Hello. And welcome to digital, gov University I'm, Justin, Herman and I work with GSA's. Emerging, citizen, Technology, Office which works with the agencies, around. Government on how, to adopt, evaluate. Manage. And, collaborate, using new technologies, like artificial, intelligence, robotic, process automation. And blockchain now. With me today is Sherri hi, I'm Shari slow-flowing with the Defense Information Systems. Agency and. I'm on our innovation, team over there and, she's also such a great champion of government-wide, blockchain, services, and helping us put, this together so, here we're here today for the first installment of our new emerging, technology, leadership, series through digital gov University and, the, reason is simple so people like what is this new tech series we. Spend so much time working, with businesses, working with academia, working, with the best and brightest minds out there but. A lot of times you might not know about it especially with, emerging technologies because. This stuff is happening faster than a lot of times people have been sharing that wouldn't you agree absolutely. So, what we wanted to do is take some of the people that we know and we've met along the way and. Again bring them right to public, servants, desktops, so the best information the best ideas, out, there. Accessible. To anybody, so we can better learn and understand, these issues and to be able to apply the, lessons learned to DES for IT modernization. And the type of services, that the American people deserve and. Again it's not just one agency having, it it's all agencies, having equal access to this so. Here we are we're at the first of the series here and we have Brian which I'm sure many, of you know so, brian, behlendorf is executive director of the hyper ledger project, which, is an initiative, at the Lenox foundation, he's the primary developer, of the Apache web server the most popular, web server software on the internet and a founding member of the Apache Software Foundation now. He also served on the board of Mozilla, Foundation since, 2003. The Electronic, Frontier Foundation since. 2013. He. Was the founding CTO of CollabNet, and CTO of the World Economic Forum, so, thank, you so much for joining us here Brian. And just actually before we pass this off because one of the things is we wanted Brian and you know we work a lot and talk with their team to. Get ideas and, really try to steer what are the issues that public, services, need, to know about to really kind of understand, and. Break down blockchain, in a way that can be then applied, again for practical, innovation, today and we're so glad that Brian is joining us today from his. Hideout actually we were joking he's, not on the premises right now he's over in the bay area but again through the the blessings, of technology, he's able to join us and be with all of you today so, that being said we.
Have Questions, and answers for. The latter half of this so if you go in and you see that there's a chat box so, what will happen is that once Brian's done challenging. You and sharing with you information on, what he thinks you should know today, about this. Technology we're. Then going to moderate and then take over some questions and answers so. Listen. If you already have things on your mind be, sure to load them up and if not we'll be doing it live from here so that being said thank, you so much to all of you who are joining us today thank. You for the hyper ledger team for, being so responsive, and taking, up our invitation, with. That being said please take it away, great. Thank you very much, Justin, and Sherri and let me tell you again. Like I've told you before it is really an honor and a privilege to be able to be, working with the federal community and the public sector community in helping, them understand, where, blockchain, technology, might actually help them do their jobs more effectively. We. I've spent a year working for the Office of Science and Technology Policy in another year with department of health and human services focusing. On open data open source software open open. Policy basically and. And, it really excites me now ten years later to be really. Working on a technology that helps helps us actually address a big challenge up there with digital, technology, which is how can we trust what we read how can we trust the, transactions, that we that we conduct, without having, to centralize, it all on one, big central player and so it's. Exciting to me to see some. Of the applications that have already come out of organizations. Like the GSA, and. I'm excited about what what what, happen from this point forward and so why don't we put the slides up on the screen if we haven't done that already and. And. I really wanted to talk about, demystifying. This. Whole blockchain, thing for, for everybody out there I mean it's very easy to, hear about the story behind cryptocurrencies, and to imagine that it's all about you know an alternative to the money system and maybe we can do without thanks, maybe we can do without government, agencies and and a lot of that is very fanciful, fanciful. But but back on the ground there, are a lot of real world problems we can solve today with this technology and a lot of simpler. Ways I think to understand, what.
Blockchain Technology, can do for all of us and so why, don't we move to the next slide. See. If we've got it great so, if there's one image, I want to burn into the back of the eyelids, of everybody on this call. It's. It's really this, for. Me and for so many people in the in this space blockchain. Technology, really, represents, two key. Innovations. And their innovations, that actually have precedent, going back 40 years in computer science research. But. But really the two big areas are distributed. Ledger's and smart contracts, and distributed. Ledger's are a special. Kind of distributed, database it's, a it's. A database you can only write to you can never delete anything from it's, a database that simultaneously. Exists. Across, an entire, connected. Mesh, of different nodes and these nodes these servers, are being run by different people, different organizations, but. All of them have the ability to publish, to this mesh to this network all of them have the ability to read from it and we, use cryptography. And mathematics, and and all sorts of consensus. Technologies. Called consensus, mechanisms, to, make sure that everybody has the same copy of that, ledger so. Everybody, it, can write, to it nobody, can deny when something has been written to it and, we can even use it to implement some very special, physics, things, like you, know I could invent, a token, and if I hand that token to Justin it gets recorded to the ledger and, if I try to hand, the same token record, again. To that ledger transfer. That same token, to, Sherry then, the, network rejects, it because it says no you've already handed, it to Justin you can't actually hand, it again to somebody else you can only do that once and so, this, is how we build up to things like cryptocurrencies. Where, you can only spend one Bitcoin, or one theorem. Token at a time but. It's also how we can get to a lot of other interesting, features once, we have that once we have this network that allows us to establish a common, ground state a common, system, of record between all the participants, in that community then, we can also write, to it these things called smart contracts, which. Are basically a a script, that everybody, gets a copy of that, says hey when the network witnesses, this, thing happening and then this thing happening and then this thing happening and, all those conditions are met then, automatically. Record, a brand-new entry right and those things could be you know it could be a checklist for, things. Like weather, insurance contract, you know if the temperature. In a certain city hits, a hundred degrees for a hundred days in a row or something like that the amounts of droughts and you want to pay out a contract, to a farmer, whose crops likely, have failed right or. A way to implement a mortgage or a way to implement all of these kinds of things where today these typically exist as contracts, between parties but, without, a network to help enforce it it's, only as good as the lawyers you can hire or the regulator's out there that sort of thing and, so a smart contract or way of adding action to to this this domain and, both. These technologies, together give, us an opportunity to, reinvent. A lot of how business, processes, are conducted, between parties this, is really, a business-to-business technology. Although it's, something towards, the end that talks about consumers, in the space and. Citizens, by the way, but. It this also takes allows us to take a lot of bespoke, point-to-point, sometimes. Very manual processes. That happen between organizations. And turn them into a predictable. Reliable system, and most importantly, a system, where the trust doesn't have to be embodied in a central, organization because. The trust is something that we all. That. Comes from the fact that we're recording events that we all collectively, witness, right it's kind of like you know on a document, that's, really important, you have to go find a notary right, to witness the fact that you signed that document well, the network is kind of like a notary service, but where everybody, is that notary and starts, combining that right, so. We can really go out and solve some some issues that today, are, a challenge for us in the digital sphere because. Of this lost of lack of trust in in in centralized. Systems right, next. Slide please, and. So. As, is. Obvious from the way that I've presented, this you. Know cryptocurrencies, are one, potential, application, of this and, they're an intriguing one they try, to solve a couple of really hard problems, at scale which is how do you have a network. Like this a consensus, mechanism, where the participants, can be anonymous, we don't have to prequalify to be a part of it where that, participation.
