Friday, February 3, 2023
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA
  • Cookie Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Contact us
BitScoop
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • BITCOIN
  • CRYPTO UPDATES
    • GENERAL
    • ALTCOINS
    • ETHEREUM
    • CRYPTO EXCHANGES
    • CRYPTO MINING
  • BLOCKCHAIN
  • NFT
  • DEFI
  • METAVERSE
  • WEB3
  • ANALYSIS
  • REGULATIONS
  • SCAM ALERT
CRYPTO MARKETCAP
  • HOME
  • BITCOIN
  • CRYPTO UPDATES
    • GENERAL
    • ALTCOINS
    • ETHEREUM
    • CRYPTO EXCHANGES
    • CRYPTO MINING
  • BLOCKCHAIN
  • NFT
  • DEFI
  • METAVERSE
  • WEB3
  • ANALYSIS
  • REGULATIONS
  • SCAM ALERT
CRYPTO MARKETCAP
BitScoop
No Result
View All Result
Home Ethereum

Spotlight on LatAm: Identity solutions for Govtech

by BitScoop
June 7, 2022
in Ethereum
Reading Time: 6 mins read
A A
0
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


The following is an update from Ethereum Foundation Fellow Chuy Cepeda.

Our identities hold immense power. In a time when people take great pride in using multiple pseudonyms or personas, we often think about how to identify ourselves. I identify as a native of Monterrey, Mexico, a Latin-American, a son, brother, father, husband, engineer, Ph.D., entrepreneur, dog lover, hitchhiker, and a believer that democracies are suffering.

Looking back at a time when I started meeting people from different countries and gaining a better understanding of their access to public services, I recall becoming aware of how far away this reality was for Mexicans. I realized that as my home city grew, many decisions made by the government were unplanned or colluded. I learned that my home country of Mexico was one of the least favored countries according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. I realized that these problems are not limited to me and my home country, but affect people everywhere.

I now feel a profound empathy for anyone who can’t look to the government for better transport, proper education, and health services. All the while, I see technology making bigger and bigger impacts in the daily lives of people all around Latin America and beyond. Think for a minute about this: while people are becoming more digital and expect personalized and real-time services, public institutions are unable to meet those expectations.

Citizens face inefficiencies, a lack of transparency and red tape, and a terrible experience when it comes to interacting with their governments. This is a global crisis of institutional agility and trust that erodes possibilities to prosper, and it’s why Democracy as an ideal is suffering.

So I decided to incorporate a new part of my identity: I co-founded OS City to improve the landscape of government services in the modern world, essentially by bringing public institutions into the web3 paradigm. In other words, to use blockchains to digitize government services and give citizens their decentralized digital identity.

The OS City team

Upgrading Bureaucracy

From birth certificates to driver’s licenses and academic records, when we are asked to identify who we are as citizens, this is about sharing our personal information or credentials, usually notarized by the government of the place we come from. Depending on where that is, those records could be located in a fancy networked database (as is the case for Estonian citizens), but more likely what we need when we need an ‘official identity’ actually resides in the specialized passport printers of a stuffy government building, or spread about in filing cabinets of various state bank branches, or maybe it’s nowhere at all!

When we “use” these representations of our identity, what we are actually doing is getting separate bureaucratic systems to interoperate. If the visa stamps from one customs office in Country A fit onto the passport pages of Country B, that’s ‘good enough’ for us in most cases. But when that basic interoperability has stricter requirements, or when it breaks down, that’s where we get into trouble. Office A requires an original stamped document from Office B, which is closed after 3pm, and requires a notarized letter from Department C, which is in a different part of the city and needs approval first from Office A… some of us are all too familiar with being trapped in this sort of prison of paperwork. This is where collusion and corruption are born, where we start the snowball effect that ends up in a terrible response to social distress, economic growth, and climate change.

