At our collaborative workshop held on September 8, 2017, Emerging Technology and Open Data for a More Open Government, over 90 participants from government, industry, civil society, and academia came together and crafted potential goals to be integrated into the fourth U.S. National Action Plan for Open Government.
These rough draft use cases represent initial ideas and moonshots as well as program in development submitted by participants, and should be considered only proposed use cases and concepts unless otherwise noted.
| Workshop Participants | |
|---|---|
| Adarsa Services | National Aeronautics and Science Administration |
| Atlas Research | National Capital Planning Commission |
| Global Blockchain Business Council | National Defense University |
| Booz Allen | National Science Foundation |
| BRMi | Organic Crop Improvement Association |
| Center for Data Innovation | Office of Personal Management |
| Center for Open Data Enterprise | Office of Management and Budget |
| Center for Disease Control and Prevention | Oracle |
| Chamber of Digital Commerce | Prometheus Computing |
| Data Coalition | R Street Institute |
| Data.gov | Science Applications International Corporation |
| Dcode42 | Small Business Administration |
| Department of Justice | Senate Judiciary Committee |
| Department of State | SensisChallenges |
| Department of Homeland Security | Sunlight Foundation |
| Elliptic | OpenGov Foundation |
| Federal Acquisition Service | The World Bank |
| Federal Energy Regulatory Commission | U.S. Digital Service |
| Fintech4good | Unified Shared Services Management |
| General Services Administration | U.S. Data Cabinet |
| Government Blockchain Association (GSA) | USDA Forest Service |
| IBM | White House |
| Millenium Challenge Corporation | Zilla LLC |
| National Archives and Records Administration |
Source: Initial concepts submitted during registration process
1. Develop Blockchain enabled ledger/register of citizen and farmer transactions across the 35 USDA agencies and offices.
2. Launch challenges, prizes and competitions that focus on Blockchain. By attending this workshop I will have an opportunity to further grasp this evolving relationship between the government and the Blockchain and AI communities. Additionally, I will gain an invaluable firsthand understanding of the government's goals, challenges, initiatives, and attitudes regarding Blockchain and AI adoption.
3. Demonstrate ways in which blockchain can be integrated into federal data management systems as well as exploring the benefits of distributed ledger technology across the U.S. government.
4. Establishing data performance objectives and metrics for federal government Blockchain initiatives.
5. Explore specifically for public health, population health how an open ledger using Blockchain can help protect privacy of data by linking it from source to local jurisdiction to federal agency to analysis. Can also make allocation of digital resources necessary for data use and analytics (e.g., compute, storage, transport) for efficient across the entire chain of data from local to state to national to industry.
6. Explore distributed computing over blockchain to better utilize resources.
7. Ensure Blockchain technology us effectively and safely applied by government agencies to mission critical needs.
8. Use Blockchain for permitting and transactions
9. At a time when core institutions across society are facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence, Blockchain has the potential to help restore trust in government and the private sector. We believe Blockchain has the potential to serve as the spine for a broad range of public and commercial services, and remove friction and uncertainty from interactions between citizens and institutions.
10. Explore Blockchain applications for trade finance that streamline processes and reduce costs, to increase access to credit for SMEs.
11. Explore how blockchain can be used to increase transparency in supply chains for goods purchased by the U.S. government.
12. Demonstrate using blockchain for unique IDs, supply chain management, smart contracts, and/or micropayments.
13. Explore Blockchain for Internet of Things identity management & logistics tracking.
14. Explore Blockchain’s potentially immense benefit for systems that support social security benefits.
15. Develop a permissible blockchain can be used for identity management and to store and share information required for processing all types of social security benefits such as retirement, disability, medicare, etc. Also, by using smart contracts, automate and gain efficiencies in the application process.
16. Access financial institutions and improve capabilities for eligibility review, claims processing, payments, audit, and reduce improper payments resulting from excess resources.
17. Leverage Blockchain technology to improve and add new capabilities across various lines of business in agriculture.
18. Enhance and improve insight on export and import sales, commodities, analysis on overseas and agricultural production trades, historical data, production and supply distribution for the USA and other nations.
19. Explore advent of Blockchain and IoT technologies as a significant opportunity to create jobs, improve natural resource management, and increase the capacity of government to do more with less, through a systematic upgrade of land management systems. A large-scale investment in the digital infrastructure of the United States specific to land management will catalyze new transactions, helping to enable broadly-based economic opportunity in every region of the country.
20. Determine the usability of Blockchain Smart Contracts for the automation and trust of Micro Service Level Agreements.