Can Be open to anybody on the whole wide Internet and where anybody can add a new note node to that Network so they're trying, to achieve some really hard things I want to give them full credit but, it turns out there's a lot of use cases where, you, can pull back from some of those ambitions, and look at saying hey I've got a community. Here of 20. Banks who want to implement a settlement network between them or 20. Healthcare organizations, who just want a better way to exchange medical, records or process. Insurance, claims right and, in these kinds of networks you can actually, go. And solve, some problems using some very approachable technologies. Next. Slide. So. I want to walk you through a couple of examples of where this technology is being used now to, try to make it real and, then and then open, up a little bit about who we are at hyper ledger so, one, of the this, network launched, very recently about two weeks ago into production called, the WIDA trade network and this is a collaboration. A consortium, that pulls, together a bunch of very blue chip banks hsbc, deutsche, bank sant, Ender in. Into, a bank. To bank network that facilitates. The processing. Of finance. The financial, resources, for the, global trade, global. Supply chain right so, processing. Thing is from letters of credit an. Extension, of, payments. Through import/export, and types of banks all the way through to final delivery of the product and then settlement, back, stream so, all of these banks are representing, small and mid-sized businesses kind, of behind the scenes who have accounts with those banks but, this process, is automating, something, today that would take weeks or even months to be able to finish then can take instead days or even hours and. Bring, a level of predictability to. It and a level of auditing, that was. Really, challenging when the, details, and the data would, sit inside disparate, repositories. In different formats, in different, organizations, and you. Can always automate, a business process you can always digitize, a paper process but, in, order to do this before blockchain you would have had to have somebody sitting there at the center of that circle acting. As the the PayPal, or the uber picker metaphor, right. Basically. You know being. Chartered with keeping track of everybody's accounts, with, a distributed, ledger with, smart contracts, were able to tease this this whole. Ecosystem apart. But, but bring it a degree of standardization, and automation that that helps cut the cost of extending, these kinds of credit this, kind of crest and. Along the way the, participants, in that network build a reputation build, a history of, their of the of what they exchange which makes it easier for them to go and get credit easier, for them to go and. Represent. Kind of their interests, in that network in, as. Time goes on next. Slide I. But. An even simpler a, example. Out there that I really like has. Been in production now for about a year and. This is the diamond, ledger that is being run by a, company called ever ledger but, in conjunction with many. Of the largest, producers and, retailers in, the diamond industry, and. I and, here the idea is to use a distributed, ledger to, trace the, flow of diamonds, from the time they come out of the ground to, the retail sector to try to provide, traceability. To, ensure, that at, no point in, that chain, what, it's was someone able to slip in, undocumented.
Diamonds. Right coming from most, likely from conflict. Regions that, deploy that employees slave labor or where the diamonds were used to purchase weapons or. Other types of, illicit. Activities, that the. Diamond industry came, together to try to stamp out this. Actually built on top of a. Regulatory. Regime that the diamond industry developed, almost, twenty years ago called. The Kimberley, process. And. Which attempted, to essentially. Say every diamond gets a certificate, in kind of a history of where it's been the, problem was there the only tools available before. Blockchain. To. Implement, such a system was, I. You. Know basically a centralization, a centralizing. A. Database. That would. Receive fax that copies, of a paper certificate, with stamps on it which. Was impossible, to search which, was Impala chol, to share that data with the, people who needed it who were receiving, these diamonds and wanted to verify you, know an accurate history of where it came from and. That opened the door to fraud, it opened the door to double spending where somebody could pretend, to that. This diamond had a fake history and send the same diamond, quote-unquote, to two different people with. This system it is now not possible, for somebody in the middle of that chain to, send a diamond, one. Diamond to two different places right, and. That kind of air tightness in the supply chain is what blockchain, technology, is really being used for here and to do that in a way that doesn't require everybody, to have to trust you, know a company, or a government at, the center of that of that system next, slide, yeah. And actually just to jump, in and on that one, of the things that my, friends always laugh, about is now, we're starting to see commercials, happen. Like during sporting events in which people are talking about blockchain, solutions. For. Supply, chain management, and everything and we usually know once the sports commercials, start happening. Yep. During the World Cup exactly. Yeah. I'm a couple of companies out there have been very ambitious about advertising their their new. Skills in this space and so yeah it's been great to see in fact the next example I have next slide please is, another, type of traceability. Example. And this is at. The other end of the spectrum so to speak in terms of the kind of product it's a it's fish right and. Fish, as it turns out very much like, in the Kimberley process, there, is an international, series of treaties. And industry, agreements, regarding. Quotas, where, fish may be caught and. I, you. Know and a lot of problems. Now with pirate, fishing fleets coming into ports. Claiming to have caught it in under. Quota in the right place but actually taking it from waters. Where they threaten the viability of species and. This is a huge problem now blockchain. Had blockchain, technology, has, the same challenge. Every other technology. Has which is what's. Characteristically. Known as garbage in garbage out, except. And this is a term coined by my friend Sheila Warren at the World Economic Forum, it's, garbage in garbage forever, right, because it's recorded, on this blockchain, and so, you can't assume that just because something is written to a blockchain that it's true but, you can use a blockchain as an evidence, trail to, add to it not just the formerly, tracked information. About, objects. When they've got point move from one point to another but, additional. Information, and so in this project. That's being developed now in the fishing industry they. Are adding to this ledger, information. Long before the boat shows up at the port to offload its catch they're, taking data from tamper-proof nets tamper-proof, sensors, on nets, off of the back of the votes that record. GPS, and weight and time, and then, record, that data to the same blockchain, with a with a signature that only could come from those sensors so, there's no chance for a boat to, corrupt, that data they, also take data from buoys. Floating in the water from ports as boats, pass in and out and put all of this together to try to help, organizations.
