AUSTRALIA UNVEILS NATIONAL BLOCKCHAIN ROADMAP TO HELP DRIVE ADOPTION

07 Feb 2020
  • On 7th February 2020 the Australian government finally unveiled its National Blockchain Roadmap. Roadmap is promoting exploration of three use cases: Credentialing, Know Your Customer (KYC) identity checks and...

    Main idea of this road map is to set upp mechanisams to create a a steering committee which will create in future regulations, create positive enviroment for domestic collaboration as wel as international exchange of skills.



    Key point of plan are:

    • 1. Set in place the National Blockchain Roadmap Advisory Committee and envolve it to the National Blockchain Roadmap Steering Committee
    • 2. Create permanent work groups to analyze blockchain use cases
    • 3. Concentrate atention to Investigate are in sectors of agriculture, education and finance
    • 4. Create a solution and introduce it to the government and by creating government blockchain users they will in future create new use cases based on existing government needs.
    • 5. Analize international situation and identify countries which are using blockchain to provide efficient government services.
    • 6. Have a close collaboration with blockchain developers as to create situation for Business Research and Innovation Initiative program
    • 7. Make sure that blockchain is included in broader policy work
    • 8. Be involved into developing common frameworks and education courses for blockchain qualifications
    • 9. Have a close cooperation with Austrade [The Australian Trade and Investment Commission] to crate capabilities in Australian IT sector and to promote blockchain start-ups
    • 10. Create Investment programs in partnership with Austrade
    • 11. Create environment and use existing bilateral agreements to get involved into blockchain pilot projects with other countries
    • 12. Cooperate with other government departments to be sure that Australian businesses can integrate into digital trade infrastructure

    Envisioning the future

    This report is quoting Gartner’s predictions that the business value of blockchain will exceed US$175 billion by 2025 and $3 trillion by 2030.

    No one knows what will happen in future but we see that Australia is making sure not to be late. Today's situation is that SMEs conduct 93% of blockchain activities. And in 2018 the total figure of Australian startups that were in blockchain is around8.1%.

    Accent of Australian government in on three use cases – wine

    Idea here is to make immutable ledger which will track the wine supply chain. This is interesting for them because Australia is the world’s fifth-largest wine producer with domestic consumption of A$303 million in 2017 Australia also exports 63% of its output. And the export export figure is A$2.89 billion.

    This will stop any counterfeits, and it will optimize cultivation, enable better inventory tracking, make a cheaper trade finance...

    Credentials and KYC

    Australia is known worldwide by its agriculture but next to it there are also in very top in exports are iron ore, coal and tertiary education. These areas are estimated to be A$35.2 billion a year.

    Know Your Customer (KYC) is also an interesting use case. This is also a global problem how to enable customer to have multiple bank accounts, without going through same procedure multiple times

    This software solution should enable customers to share its KYC information with other banks. While keeping them confidential and to have a legal solution.

    The roadmap

    Main part ofAustralian strategy is to create a National Blockchain Roadmap Steering Committee and enable it to make a healthy model of collaborating with industry, researchers and government.

    In strategy, accent is given to need to analyze current regulations, with emphasis on one about identity and privacy. And if needed to create a new one that will fit the better world of tomorrow which will be based on a distributed network of blockchains. This must be done in a way that will make pseudonyms used on blockchains cannot be linked back to real people.

    Cardinal point is to create a database which is immutable and accurate. So it can be used by other regulatory bodies for purposes of security, data keeping, integrity and governance. The new organisation must follow what's happening in the field world wide, what are other governments involved in and to adapt in time. This in turn will give better start positions for Australian based Startups

    Driving adoption

    We will quote here Karen Andrews, Australia’s Minister for Industry, Science and Technology “Together, we can drive the long-term development and adoption of blockchain technology, and capitalize on the tremendous economic and social opportunities it offers,”

    And Simon Birmingham, Senator and Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment “It is vital Australia and our tech companies stay ahead of the game in one of the world’s fastest growing technology sectors,”

    We can notice that Australian government is very involved in development of blockchain and DLT and we expect that in future they will become one of the leaders in this area.

    Stay tuned!
    Aleksandar JELIC
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