The fundamental challenge is that everyone must have an identity, but it is simply not true that everyone has an interoperable representation of identity. That’s where I believe we can do better. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s certainly not going to happen all at once, but if we start in the right direction, we might end up in a place we want to be at. Part of our work to solve these issues led us to develop an application-specific wallet called Soberana, which is meant to be used to hold and manage digital identities.

Blockchains are by design built from interoperable and standardized components that can combine and integrate into all sorts of ways. Any blockchain built to be Ethereum or EVM-compatible will follow the same set of standards. So at Soberana, that is our starting point. Unfortunately, we work in a design space that must allow for some degree of centralization, i.e. a government authority must approve a record or identity.

Nevertheless, we start with a small kernel of identity that is still compatible with the open, permissionless systems of the web3 world. Starting from that compatibility makes it a lot easier to improve and build more complex systems around it over time – a network economy of digital services, both centralized and decentralized. The goal here is maximum compatibility for a digital identity: whether you’re using it for a centralized government notary, a proprietary banking transaction or a public NFT registry, your ID should move between those systems seamlessly and securely.

As we add more and more functionality, we’ll be able to verify, port, and share that identity through a whole suite of government services that all connect to each other. From marriages to mortgages, all of the paperwork that requires identity could be de-bureaucratized and made painless by using the right infrastructure. By starting small and with this first piece of the puzzle, we pave a way towards broader institutional reform, using technology wisely to increase the legitimacy of the public sector as a whole.

This past year, we have focused on rolling out an official citizen digital identity through an online government-run portal, where citizens obtain a wallet that serves as their digital identity and digital document-holder. Citizens can port and use official documents in their digital wallets, as well as share and renew these documents.

At the moment, these documents are limited to commercial permits, construction permits, city inspector credentials, tax payer statements, among others; but we are working to expand and incorporate as many documents as possible to be compatible with local governments in Mexico and Argentina.

The Long View

I understand now that bureaucracies are merely inertial inefficiencies of governments that have lost the excitement of innovation. That’s why I believe blockchains have an enormous potential to lead us into a new era of openness and collaboration that helps to increase the legitimacy of the public sector. With the help and support of public sector leaders, we can create radical change in the government sector, and even make it a prosperous field for business, fostering the digital, economic, and social transitions of our nations.

My short-term vision is to be able to offer citizens the possibility to own their official records, to eliminate duplicate efforts in every government process, to make government transactions traceable and transparent, and to foster the first government standard for blockchain verifiable credentials. This will hopefully show the international public sector that interoperability can succeed when we put citizens in the center, when innovation promotes regulation and not the other way around.

In the long term, I hope that we can all work together to rethink governance and identity. We are starting by rethinking and reinventing the way governments, individuals and companies interact among themselves; in a decentralized digital world, interactions are not state or market-centric, but community and citizen-oriented. This implies a new ecosystemic vision where the government, startups, academia and civil organizations jointly explore public problems, seek (and transfer) appropriate solutions and feed on their learnings. It is not the state hiring suppliers, but the state interacting with other actors to solve society’s most pressing problems. I believe a new digital identity is one step that will allow governments, citizens, and communities to get the most out of blockchain technology, fostering prosperity through a network of citizen-centric digital services.

For more about the Ethereum Foundation Fellowship Program, read this blog post.





Source link

Related articles

Awesome video about Blackrock and their AI technology. Also timestamped for those that are busy.

February 3, 2023

Comparing Developer Activity between Polka and Ethereum

February 2, 2023
Tags: altcoinsbitcoin pricebitcoin updatesbitscoopcrypto newscrypto updatesGovtechIdentityLatAmlatest bitcoin newssolutionsSpotlight
Share76Tweet47
Previous Post

Bitcoin Marks First Inexperienced Weekly Shut After Two Months In The Purple

Next Post

Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of ‘Materials Breach’ of Settlement — Threatens to Finish $44B Deal – Featured Bitcoin Information

Related Posts

Awesome video about Blackrock and their AI technology. Also timestamped for those that are busy.

by BitScoop
February 3, 2023
0

​ Sharing to help raise awareness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AiJNvKB6Ws&t=107s 00:00 Why haven't you heard of Aladdin? 00:48 Is this important to you?...