Verify. The integrity. Of a claim that a boat has made when it's arriving that it caught this fish at this time and. Then that's just the beginning of the chain in addition, to the handoffs you want to make sure that the fish has been kept at a safe temperature I. That. It's been not, sitting in port for weeks while while paperwork, clears that sort of thing and so added. To this network is a whole lot of other sensor, data and third-party, data to. Try to make sure that the fish when it's presented not just came from a known good source but was adequately. Cared for, by. The time it gets to the, the retail channel right and, so this is this is pretty exciting and there's a lot of applications, not just for traceability, but for food safety as, well in in. Many, of the supply chain networks out there when. You think about it a lot of challenges we have a global trade boil, down to making, sure that you're getting what you know you're getting, or. Think that you're getting, and. Have ways to independently, verify that that that's, true next, slide please. And. And if time were fuller, I'd give a lot of other examples, of, other financial, use cases of their supply chain related use cases or even use, cases in the healthcare industry for example or in. Government as well there's a lot that. We're saying we can talk more about them later but the one that I really wanted to make sure we dropped, and. And and talked a bit about was digital, identity. We. Know that there's a problem out there with the traditional, way that identities. Are managed online it's. Very much of a mainframe model, where you know you have, a name and a password for, a remote server somewhere and that has all of your data and. You have no idea that, whether or not that data has been shared with other people right you, don't really have a sense of agency on, it and by, the way if you move, as. I did recently you move homes you, don't even have a good sense of who has that address. That needs updating, right who you've shared it with and. Who you'd like to actually, stop sharing it with so.
With. Blockchain, technology, we can finally, fill in some of the last pieces to another. Kind of wave that has been moving through the digital identity, world for the last ten years called, self sovereign, identity, which, is an inversion of this mainframe, model to say it's, less about the data that exists about you on these centralized. Websites. Government, or private sector run and more about data, that you possess close to you in something that perhaps looks and feels like a digital, wallet right something, that is a mix of data you've recorded, about yourself and you decide who to share it with or. Things, that have been given to you like a diploma or a, passport or a. Healthcare, record right and, what. Role does blockchain technology, play in this well it's not to. Record, all that data because it's, it's almost the opposite technology, right block games are about spreading. Data around to everybody, on that network so you don't, store PII, they're personally identifiable, information but, you could use it to store, public. Keys, signatures. Hashes. Pointers, basically. Enough, metadata. Enough information to help you, prove when you present your, passport to somebody that it came from a, known good source that it was issued on a certain date and certain time and, then you use a blockchain as well to record, in a in a encrypted. Privacy, protecting, way that. You granted consent, to that sharing of that data and. Allows, you to also issue a reeve occasion, of that consent and this sounds what what does all this mean this means potentially. Moving to a very different world in. Terms of managing, how our identities, work how personal, information, works online and, moves it much closer to, the types of regulations, we see coming out now for example the GD P R from, the European Union or the recent Privacy, Act that was passed in, California, which is modeled very much after that Brazil. And India and, several other countries are now and on. Their way to adopting, similar privacy, regulations, all, of those work in a world where you as the individual have much more understanding. Visibility, connectedness, and, agency. Over, the sharing of your data and so we have a project of hyper ledger the keys off this I'll mention in a bit but. I just wanted to plant this because I think especially for, government. Innovators, this is a use, case you might be particularly, interested, in next, slide please. So. All. Of this really, hopefully, paints a picture for you that we're not talking about one big blockchain here we're talking about a. Network, of block chains a network of these distributed. Ledger's with automation. On top of each of these right with different smart contracts, deployable across, them but. Where the the, ledger that runs a banking network might be distinct, from the ledger that runs an, identity, network that runs a a. Supply. Chain network of course, we're gonna want to be able to link between these but. What, we need and, and and we need standardized. Tools for being able to correlate. Transactions, to be able to point, a data that sits on one from a smart contract running on another all that sort of thing but. This is a very different model perhaps if you ever hear somebody use, the term the blockchain with the definite, article before the words log chain that's. That's a very 2012. 2011, view, of how watching technology, is going to work most, people now say it's going to be a, kind. Of a universe of different Ledger's many, of them overlapping many of them competing perhaps, but. Also giving. Us the flexibility, and freedom to decide the technologies, we use and most importantly the, distinct, governance, models, on each of these Ledger's next. Slide please. And. And, it's also important to think about this not at you know the terms the cryptocurrency networks. Which are big and public, facing. Where you know if I happen to know Justin's, Bitcoin, address, and. You. Know share it Sheree's email address I can know exactly the full history of the payments that they've made between each other right I instead.
