In recent years, Blockchain has had an ever-increasing impact on our everyday lives.
Today, most people are familiar with cryptocurrencies that shake up the financial sector (who has never heard of the famous Bitcoin?) but few people know that this technology reaches many other sectors: health, trade, retail etc. but also public administrations!
Blockchain is to transaction what the Internet is to information
In a world where we are confronted with a huge amount of data which’s volume and velocity are constantly growing, new needs for efficiency, transparency and security are emerging. In this context, any transactional relationship is also impacted and Blockchain (that is part of what we call: “Distributed Ledger Technology”) can bring efficient and innovative solutions to these challenges.
In order to record transactions, Blockchain allows the switch from a centralized to a decentralized ledger. This means concretely the shift from a unique trusted third-party towards a network in which each node verifies the transactions. Ultimately, DLTs will help with record keeping, the transfer of value and smart contracting.
Innovation starts with curiosity
As Blockchain is becoming a key of high standards technology services, the International Organization (IO) team of WESTPOLE organized a webinar on the subject on Thursday 10 December 2020, with two speakers: Jean-Luc Verhelst (professional writer and public speaker) and Grégory Steenbeek (WESTPOLE IO consultant working for the European Commission the Directorate-General for Informatics).
During the webinar, Jean-Luc Verhelst, explained in a very didactic way the principles and mechanisms behind this technology: a peer-to-peer and community-based model, private and public keys, electronic signatures, wallets, hash functions, tokens etc. He also presented concrete use cases for different industries and public administrations.
Following the presentation of Jean-Luc, Grégory Steenbeek (consultant at WESTPOLE IO for the European Commission the Directorate-General for Informatics) talked about the “European Blockchain Services Infrastructure” project. Within the scope of the Digital Single Market, EBSI takes part in the “Connecting Europe Facility” project which focuses on better connectivity in the fields of transport, energy and digitalization. It establishes, across the EU, a blockchain network that aims to deliver cross-border public services. Various use cases already exist: notarization of documents, European Self-Sovereign identity, diplomas management, trusted data sharing, etc.
We concluded the webinar with an exciting Q&A session during which we talked about many subjects such as the impact of Blockchain on the environment but also about all the jobs opportunities related to it and realized that the blockchain’s potential becomes apparent to administrations as their commitment to it is continuous.
François Delmoitiez- Account Manager IO