Ireland To Host Blockchain Hackathon

By Rishma Banerjee

The government of Ireland, as per recent reports, is hosting a blockchain hackathon this week with the aim of identifying and analyzing potential use cases in public service. BlockAthon Ireland will take place between January 25 and 27, 2019, to explore how blockchain can be utilized in public services so that current processes are improved, developed and be made more efficient. The department of public expenditure and reform in association with the department of finance at the Innovation Academy in Dublin is hosting it.

Paschal Donohoe TD, the minister for finance and public expenditure and reform said,

“Blockchain technologies have proposed new economic, business, social and technological models that have the potential to significantly impact business and society… As part of Our Public Service 2020, our government has pledged to drive innovation in policy design and service delivery, as well as promote a culture of innovation across our public service. We believe this can partially be achieved through the use of novel and alternative mechanisms, new platforms and unusual channels.

He also mentioned that

“Consulting and engaging experts on innovation from across the public sector, academia and the private sector to share ideas is a valuable action under the strategy, and this hackathon offers an opportunity to do so.”

Ireland’s Our Public Service 2020 plan mainly focuses on accelerating digital delivery of public services. Driving innovation in policy design and service delivery, as well as promoting a culture of innovation across our public service has been their main concern.

Participants will be presented with potential public services business cases and problems to solve over the course of two days. These use cases and business problems are:

• Medical device tracking in health, safety, and environment (HSE);
• State aid tracking;
• A solution to verify the central statistics office (CSO) data with appropriate security and privacy controls;
• A solution that provides transparency and traceability of the transactions for Ireland’s transport infrastructure;
• Improving quality and avoiding inefficiencies, work duplication and human error in the current processes used by the Programme for Government (PfG) office to gather information from all 17 government departments on their PfG commitments.

The participating teams will then brainstorm about potential blockchain-based solutions. A prize will be awarded for the best solution, on completion of the hackathon, which will then be submitted for evaluation for formal project development/implementation. Judges who will be evaluating the participating teams will include representatives of EY Ireland, Ambrosus and the University of Dublin.