There's. A spectrum here from, fully. Permissionless, in public on the left-hand side to permissioned. In private on the right-hand side where you're dealing with sensitive data even if that sensitive data is not being directly written into the ledger you're still dealing with applications. On top of that that will deal with sensitive data and, so you really, need, better. Tools to manage that than you would get on the public permissionless side and. And, really there's a spectrum here of, different. Approaches, to this kind of thing and, just to jump in real quick I think like this slide right here and breaking it down is. So, valuable because a lot for the people that we meet with this is one of the hang-ups that occur because. When you talk with somebody again. We people, talk about blockchain like it's this, one thing, that, you buy off-the-shelf plug-in, and all the sudden magic, starts happening and. People. Get very hung up and and, again very confused, by some, of these differences, because somebody might be talking about one, of these levels of permission. And, that might be their, full understanding. Of it and so then they tell other people, essentially. Referring to the blockchain. As. It's one thing and then people get really confused and frustrated or, just think it's hype or something and. So like these are the one of the like this slide right here in particulars, when I think just so valuable to break down cool. Yeah it's a and. I and there'll be ways to bring. These different block chains together and of course they'll be standardization. But, it's important remember you know the web kind of grew by some common, simple standards the internet grew but, it was mapping, on top of a very complex, space underneath and it was only by being able to be adaptable, to, local environments, to be able to run you know Virtual Private Networks for example or to be able to run intranet. Style applications, that we're actually able to move everyone over to web technologies, and so yeah, there'll be a mini faceted, world out there thanks.
Like. So. Now, let me pivot didn't kind of explain who we are and the. Role that we're aiming to play in this space so, hyper ledger is a part of the Linux Foundation which. Has, been, around for about 15 years helping. Bring, together the, different. Facets. Of the Linux initially, just the Linux operating system, world, and increasingly, more of the rest of the open-source community. And, when I say facets, there's kind of two distinct. Layers, of community, that the, Linux Foundation tries, to bring together the, developers, working on code who, just, want to get things done who want to use the software but you know if they find a bug they want a place to report it if they want to fix a bug you know they have a fix they want a place to share it with other devs they, want to if they want to work on some new feature they want to find other people who want to work on it with them right and, so providing kind of a governance, model kind, of an air traffic control, if you will for, developers, is a key part of what the, Linux Foundation does, the, second tier of that is the, companies, in this space the vendors I mean, there may be a misunderstanding, that that open source software depends, upon the, kind, of charity. Work of a lot of individuals, who are. Completely. Uncompensated, and, have, no idea of the inherent, value of their own intellectual, output right and. Are doing it just for it to build a better world and there are people out there like that people. Who are you, know working on open source software to make the world a better place but, there are also quite a few people I would wager to say the majority of people who work on things like Linux, or cloud. Compute open source cloud computing, tools or open. Source automotive, software, open, source you know all these different areas who are doing it for a business reason they're doing it for their employer they're doing it for to. Solve some problem I that. They have or they're just doing it to raise their skills and develop a profile. In space it's, not charity, so much as enlightened, self-interest and so the Linux foundation's role there, is to help these companies, understand. Not just how to get value out of using this code but, how to redirect, some of that back to the build a broader community, build a multi vendor or multi stakeholder community.
Around It sometimes. It's a bit of marketing sometimes that's, a bit of soothsaying. You know sometimes. It's running, conferences, and events sometimes, it's just going and showing up and giving a talk right but. This is critical work and, the Linux Foundation has grown well. Beyond the Linux operating system a, few years ago it got into all these different sectors in fact next slide. Got. Into, networking. Cloud computing. Web. Technologies, like nodejs, and, the JavaScript foundation. Security. Projects, like let's encrypt and the core infrastructure, initiative all of these domains where you could define a common, set, of needs and find companies, and organizations, who, are willing to combine. Their efforts both financial, efforts to help fund a program office around each of these projects, and, put, their developers, on these projects to go and build, software. That everyone gets to take for granted you know it's it's it's plumbing, its infrastructure, businesses. Do not compete on the quality of their plumbing right, and. So this is a a necessary, a must have and there's, a lot of companies who realize that by, jointly. Building this they end up saving, money they end up getting. Further faster even, if it means their competitors, or other other, companies, can use the fruits of their work for free there's, kind of a bigger picture here at work right so hyper. Ledger fits, into this picture where, for, the last two and a half years we've, been as a part of the Linux Foundation building. This independent, community around blockchain. Technologies, next, slide. And. We are builders I mean there's a lot of other or except they're talking about protocols, and. And and trying to look at standards, in this space whether it's ISO or the IETF, the w3c. We also don't view ourselves as a governance, organization. There are groups like the etherium, foundation or. You. Know many of the other companies kind of coin centric, kinds of foundations out there or in the blockchain space, governance. Organizations like r3 who. Are building a banking network or. Moby. Mo. VI who, are focusing on automotive, blockchain. Use cases they're, all about how do we bring together participants. In these sectors and, build use cases and actually go deploy, a ledger, what, we're about is building, the underlying, tools right, the underlying. Software. Packages, to be able to stand these networks up to be able to run these in production, and and, build these, these Ledger's across, all the different all these different places very much like how, linux, as an operating system, runs, inside of every Android phone runs inside of every Mazda car starting, starting, this year and.
