Read an article today in Bitcoin magazine IXO Foundation: A blockchain based response to UN call for [better] data which discusses how the UN can use blockchains to improve their development projects.
The UN introduced the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDG) to be achieved in the world by 2030. The previous 8 Millennial Development Goals (MDG) expire this year.
Although significant progress has been made on the MDGs, one ongoing determent to MDG attainment has been that progress has been very uneven, “with the poorest and economically disadvantaged often bypassed”. (See WEF, What are Sustainable Development Goals).
Throughout the UN 17 SDG, the underlying objective is to end global poverty in a sustainable way.
Impact claims
In the past organizations performing services for the UN under the MDG mandate, indicated they were performing work toward the goals by stating, for example, that they planted 1K acres of trees, taught 2K underage children or distributed 20 tons of food aid.
The problem with such organizational claims is they were left mostly unverified. So the UN, NGOs and other charities funding these projects were dependent on trusting the delivering organization to tell the truth about what they were doing on the ground.
However, impact claims such as these can be independently validated and by doing so the UN and other funding agencies can determine if their money is being spent properly.
Proving impact
Proofs of Impact Claims can be done by an automated bot, an independent evaluator or some combination of the two . For instance, a bot could be used to analyze periodic satellite imagery to determine whether 1K acres of trees were actually planted or not; an independent evaluator can determine if 2K students are attending class or not, and both bots and evaluators can determine if 20 tons of food aid has been distributed or not.
Such Proofs of Impact Claims then become a important check on what organizations performing services are actually doing. With over $1T spent every year on UN’s SDG activities, understanding which organizations actually perform the work and which don’t is a major step towards optimizing the SDG process. But for Impact Claims and Proofs of Impact Claims to provide such feedback but they must be adequately traced back to identified parties, certified as trustworthy and be widely available.
The ixo Foundation
The ixo Foundation is using open source, smart contract blockchains, personalized data privacy, and other technologies in the ixo Protocol for UN and other organizations to use to manage and provide trustworthy data on SDG projects from start to completion.
Trustworthy data seems a great application for blockchain technology. Blockchains have a number of features used to create trusted data:
- Any impact claim and proofs of impacts become inherently immutable, once entered into a blockchain.
- All parties to a project, funders, services and evaluators can be clearly identified and traced using the blockchain public key infrastructure.
- Any data can be stored in a blockchain. So, any satellite imagery used, the automated analysis bot/program used, as well as any derived analysis result could all be stored in an intelligent blockchain.
Blockchain data is inherently widely available and distributed, in fact, blockchain data needs to be widely distributed in order to work properly.
The ixo Protocol
The ixo Protocol is a method to manage (SDG) Impact projects. It starts with 3 main participants: funding agencies, service agents and evaluation agents.
- Funding agencies create and digitally sign new Impact Projects with pre-defined criteria to identify appropriate service agencies which can do the work of the project and evaluation agencies which can evaluate the work being performed. Funding agencies also identify Impact Claim Template(s) for the project which identify standard ways to assess whether the project is being performed properly used by service agencies doing the work. Funding agencies also specify the evaluation criteria used by evaluation agencies to validate claims.
- Service agencies select among the open Impact Projects whichever ones they want to perform. As the service agencies perform the work, impact claims are created according to templates defined by funders, digitally signed, recorded and collected into an Impact Claim Set underthe IXO protocol. For example Impact Claims could be barcode scans off of food being distributed which are digitally signed by the servicing agent and agency. Impact claims can be constructed to not hold personal identification data but still cryptographically identify the appropriate parties performing the work.
- Evaluation agencies then take the impact claim set and perform the evaluation process as specified by funding agencies. The evaluation insures that the Impact Claims reflect that the work is being done correctly and that the Impact Project is being executed properly. Impact claim evaluations are also digitally signed by the evaluation agency and agent(s), recorded and widely distributed.
The Impact Project definition, Impact Claim Templates, Impact Claim sets, Impact Claim Evaluations are all available worldwide, in an Global Impact Ledger and accessible to any and all funding agencies, service agencies and evaluation agencies. At project completion, funding agencies should now have a granular record of all claims made by service agency’s agents for the project and what the evaluation agency says was actually done or not.
Such information can then be used to guide the next round of Impact Project awards to further advance the UN SDGs.
Ambly project
The Ambly Project is using the ixo Protocol to supply childhood education to underprivileged children in South Africa.
It combines mobile apps with blockchain smart contracts to replace an existing paper based school attendance system.
The mobile app is used to record attendance each day which creates an impact claim which can then be validated by evaluators to insure children are being educated and properly attending class.
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Blockchains have the potential to revolutionize financial services, provide supply chain provenance (e.g., diamonds with Blockchains at IBM), validate company to company contracts (Ethereum enters the enterprise) and now improve UN SDG attainment.
Welcome to the new blockchain world.
Photo Credit(s): What are Sustainable Development Goals, World Economic Forum;