Austin is piloting blockchain to boost homeless services

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While the vagaries of the cryptocurrency markets ar keeping crypto traders pasted to their CoinDesk graphs, the important potential of blockchain is its capability to unravel real human challenges in an exceedingly redistributed, private, and secure approach. organisation have more and more investigated however blockchain would possibly solve important issues, however currently one town intends to maneuver forward with Associate in Nursing actual implementation.

The city of Austin is piloting a brand new blockchain platform to boost identity services for its homeless population, as a part of a competitive grant awarded by the Mayor’s Challenge program sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Austin was one in every of thirty five cities to be awarded pilot grants, and also the high town from that cluster can ultimately be awarded $5 million.

Steve Adler, the politician of Austin since 2015, explained to TechCrunch that “at a high level, [the pilot] is making an attempt to work out a way to solve one in every of the challenges we've in our community associated with the homeless population, that is a way to keep all the data of that individual thereupon individual.”

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Identity is among the thorniest challenges for governments to unravel, significantly for marginal populations just like the homeless or refugees. As knavish Majid, Chief Services Officer for Austin, said, “If you've got your backpack purloined or if your Social Security card gets wet and falls apart, or if you're encampment and also the town cleans up the positioning and takes your possessions, you've got to begin everywhere from the start once more.” that's devastating for marginal populations, as a result of it means the cycle of impoverishment persists. “It very prevents you from going concerning and doing the kind of activities that permit you to transition out of condition,” he continued .

Austin has been on Associate in Nursing economic tear, changing into one in every of the highest startup hubs within the u. s. and more and more drawing talent from major cities like metropolis. But, “For everything that's going right, we've some challenges that ar shared by lots of huge cities,” Adler aforementioned. That dizzying growth has raised housing costs, creating it tougher to boost the city’s condition rate. Some 2,000 people ar homeless within the town in step with a census taken earlier this year, with many thousand a lot of at varied states of transition.

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The city needed to boost the power of its patchwork of presidency and personal homeless service suppliers to supply integrated and comprehensive aid. There ar variety of separate challenges here: substantiative the identity of someone seeking facilitate, knowing what care that individual has antecedently received, and empowering the individual to “own” their own records, and ultimately, their destiny.

The goal of the city’s blockchain pilot program is to consolidate the identity and important records of every unfortunate in an exceedingly safe and confidential approach whereas providing a way for service suppliers to access that info. Adler explained that “there ar all types of confidentiality problems that arise after you try and try this, that the thought was that blockchain would permit US to bridge that require.”

By victimisation blockchain, the hope is that the town might replace paper records, that ar exhausting to manage, with electronic encrypted records that may be a lot of reliable and secure. additionally, the blockchain platform might produce a redistributed authentication mechanism to verify a specific person’s identity. as an example, a homeless services employee in operation within the field might probably use their mobile device to verify someone live, while not having to bring somebody back to Associate in Nursing workplace for process.

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More significantly, important records on the blockchain might build over time, thus completely different suppliers would recognize what services someone had used antecedently. Majid provided the instance of health care, wherever it's crucially necessary to understand the history of a personal. the concept is that, once a unfortunate walks into a clinic, the blockchain would offer the complete patient history of that individual to the supplier. “Here was your medical records from your last clinic visits, and that we will build off the care that you just got last time,” he said. capital of {texas|state capital} is partnering with the dingle grad school at the University of Texas to figure out however best to implement the blockchain for medical professionals.

Identity may be a widespread space for investors curious about blockchain and decentralization a lot of typically. As I wrote concerning earlier on, Element, a brand new York City-based startup co-founded by famous deep learning man of science Yann LeCun, hopes to supply redistributed identity to individuals in developing countries like Republic of Indonesia and also the Philippines. Austin is exploring partnering with redistributed startups like BanQu to implement the small print of the service for the town.

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Majid noted that “It’s Associate in Nursing reiterative method for US, … we have a tendency to|and that we} got to crawl before we walk, and walk before we have a tendency to run.” Adler believes that the program is Associate in Nursing example of the ability of fusing government and personal trade. Austin “tries to figure with new industries, and new technologies, and new economies and tries to seek out the right intersection of presidency innovation and responsibility,” he said. If blockchain will improve condition here, that answer might carry throughout the planet.


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