Runs On all 500 of the top 500 supercomputers, in the world right it's that flexibility. But also that, standardization. That comes from having common open source code and that's why we exist next. Slide, and. So. Within, hyper ledger we. Have 10 different technology. Initiatives, I won't go into each of them because, that would take another hour. The. One that you might have heard most about is fabric, that is the one that kind. Of we started, the project with fabric, and with sawtooth, but fabric, is the one that perhaps has received the most developer, attention, and. The most industry, attention, it's. A mature product, it is hit version, 1.2, but. It's being used in production today for, example the we trade network that I mentioned is using it in production the, two that I'll additionally point, out and, happy to talk about many others is hyper. Ledger borough which is an implementation of, the etherium, virtual, machine which is a smart contract engine. And. This is a toolkit. For being able to run the same kinds, of scripts in fact in many cases the very same scripts that run on the public aetherium network but, to be able to run that in a permissioned, environment, and that, runs, standalone. But also runs now on top of both fabric, and sawtooth, which, is, another. Framework that we have that hyper ledger and, then also mention indie indie is, tool for building distributed. Self sovereign, identity, blockchain, systems I know that's a mouthful, but. That is, a platform, that's being used today by a nonprofit called, the sovereign, foundation, sov, Rin, org, and. They're doing a lot of interesting work in distributed, digital identity including, with the government of British Columbia and with, several. Other government projects, I think, the state. Of Illinois as well as doing a part is doing a project with them and. So we're really excited about that, happy. To talk about more like in the Q&A next, slide. We've, got, a tremendous amount of momentum behind what we're doing I mean it's hard to measure impact when you've got a technology, base that people can use not only for free they can use without asking for permission they, can use without telling you you know it's. Not like say. Coin market Capcom. Where you get to see here's the top you know 1000. Crypto currencies out there there's. No leaderboard for this because this is fundamentally, about permissioned, technologies. But we've, had over. 500 different, developers. Contributing, code to, the, different hyper ledger projects, we've. Had, over. 50,000. Actually an update from this 50,000, different commits, to the different repositories, we. Have a lot of active working groups that cut across these, different projects, or focused, on performance, security architecture. Those sorts of things and, as an organization, we have developed quite, a footprint, as well in, the membership that we've pulled together to help support this effort next, slide. This. Is the nascar slide, as we call it of the companies that are our, biggest, supporters, financially. And and often, in terms of software developers, the. You'll notice some familiar names there no doubt including, one that might have taken out that Super Bowl or the the, World Cup commercial. That you mentioned but, others that are. Really, end-users. Of these technologies, right so, companies, like Airbus and Daimler, or. JPMorgan, none of these are software companies none of these are cloud companies, but. They realize, they're going to be using this technology deeply. Inside of their own businesses, and so they wanted a front-row, seat to it next slide.
But. We're also involving, the work of over, 200 other for-profit. Companies who. Have, jumped, in and and that represents, a really broad geographic. Distribution as, well you'll see companies like Wanda I was sorry why way if, I do and, ten cents involved but quite a few startups in China. Organizations. In Europe, organizations. In the States a mix of big companies and, and, and startup companies all over the map so really. Excited, to have, such. A broad cross-section those, of not. Only the the tech industry, but but other industries, that we know will be impacted, by blockchain, technologies, involved, next, slide, and. Finally. We also have a membership. Model that that is, really inclusive of, nonprofits. Government agencies, and industry, consortium, and universities. So, we have 50 members now who. Have, committed they don't commit financial resources, but they I guess we don't we, don't want their money but what we want is their, involvement in the project in, some way and that can be code that can be in, doing research of the technology, that can be in hosting, meetups or. Simply. Directing, their, or their organizations. Their members to get closer to and understand who we are and what we do and this includes organizations like the, CFTC. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston the, Bank. Of England the Monetary Authority of Singapore smart. Dubai which is the government agency and Dubai that's chartered with. Moving. Their entire government, over to blockchain. Technology, where appropriate by 2020. And. And, so we really believe in kind of a you, know this is fundamentally. Technology. For, building consortium. Right technology, for building governance. Organizations and, so we, think it's really important to partner with those. Types of organisations in that space and frankly for me it's less, the use cases about banking. Networks and much more the use cases around how do we build auditable. Systems. That in. The private sector and the public sector, in. The you know in the in the in the nonprofit world you know all over the map how do we really. Important, sub trustworthy, technology, and trustworthy, systems at, a time in an era when Trust is on the decline where people aren't quite sure if they can believe what they read online anymore, and. This. Is one path out of, that. Kind of spiral so, next. Slide. That's. Really all I wanted to say and let's jump into some conversation. Awesome. Well thank you so much again and, for everyone has joined us so, the chat is live right, now we only have. Some. Comments from Bindu asking, about small business support which I'm, sure you can go on to the website and. Check it out and find out more information, and. So. We, actually have some questions already geared up and so in the meantime participants. Around, the world who are tuning. In for this feel, free to chat it out actually, I wanted to go right for the jugular on. This one. Because one, of the things that obviously like, we were, we have more than a thousand, people currently. Subscribing. To these GSA, government-wide, blockchain, programs, but, then around, the other side you also hear that government, isn't doing anything I know at times I've, seen this like when we're consulting with agencies, somebody. Will legitimately. Say I will, not sign off on this, to continue, because, I've, heard it's a bunch of hype or I've read that it's a bunch of hype and it's. Actually something that's troubling the weirdness factor a little bit and the way people are treating it coming. Back because sometimes the way that people even describe it. And, they think they're being positive, it still creeps people out a, little bit and I think, all of us have experienced, that kind of like a little bit of snake, oil and people get excited about it earlier but if we're trying to have that practical, innovation. And. Again employed. Us today and find out when it's appropriate or not I mean, how would you say like if you were a senior leader, in government for. An agency, who is watching, this what. Would you tell them like where, could they start what are some red flags they should maybe look at to. Be able to separate, through that height and really, look what's, going on today in their agency, yeah well, despite the first four letters of our name happening. To be hype, we. Really like to try, to be the sacred, yeah. I know it. That out maybe, we need a rebrand, now. At the we've. Been focused, from day one on you. Know the same kinds of things that built the internet right rough consensus, but running code and. And, it doesn't really matter what you believe or how you want to remake the world unless you can ship a product people.
