Federal Blockchain News

The US Army Research Lab has a vision for blockchain on the battlefield, coordinating sensors, drones, vehicles and soldiers in hostile, low-bandwidth, high-latency environments. Dr. Manny Vindiola and Dr. Charles Kamhoua discuss their work on the Tactical Distributed Ledger and its implications for warfighters and civilian applications.

Mike Peckham of HHS reveals how he is returning $142M to mission by implementing blockchain for multi-agency grant risk review with the HHS Grant Digital Dossier.

The Blockchain Research Institute's new Special Report "New Directions for Government in the Second Era of the Digital Age" calls for the Biden-Harris Administration to uproot generations of legacy federal IT to leverage blockchain, IoT, and AI. We hear from co-author Don Tapscott why federal adoption of Self Sovereign (Decentralized) Digital Identity is as important as fighting climate change.

At least three blockchain pilots focus on streamlining management of the over $750 billion that the US Federal government distributes each year, often through multiple administrative layers. Marla Ozarowski shares MITRE's Grants Management Blockchain demonstration project, which aims to create a working proof of concept demonstrating end-to-end business use cases incorporating and improved by blockchain technologies.

A council of federal and industry technolgy leaders known as ACT-IAC has created a "Blockchain Playbook" for the US Federal Government. The playbook is a 100-page guide to implementing blockchain projects from problem assessment through implementation and integration. On this episode we hear from two authors of the playbook and the leaders of the ACT-IAC Blockchain Working Group, Frederic Devaulx and Todd Hager. You can find the playbook on the ACT-IACT website, we also keep a copy on the Federal Blockchain News website, and there is an interactive version on Github.

Campaign finance software creator Schweitzer Laboratories has enlisted BlockApps to create blockchain-enabled transparency for campaign finance reporting. Hear fromWill Schweitzer, Blockapps CEO Kieren James-Lubin, and former FEC Chair Ann Ravel about using blockchain to bring trust back to America's elections.

Three former cabinet-level CIOs weigh in on the federal government's slow pace of blockchain adoption. Featuring Joyce Hunter (Agriculture), Pete Tseronis (Energy & Education), and Jose Arietta (Health & Human Services).

Host John Stevens on the Federal Blockchain News mission, what's happening in the federal blockchain market now, and why the US form of governance is ideal among governments for transformation with blockchain.

Federal blockchain innovator Craig Fischer discusses the current project at US Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service to relieve the burden of grant reporting through multiple layers of sub-recipients.

The US Patent and Trademark Office is the world's premier registrar of intellectual property, a "single source of truth" function that might lend itself to blockchain technologies. CIO Jamie Holcombe says identity verification with blockchain might be in the future for USPTO and talks about navigating changes in policy & law when considering a distributed ledger to store patents & trademarks. Among the interesting questions: do we start with patent #1 (applicant: George Washington)?

Are blockchain-based identity wallets designed for engineers, not users? Kathleen Kenyon & Anil John Digital think so, and created the Digital Identity Wallet UI Design Competition. We talk with them, and with finalists Jeff Stephens of Dignari, Josh Welty of Trinsic, and Ken Ebert and Scott Harris of Indicio.

Mesur.IO founder and Chief Technology Officer Mike Prorock talks about how blockchain will become an important component of agricultural commerce, and about his recent award from the DHS Silicon Valley Innovation Program to create an open source API layer and engine that meets DHS needs for imports of food and agricultural products.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services is working with private industry to develop digital verifiable credentials, starting with the permanent resident card. The new credentials would be issued and usable on smartphones using blockchain technologies. Jared Goodwin, Chief of the Document Management Division at USCIS, reveals how they are creating capabilities that other federal agencies will be able to take advantage of.

Mavennet CEO Patrick Mandic talks about tracking oil & gas imports across the US/Canada border with blockchain technologies.

Vincent Annunziato, Director of Transformation & Innovation Division of the CBP Office of Trade, talks about shaping blockchain technologies to make imports safer and more secure. CBP's current projects include tracking steel, oil, and natural gas imports from Canada.

An interview with CTO Dmitry Barinov of SecureKey Technologies, a Toronto-based firm known for its VerifiedMe platform, on the recent DHS Silicon Valley Innovation Program award to create an "alternative identifier to the Social security number", part of an effort by DHS to reduce collection and use of social security numbers in its operations.

Melissa Oh & Anil John of the Department of Homeland Security's Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) reveal the secret sauce of this one-of-a-kind federal innovation approach to push emerging blockchain products towards interoperability, and create solutions built-to-suit for DHS without suffering vendor lock-in. They discuss building a diverse partnership portfolio with startups run by women and other underrepresented groups, and call on other federal agencies to share their work and lessons learned in blockchain projects. Melissa Oh is Managing Director of the Silicon Valley Office of the DHS Science & Technology Directorate. Anil John is the Technical Director of the SVIP.

RevoltCypher CEO Mussie Haile shares his experiences delivering blockchain POCs for the federal government, including a Box-integrated platform for document sharing among parties in legal cases, and health record portability for the Veterans Administration.

In the wake of the Nobel Prize for Economics honoring work that revolutionized how wireless spectrum is allocated in the US, we talk with serial fintech, wireless and blockchain entrepreneur Chris Duffus about how the FCC could use blockchain for real-time radio frequency spectrum allocation mechanisms that could dramatically increase the useable wireless bandwidth for first responders, personal electronics, the military and more.

In their new book "Redefining the Future of the Economy: Governance Blocks & Economic Architecture," Co-Authors Dawn Talbot & Ralph Benko say the blockchain industry has failed to live up to its promise because it cannot reflect complex decision processes. They propose a mathematical framework for automated decision making meeting fiduciary standards. Without this approach, they warn that the US could become a second-rate technology power dominated either by coders with wild-west mentalities or by China’s investment in blockchain, which they call this generation’s sputnik moment.

James Howard, PhD, discusses the findings of his paper "Blockchain Compliance with Federal Cryptographic Information Processing Standards", co-authored with Maria Vachino. The paper revealed that of the Ethereum, Corda, Fabric & Multichain platforms, only Corda meets FISMA standards.

Victoria Adams, PhD & Jason Brett of the Value Technology Foundation preview their upcoming paper on the threat posed by China's Blockchain Services Network and what the United States needs to do to prevent China's technical hegemony.