Comparing Developer Activity between Polka and Ethereum

by BitScoop
February 2, 2023
0

Just two weeks Electric Capital issued their Developer Activity Report, claiming that Cosmos and Polkadot are some of the blockchains...

EIP-5528: Refundable Fungible Token with Jerry Li

by BitScoop
January 31, 2023
0

Check out the recording of a talk on the latest Ethereum standard with Jerry & David explaining escrow for DeFi...

Will this trasction work?

by BitScoop
January 29, 2023
0

I am trying to send from peer2profit to coinbase: ​ https://preview.redd.it/edof3293gxea1.png?width=1096&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b8656100d46271be81889bdcbdc6a410aa7b4bd here is what Coinbase says about ERC20 addresses ​...

Ethereum liquid staking using distributed validators(this is a censorship resistant protocal that will help deal with the OFAC issue)

by BitScoop
January 27, 2023
0

https://divalabs.org/ ​ https://www.mevwatch.info/ ​ 63% of staking services comply with the OFAC sanctions frankly OFAC should be abolished but given...

Load More
Next Post

Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of 'Materials Breach' of Settlement — Threatens to Finish $44B Deal – Featured Bitcoin Information

Octagon Networks; The First Cybersecurity Agency To Convert Stability Sheet To Bitcoin

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest

Celsius Floats Possibility of Debt Token to Repay Creditors; Secures Court Approval to Process Customer Withdrawals – Bitcoin News

January 25, 2023

Romania Carries Out Raids as Part of Crypto Tax Evasion Probe – Taxes Bitcoin News

January 8, 2023

Poland’s Consumer Protection Agency Opens Case Against Cryptocurrency Exchange – Exchanges Bitcoin News

January 15, 2023

Neobank N26 Exapnds Crypto Trading to 5 New Countries

January 17, 2023

Solana Keeps Radiance Bears Could Dampen Mood This Level

January 22, 2023

Questions about ERC20 Tokens

January 22, 2023

Is a Rally on the Way for the Fledgling Altcoin?

February 3, 2023

Why Bitcoin Is Among ‘Hottest Subjects’ On Earth, According To ‘Rich Dad’ R. Kiyosaki

February 3, 2023

Uniswap Price Nears Key Resistance as Daily Users Spike

February 3, 2023

Core Scientific to Hand Crypto Mining Rigs to NYDIG to Extinguish $38.6M in Debt

February 3, 2023

Banks in Russia to Lose $700 Million a Year Due to Digital Ruble, Experts Say – Finance Bitcoin News

February 3, 2023

Australia Releases Token Mapping Consultation Paper, Plans to Reveal Crypto Rule Framework in 2023

February 3, 2023
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Tumblr
BitScoop

Find the latest Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, crypto, Business, Fintech News, interviews, and price analysis at Bitscoop

CATEGORIES

  • Altcoin
  • Analysis
  • Bitcoin
  • Blockchain
  • Crypto Exchanges
  • Crypto Updates
  • DeFi
  • Ethereum
  • Metaverse
  • Mining
  • NFT
  • Regulations
  • Scam Alert
  • Web3

SITE MAP

  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA
  • Cookie Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Contact us

Copyright © 2022 - Bitscoop.
Bitscoop is not responsible for the content of external sites.

No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • BITCOIN
  • CRYPTO UPDATES
    • GENERAL
    • ALTCOINS
    • ETHEREUM
    • CRYPTO EXCHANGES
    • CRYPTO MINING
  • BLOCKCHAIN
  • NFT
  • DEFI
  • METAVERSE
  • WEB3
  • ANALYSIS
  • REGULATIONS
  • SCAM ALERT

Copyright © 2022 - Bitscoop.
Bitscoop is not responsible for the content of external sites.