Can Pull into their hands and start using and, and, solving some very basic, needs first right and, then we can see where it goes so. By. Being very software, focused and shipping focused, I think, our community has helped kind of substantiate, that there are real use cases out there the, ROI on them is still being figured out all right like where is the right place to use these but. What's, becoming, clear is that it's often not what the consultants, think it's often not what the top down decision, makers. Necessarily, think but, as often just like with other waves of technology, a bottom-up, driven kind of thing so my, sincere. Recommendation, to a lot of people is to you, know stop going to you, know the more think piece blockchain, events, you know and and let, your devs let, your technical, staff go to some more the technical focused, ones and give them carve. Out some space where they can start to. Understand. This technology where they can spend an afternoon which, is really all that it takes going. To either, hyper ledger org or to the other kind, of interesting websites, out there around developer. Technology, in the space and, build, a hello world equivalent. Right I know that in the course of an afternoon on this anybody. Who's an average developer or above will, be able to to build a proof of concept will, be able to gain, an understanding and, if, they if they it's like building a muscle it's building a capacity right, and then, they'll be able to take that to challenges. That they see in, in the rest of rest. Of their day-to-day work. Now. This is a little bit different, from some, previous, technology, waves in that it is fundamentally. A a, team sport as, my friend David treat at Accenture likes to say it's fundamentally, there's no such thing as a blockchain of one right or even a blockchain application. Of one you. Can prototype something but you really want to understand, you really want to think about use cases that span, people. You deal with you maybe even your competitors, right so in a lot of cases we're saying competitors, like those 12 banks, doing that that we trade network getting, together to figure out what is common, enough about all of our businesses, that it's worth coming up with a common use case and, what are we willing to share with each other even, though you know we're gonna be competing, with each other for business, as well so that's. A little bit that's where maybe you do need more of the business and strategy side to kind of get, to get a degree of clarity around where. Is there a collective action problem, right where is there a coordination, challenge, between them and their market that they live. In and. And maybe somewhere, between those two strands. Of research you, know you know with with the business, side meeting regularly with the technology, side you'll, you'll come up with a with an appropriate. Proof of concept or even pilot project in in-house, also. Do you have anything follow up without charge. You, know it varies. But I think there's a lot that they can, do to understand. What, this landscape, means it's kind of like talking about the web in 1994, I. Mean people had seen BBS's, people, had seen prodigy, or CompuServe, right but. Until they could actually see the web you know and and, and have that kind of first line experience it was it was a challenge, so, there. Are but, you know we I gave a couple of examples there, are websites, out there that are also detailing, we have a bar, chain showcase for example on the hyperlink or website that, talks about other deployments. Of this technology, we. Also funded, the development of a course at EDX, called.
Blockchain, For business the first half of which is not about programming, at all but is about this, model for understanding how do you build these, these, business, networks these blockchain, networks and so, we've, had over a hundred thousand people sign, up for that course and and, then the second half of it is let's go and implement this, using. Different. Hyper ledger technologies, and, we actually do have a project. An. Initiative at hyper ledger called hyper ledger composer, which, is a high-level, IDE. If you will for defining you, know your blockchain, use case here's the actors here's the assets, here's the business. Process flow, and then, it creates, for you. Chain. Code which is like the smart contract system used in fabric as well as in a, front-end, built in JavaScript, for an application, that does what you want it to do so. I I think, it's pretty approachable I mean there's still it is still a bit like the early days of the web where, there's pieces, that aren't necessarily finished. But. III but. They're also in a growing, category. Of blockchain as a service, providers, companies. That will make. Developing. And deploying these kinds of things much more programmatic and, and accessible. To staff. Excellent. So there's actually a so, now there's a lot of questions over. Here so we're gonna we're gonna go. Through them so Chris and actually this is something that we can help dispel as well because. And something, that we were talking about before we started rolling with, this is. This sort of like Cassandra complex, that people can feel for this because, there's so much more going on than a lot of people realize or know, about and part. Of it is because these things are advancing, at a speed that oftentimes. You're not gonna see it on a government website there's, not going to be an agency policy, to address it and normal, indicators, people usually look for so, Chris here goes Brown mentioned a handful of private sector use cases what are agencies using it for and which ones have made the most progress and. We can actually just, talk a little bit for us and then of course Brian. For, you to follow up on but you could tell you some of the challenges that we have in this if you go to so our website, emerging, digital gov. Was. Conceived, to be a repository, Atlas. Where. Agencies, were going to be able to quickly. Be able to post updates on, pilot, programs, and proof of concepts, and everything that's going out there so, what it happen cuz you again you're not going to read about this stuff in a lot of places so. We put a placeholder content. Which is just scratching the surface of, what we work with with federal agencies and a, we got inundated with so many requests, just from a folder content, but to a lot of it hasn't updated because. Again is just even, what what we're rushing to get online for people to know about is, a fraction, of what's going on a GSA ourselves. Federal. Acquisition services. An entire profit program on. Acquisition. Vehicles in IT schedule, 70 so if you check out GSA, and blockchain you're, gonna find out about that Health, and Human Services FDA. We talked with the Navy the obviously. Your organization. So it's this weirdness, for us a little bit because here. You know and that's where the Cassandra complex comes in is we're working on this stuff we see this stuff and we. Want to warn people and basically tell them listen here's, the needs here's the trends that gets seen but, if those aren't being communicated. Outwards we're. Doomed to not be able to really, get people to believe it sometimes right, so it's a constant, source of frustration but. That being said I mean from now we've, brought in your team and you've been so gracious with time to be able to help some of these agencies, what, are some of the trends that you see going on I think. You couldn't take in okay, so we're, seeing a lot of. Government. Agencies experimenting. With this worldwide. Right, and there, are some famous, examples like the government, of Dubai I mentioned they had the Crown Prince of Dubai issue an edict that they were going to move the, government a 100 percent to blockchain technology, by 2020.