21. Permissioned blockchain for research data provenance and PII protection.
22. Leverage the concept of a "shadow-chain" to realize the value of a permissioned blockchain without major disruption to existing business network legacy applications while providing trust, transparency, and accountability not able to be met with traditional approaches. This type of blockchain implementation allows government entities to "sponsor" a blockchain network while driving immediately towards tangible business value in a prototype or pilot environment with ability to scale/grow to full production over time to additional members of business network and/or business processes.
23. Blockchain for electronic health records to increase interoperability, security and privacy, and control of personal data. Allows for the introduction of genomics into healthcare, becoming a part of a patient's 'medical history'. Ability to anonymously share an abundance of health data with academic research institutions easily furthers advances in healthcare and science.
24. The creation and implementation of international Blockchain technology standards for vital records, e-voting, etc.; targets for pilots, etc.
25. We are currently evaluating Blockchain for a number of public health use cases including: public health data surveillance, death certificate exchange, population health management, pathogen tracking and developing supporting business and technology proofs of concept. We see this as the start of a process that could ultimately lead to a global public health blockchain construct. This could further be extended to a public health blockchain marketplace that could drastically improve the process of budget allocation and funding for public health programs.
26. Land title management.
27. Utilizing blockchain technology to bring together job seeker profiles, resumes, training records, and eOPF data. The goal of this is to support data openness and security across Federal HR systems for human capital planning and targeted recruitment, while also building out open data and job search tools for job seekers, academic institutions, and private sector research partners.
28. Global trade transparency.
29. Public, internal and stakeholder engagement around the development of the policies, procedures and ground-rules of all this good stuff moving forward. You know how we do.
30. Develop strategies and processes for applying blockchain to types of federal data that include PII (eg health and finance). Determine how blockchain can help address privacy and security issues, and how this data can be appropriately "opened" (e.g. shared selectively with researchers, other federal agencies, or other selected users rather than the public at large.)
31. Open Data On-Ramp to Blockchain: Accelerate current and future Open Data initiatives through building open APIs that de-silo data and leverage key blockchain capabilities. Objectives include: Allowing for data to be more actionable and drive accountability (single source of truth) - know where it came from, who provided, provenance, etc; Get to near real-time data delivery via Open APIs; Adds ability to control security and privacy of "selectively sharing" data based on defined rules - who accesses what when and why - more data can be shared with more granularity; Allows for future two-way interaction by allowing business network members to add to/enhance existing government provided information - additional information available. Description: Both current Open Government initiatives and future initiatives can leverage the standards-based, real-time access of open APIs while taking advantage of trust, accountability, and transparency the blockchain provides. Some Use Case Examples: Public Health - Opiod Tracking, Public Health Surveillance, Population Health, Medical/Certification information; Land Management - Public Lands, Shared infrastructure; IoT Integration; Unreachable populations (people and entities); Marketplace establishment (Healthcare, Human Resources, etc.) Metrics: Increase SLA compliance through Smart Contracts and Incentives; Increase data access; Improve selective and auditable sharing of data; Improve Data quality metric (auditable, trusted, reduce secondary/manual validation)
32. National blockchain based personal identity: Create a national blockchain based system for personal, digital identity management to enable individuals to access government services. Key Objectives include: Increases trust in government use of personal information; Combines biometrics and other unique identifiers to ensure identity is tamper-proof and cannot be falsified; Increases interoperability between multiple government agencies and services. Description: Applications can include health records, e-voting, land registry, birth certificates, traffic violations. Measureable Metrics: the number of users; the number of agencies involved; the number of times users are able to access different services; the number of challenges to system security.
33. Blockchain Toolkit & Primer: Information and tools to help federal decision makers determine whether blockchain technology may be a solution to their needs, and if so, how to get started. Key Objectives include: Blockchain increases accountability; Increases transparency; Increases participation. Description: Develop and disseminate foundational information, use cases, best practices, & implementation guidance, playbooks, etc. Measureable Metrics: Actionable guidance within six months, and then number of uses and distributions.
34. Distributed Ledger Technology Supply: We are working on the concept of food / consumer goods on the blockchain from where food is grown, picked, distributed and sold. This would help with food sickness, emergency distribution. Key Objectives: This would improve trust, traceability and centralize our distribution; Government would have accountability over products and help with fraud & safety / cost management; Citizens could see where & what was spent over emergencies and over events; We can verify that food / medicine was picked up and delivered & distributed. This would assist with natural disasters. Measureable Metrics: Improve food waste and security.
35. Open Government Blockchain Innovation Initiative: Provide incentives for federal agencies & departments to implement & scale successful blockchain pilots for open government. Description: Establish an annual process or competition to identify & support blockchain projects & pilots that advance open government goals. All federal agencies & departments to be eligible to participate. Successful projects to be rewarded with funding & technical support. Measureable Metrics: Participation rate from agencies / departments; Scoring & and judging criteria; Annual Competition.