaction validation
2. Software license management
3. Security documentation sharing
4. Identity, credential and access control
5. Authenticate and validate government data
6. Survey data collection processes
7. Supply chain management
8. Museum and library collections management, digital humanities, and archives
9. Authorities to Operate (ATOs)
10. Smart Contracts
11. Small business loan distribution
12. Acquisitions
13. Visas
14. Payments, funds transfers, IAA's and remittances
15. Regarding domestic assistance, enable coordination between federal and local governments
16. Supply Chain Management and Security
17. Combating pirated agriculture inputs
18. Alleviate impact of foreign currency fluctuations
19. Tax assessment on crypto currency trading
20. Smart contracting and financial transactions
21. Instantaneous payment without having a bank account or a Credit card
22. Using micropayments to incentivize or reward behavioral outcomes
23. Case / evidence management
24. Evolving Interagency Agreements (IAAs) to better meet government’s needs
25. Further accelerate the adoption and impact of cloud technologies for agencies
26. Reimagine federal records management
27. Loan processing
28. Evolving notary public services
29. Property deed records
30. Post Office official identifications
31. Blockchain for micro-SLAs
32. Reducing friction in mission support systems and other shared services. Consider a Payroll and Personnel system that reduces that time to transfer payroll records, smart contracts, and financial management. As the govt. explores the probability of transitioning, in the coming years, to cloud-based Software as a Service for HR/Personnel, FM, Payroll, Contracts, Grants, Travel, what are the opportunities to drive consistency (or, at least, compatibility) as each of the respective LoB begins its blockchain journey.
33. A public-private partnership model for sharing private sector security information to identify potential threats to and to reduce risk to critical infrastructure. The protected critical infrastructure information (PCII) program is in place to protect private sector infrastructure information voluntarily shared with the government for these purposes. Blockchain could be applied as an enhanced security and validation tool to create digital identities that protect this private sector information and maintain privacy.
34. Cross-domaining solutions to ensure security and audit-ability when moving information across automatically across security classifications.
35. Improve Local Level Community Engagement, Access to resources, and oversight. Also to learn how legislation needs to change to take full advantage of this technology. Lastly, to assess the potential/feasibility cryptocurrency has to address the under banked.Improve Local Level Community Engagement, Access to resources, and oversight. Also to learn how legislation needs to change to take full advantage of this technology. Lastly, to assess the potential/feasibility cryptocurrency has to address the under banked.
36. Independently reviewable registration and chain of title could have value for the licensing of spectrum in the way that deeds and titles have experienced value for both traditional state and municipal deed offices and third parties in real property transactions.
37. Reduce the risk of forced labor in labor supply chains. Smart contracts can be used to eliminate the practice of "contract substitution," to help establish identity to migrant populations that do not have access to official documents, and to bring more transparency to payment records between employees and employers.
38. Create a trackable system for a landmine removal work-order management type system in a post-conflict setting.
39. Driving medical innovation through the development of knowledge and materiel solutions for the acute and early management of combat-related trauma; including point-of-injury, en route, and facility-based care
40. Blockchain as a technology to provide for clear ownership tracking of land parcels.
41. H-Visa information that is used by the Employment Training Administration.
42. Blockchain based network that democratises access to siloed inventory (foreclosure, repossessed inventory) data by enabling sellers (local counties, sheriffs, municipalities, customs) to hold multi-merchant auctioning through a distributed network. Forming an open marketplace, where any online merchant store can join and re-market, auction the same inventory in sync with global network of such intermediary online stores.
43. Reduce the high overhead cost of traditional trade finance solutions through commercial banks to help small businesses export American products overseas. Explore blockchain applications for trade finance insurance and government-backed working capital guarantee products. Coordinate with commercial banks to facilitate integration with their trade finance blockchain solutions as they develop theirs.
Use of blockchain technologies to foster creation of prediction markets (ideas futures) in early pharmaceutical ideas and concepts to speed the development of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other therapies to the market. Management of clinical trial protocols, data, and patient databases using blockchain ledgers.