I Think they've pulled, back a little bit on that to be more practical but they actually adequately. Staffed an entire agency with, a couple hundred people to go out and do a whole series of proofs, of concept using. Different technologies, they came, down and decided we're gonna pick a hyper, ledger fabric as one of the two core technologies, that we expect people to build on top of and integrate with but, then they systematically, identified. Use cases and are, pushing that through I think they'll actually hit their target, there. Are other, states. Like the state of Illinois which launched, a the, Illinois blockchain, initiative, which is within that state an attempt, to collect. A. Possible. Use cases. Interested. Research interested. Parties at, the state county, and city level to. Start to implement some proofs of concept around. Bursts. Birth and death certificates, around land titles around, business. Registrations. The. State of Delaware has also been very active when it comes to the business Reggie, tration given that there's so many businesses, out there who register. In Delaware because it's, known as the very business friendly state now. They're moving that to a digital process, and issuing, those records, onto a blockchain makes, complete sense right, so. So. There's a lot of a lot of government's experimenting, with this and, and, some who've moved into production a, one. Use case so mentioned. It very cautiously is there's. A lot of interest in the application, of blockchain tech to voting, and I'll. Get my personal, take on it which is that I think it. Would be great as a as a tool to enhance the integrity of the voter registration, process. To. Help fight. People's. Names being stricken from the record unfairly but, also make sure that everyone. Who should be able to vote and, only those who should be able to vote are able to vote but. Then secondarily, when you add up the totals, at the different real, world polling. Places having. Transparency, into how that roll-up actually. Summarizes to a statewide. Or, a countrywide, kind, of total right both. Those are places where there's you know using a public distributed, ledger it, could be very advantageous when, it comes to helping build confidence, in, the voting process I think the actual submission, of a vote you still want a voter verified, paper ballot but. That's that's that's something different so. No they're really Legion and and anything, involving. Wood, you know the submission, of a form by. By. The private, sector for, some, sort of process or even potentially, by a citizen in some way that affects their, digital, identity, I think those those, processes. In twenty. Years time at the outset right but but in some cases a lot sooner than that will, be backed perhaps, even invisibly. To the end user by, watching, in somewhere enough and, our resource I could actually point, people to as well Oh II CD, which, is based out of Paris.
Recently. Issued, a, new report that they worked quite a long time on that looked, at over 200, public, sector, blockchain, programs, around the world and like, a lot of times again people are like oh I'm not familiar that government, was part of blockchain, and over, 200, different programs, around the world is a lot but, still, that's. Only a frack because, even the ones that the u.s. government listed, it's only again. What people can discover online and know about and there's such an undercurrent, around, this so I'd invite anybody to check out the OECD, report, on. Blockchain that just came out and again it's really fantastic primer. For. Looking at what's happening, in the public sector and also know that like, it's, still, growing and, still there's interest in there but as you said Brian to some, of this stuff of course just because people are excited and they're passionate about it doesn't, mean it might be the totally, appropriate, thing in the long run to be able to do because. Again this is changing so quickly that the, pros the cons are. Shifting, and people need to be part of that and one thing that I think has changed in, the last two years, that. Has helped with. The adoption of this in by. The the, consideration, of this by the by the public sector has, been the, fact that we now know how to build blockchain. Networks. Without needing, a cryptocurrency. At, the heart of it right a speculative, financial instrument. That has, booms and busts, and where you have kind, of you know actors, who might want to pump the value up of that temporarily, right yeah. We also know how to build these now without needing proof of work proof of work is the specific. Computer algorithm, that famously. Drives that very heavy, energy. Consumption, that people associate, with Bitcoin, and the other cryptocurrencies. But. On a permissioned, Ledger's and, in all these use cases around government that I know of at least you, don't need, proof, of work you don't need what, is designed for a big, public, internet, scale anonymous, Network. If you pull back a little bit from those requirements, you, find that there's simpler consensus, mechanisms, that that don't consume, energy just for the sake of it which proof of work sometimes does so. Between these two things I think there's been a much more mainstream acceptance, of this idea of, distributed, Ledger's now that we know that we don't have the toxic. Kind. Of impact, of all that energy consumption and we don't have to worry about scammers, making. Bank at the heart of the technology, oh yeah. Totally I mean. So. We could scale. We'll return on investment yeah so, actually so somebody, that we're familiar with Donna. Over at the Asian Development Bank just. Ask question, thanking you of course Bryan.
And Says you know she says we need to build capacity in, Asia like how can Development Bank's like the Asian Development Bank become. Part of this and knowing things like the u.s. gov is one, of the largest stakeholders. Of, it is, there any basic steps you can offer people quickly. That you know where work where can people start to learn how to be part of this entire collaborative. Environment. Well in. Particular has. Been you. Know one of the leaders, in in, this project I mean I mentioned for example the fact that our consortium, has, participation. From members plenty of members in Asia but also 20 percent of our members are headquartered in mainland China and at, a time when you know there's a fair degree of tension in the air in international, relations this. Is actually a space where developers. Are collaborating, where companies are collaborating, because so many of the use cases span. International. Borders that involve you know supply, chains you, know from you, know stretching all the way from one side of the planet to the other and. In particular, while the. Chinese government, and and other Asian governments have been really, skittish around cryptocurrencies, and icos. They've all been uniformly, very supportive, of the idea of using technologies. Like this to help build more auditable, systems more automated. Marketplaces, right as a way, to leapfrog potentially. A, whole, generation of, earlier industrial, systems in the same way that the cellphone leapfrogged. Entirely, the, local landline, business, in, in, many developing, countries right. So Asia, developers. In particular, are. Coming. Up to speed on these technologies. We. Ourselves, have. A team. That's based in Hong Kong who helps maintain. Our relationships, with our members as well as the developer communities, in that region we. Certainly, would love them to get involved we even have a wee, chat channel, if, that's. Appropriate for the, audience, but. I you. Know getting involved in this is the same as you. Know anybody in any other country which is, all. Of the at least to do for - I don't mean to hype what we do but but as an example, right we, publish on the website on our wiki through. Our mailing lists through our. Source code repositories, everything. Is public and transparent there, is never you, know you never need to pay a fee you never need to ask permission there's, no special information to be conferred and a one-on-one meeting where, there's no salespeople we're going to send out to you. All. Of that information about how to start using this is there and. It's up to really you if you're a developer -. OH - to, go and pull that down or if you're if, you manage developers, to empower them give them the space and the time and the freedom to be able to understand. These technologies, and maybe build a proof of concept or beyond. Awesome. So, we actually we. Have about five more minutes left we have much more questions, so we'll, try to start with the top here now you, mentioned the magical, word for us, transparency. Before. And I like we were just discussing before we have a shared, heritage because, we've all contributed to, some of the open government initiatives. Specifically. You know transparency. Accountability. Responsiveness. You know basically, the kind of government that everybody would like to really have so, Tom asks, and what special way can blockchain, assist with transparency.
