Karnataka announces hackathon to explore blockchain adoption for governance

In a bid to explore the adoption of blockchain technology in government services, Karnataka government, is organizing a ‘Blockchain Hackathon for Governance’ between January 19-21 which will look to create demonstrable prototypes of the use of blockchain in government applications.

According to a statement from the government, experts from departments like home, transportation, tourism, forests, agriculture, and finance have been consulted to develop use cases for each sector.

“The use cases will address a variety of issues across domains, and will involve multi stakeholder decision making, such as Cross-Domain multi-stakeholder decision making in case of beneficiary management of welfare schemes, tracing the Chain of Custody of Agricultural/ Horticultural/Forest for better quality and price for farmers, Identity Ownership Management for data privacy and Real-Time record maintenance for land records management and taxation,” the statement says.

This is a ‘residential’ hackathon: it will last 48 hours (Friday to Sunday), and participants cannot leave the venue for the duration. The government will provide all facilities including food at the venue. The hackathon will be open to students, startups, and other IT professionals while cloud-based blockchain technology providers will be invited to provide platforms for use in the hackathon.

“This is not like a random hackathon which will take us nowhere. We are looking at specific problems in a few identified departments, and if the government finds a solution feasible, then we will pay for evolving the complete solution and see it is ,” Information Technology Minister Priyank Kharge said.

Government officials, heads of the concerned departments, industry experts, and the government’s Knowledge Partners, will act as mentors during the hackathon, and provide information, resources, and support for teams, and monitor the entire hackathon process.

The hackathon makes Karnataka the third state after Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to officially announce its plan to use Blockchain in the government application.