44. Determine the feasibility of using blockchain in a permission-based DLT platform as the foundation for a government-wide software license entitlement exchange as mandated by Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA). This would expand on work started by DHS and NIST championing the adoption of ISO-19770 software identity (SWID) tags to enhance cyber security and IT Service Management operations.
45. Pilot program for fresh produce contracts/procurements by school districts with USDA approved vendors to utilize entitlement funds and enhance local procurement volume. Orders, receipts, bills of lading, invoices, approved vendors and products visibility for USDA agencies, state agencies, school districts and vendors to verify compliance with pilot rules, auditability and ensure prompt payment. Currently 2 federal agencies, 8 states, 400+ school districts and 90+ vendors participate in a manual validation and tracking process.
46. Utilize hackathons to discover innovative approaches to BC usage, exploitation.
47. A public blockchain to store encrypted chain of custody records as a way to increase public trust by providing an immutable record that could include hashes of digital files collected in an investigation.
48. Human Capital Employee Digital Record - build out network of partners (gov and industry) and exchange incremental updates between members
49. Tax refunds. Possible reduction of fraud. With tax submission as well.
50. Blockchain technology in existing data acquisition, storage, and retrieval system for traumatic brain injury (TBI) allowing for improved accuracy of individualized patient data which will allow for better prognostic and diagnostic determinations for individual service members who experience TBI.
51. Putting our University engagement program - Diplomacy Lab - on blockchain in order to securely share research products between Department offices and to manage transactions of research assets between university researchers and State entities.
52. If an SEC registrant uses a blockchain to record data the SEC has access to pursuant to its regulatory authority, a proposed use is that the SEC be given access to a œregulatory node on that registrant’s blockchain with permission to read that data in real time.
53. Blockchain's potential for improving data access and security in consumer affairs.
54. Non-ID response. This challenge occurs when a respondent provide information does not have a pre-provided unique ID. For example, if a individual responding to the decennial census on a generic form from their public library vs. using the one mailed to their house that contains their ID.
55. Legal entity identifier (LEI) management, financial research revolving around public/private blockchains in the US financial system.
56. DHS employs a public-private partnership model for sharing private sector security information to identify potential threats to and to reduce risk to critical infrastructure. The protected critical infrastructure information (PCII) program is in place to protect private sector infrastructure information voluntarily shared with the government for these purposes. Blockchain could be applied as an enhanced security and validation tool to create digital identities that protect this private sector information and maintain privacy.
57. The ability to create and share records using blockchain across agencies.
58. Exploring potential changing from a submission model for data to a data sharing model
59. Permissioned/permission-less blockchains for intragovernmental transactions; smart contracts for federal financial assistance, contracts, etc.
60. Immutable Logging to Ensure Resiliency, Integrity and Independent Validation of IoT Device and Sensor Data
61. Improving International Passenger Processing
62. Streamlining and Enhancing International Trade Documentation Processing
63. Alternatives to Paper Based Official Records to Mitigate Forgery and Counterfeiting
64. Exploring applications to safeguard the financial system from illicit use and combat money laundering and promote national security through the collection, analysis, and dissemination of financial intelligence and strategic use of financial authorities.
65. Reconciling balances and transactions to core finance subsystems
66. Creating balancing journal entries to handle discrepancies
67. Automating pricing reviews based on customer contracts and pre-approved price lists
68. Automating processing of payments and bulk payment files for journal entries to subsystem
69. Releasing reference data and scorecards
70. Data provenance for topics like drone technology, IoT, and the cloud
71. Decentralization of official data storage to increase resilience if data storage facilities are affected by an incident or accident.
72. Non-ID responses to surveys (verifying self-response surveys without sending mailers).
73. Evaluate blockchain technology in terms of its use in ICOs.
74. How to pre-vet data sharing between our agency/bureau (several offices and directorates) and another agency counterpart.
75. Business process and operational efficiency improvements
76. Streamlining and Enhancing International Trade Documentation Processing
77. Mitigating accounts payable risk
78. Regulatory reporting and management
79. Assignment and Ownership Data for Intellectual Property