Well. You, know just. As it's not magic, pixie dust when it comes to stuff that gets written to the ledger right it isn't automatically, just because it's written doesn't make it true you know you want to have ways. To verify the integrity of what's being claimed I also don't necessarily believe, in a technology, in particular can. Force an organization. Or a marketplace, to be more, transparent. Or open, to the public than it otherwise wants to be but I believe. Once, you create a model, and incentive, to do that whether it's to enhance the integrity of claims about products, moving through a supply chain or the, set up say, you. Know a blockchain. To track claims, that are being made to. Try to, answer. The concern about the integrity of the press for example around. Around, publications. Like we, can use this as more. Trustworthy, data, than. We might otherwise have, well as somebody who is leading the charge on open data ten years ago it, always disturbed me a bit you know prospect of that, open dataset, you know if it's stored on a server somewhere being, kind of silently, corrupted, or silently, changed, in, a way that that would favor whoever hope and happened, to run the servers that that open data set was sitting on right without. A really easy way for us to verify integrity. Of those claims to. Have witnesses, to a claim that's being made and, without that data being plugged into the transaction systems, of the world, you. Know instead it was just like this two or three layers out kind of exhaust. From that activity but, what if we made that that, data actually, the ledger that everyone used to keep track of transactions. Keep track of who owned what properties, out there in the real world who you know like or. Business, registrations, what if we used it as a way to try to fight you. Know the way that that business registrations, are sometimes done as. A way to hide the, true actors behind certain systems right what. What if we thought it's not enough to get political or anything like that but but in, the hands of the right that people who understand, how these technologies work, I think we might find a way to, reinvent how, regulatory. Processes, work I know the SEC and the CFTC are. Very interested, in this there's. A way that actually helps, businesses, be more effective, more efficient, build. Upon each other much, more much more effectively. But, might. Also allow us as the public to be, able to have greater confidence that you. Know the systems aren't being corrupted against our interests so I'm. Optimistic there, I was, with the internet too and and it's, sometimes hard to be optimistic on any given day but the, minute the, net impact. Of all these technologies, is undeniable, and, and, I think it will lead us to a better place all. Right and I this is probably going to be our last question but it addresses. The great religious, debate of our time open, incentivized, models, versus private closed networks, because. Again, this goes down to even the way that people, perceive this technology, is sometimes. Someone's, understanding, well we have one of those models and then they'll make judgments. And comments, based, on that and people will be like well that's not a real blockchain, that's not really this I mean we take a very agnostic, view where. This, technology is secondary. To problem-solving. And better processes. Themselves, and, opening it in such a way that these technologies, could potentially, solve. Them so people. Get into really fierce debates, about the, open blockchain, or a, closed system and then again, they'll even say these are not even real things so well, what are your thoughts on that you touched upon it a little bit before, but. If you wanted to close out on this how. How, should people be thinking about this well, technology, debates, are nothing new I mean the technology industry you, know as its fought the the Emacs versus, VI battle, for four decades but, what we didn't have before was, this additional, layer where, people, have tokens in their pockets, of a certain value and if I've run an IC o---- you. Know for because I'm really passionate about solving, a problem and I and I sold a bunch of people tokens that are gonna be redeemable, in some way with. Some floating value to them I not, gonna be surprised, if my if I end up becoming an advocate for that system right or.
If I even if I've just bought tokens, in somebody else's system I'm gonna be motivated, to try to drive people to that so. It's. Really hard to escape, the tribalism, in this space really hard to escape I, you. Know kind of like the conflicts, of interest that exist. Often, out there just to be upfront I'm. Very much for tokenization, I think blockchain. Technology can be used to to, make the trading, of a lot of financial instruments much, more liquid. Much much easier to do much easier to trace and keep, bad actors from the system out of the system but. I think we have to be careful about choosing technologies. Where there's a very small number of beneficiaries. Open-source. Software has always been about spreading, that wealth spreading, that benefit in a much in, a much broader and more equitable way that, doesn't penalize late. Comers to a technology, and so that's that's where we hang our hat and that's why all, the things, that we've been building have been about intrinsic, value and painting. This broad spectrum, from very small and closed permissions on one end to public, and on the other with a lot of points in between Brian. You should call it no hyper ledger I think, is you pretty. Much make it sound like a reasonable. Thing that people can be able to get more resources on, understand, and know, that you're part of a large community. Out, there would no matter what organization you, are and of course are our customers, and colleagues our federal, agencies, themselves, and. To know that you're a part of a strong robust, community, of people asking the same questions, and, you. Know there's no reason to go any of this alone like you said, blockchain. Is not a one-person sport, on. It so we're, gonna close out I'm gonna give, up a few next, steps and. Brian and your team thank you so much again for joining us both, you and your team have been very available to us and we look forward to bringing, you in to more workshops, maybe. We could start building some stuff, and. Again keeping, that relationship open. Because collaboration. Between, you know government and industry and academia, that's the only way we're gonna do this and do this right and fulfill the full promise of IT modernization. For public services, and so, a couple of those next steps as well of, course is we're going to be sharing this video online and, sorry we couldn't get to all of your questions but again this is an open collaborative, process. This, isn't just like one-off, webinars, or something, we're, always thinking of new ideas in. Which we can open up our table and bring, you in to be able to get the best opportunities. The best information so. A we're gonna have more webinars like this we, have workshops at GSA, we. Invite you to go to emerging, digital, gov. And sign, up for the federal blockchain, community, and there's. Two of them one, of them is for government only the. Other one is the public so any of you can sign up to get news and information on, opportunities. Like, this or other things and you can answer ask your questions, there and have, the full breadth of the community, there too to solve it for you sherry, tha
2018-07-20