The move is only a part of a broader government initiative called Dubai Blockchain Strategy.
Blockchain finds support in Dubai as the government announces the intention to see all of its documents on a blockchain by the year 2020. The news was disclosed via the Dubai Media Office’s official social media account, citing Hamdan bin Mohammed, the hereditary Prince to the crown of Dubai.
. @HamdanMohammed Launches #Dubai Blockchain Strategy, 100% of Government Documents to be on the Blockchain by 2020
— Dubai Media Office (@DXBMediaOffice) October 5, 2016
The Prince has also announced that the Dubai government is planning to execute the transactions on blockchain as a part of a new initiative called the “Dubai Blockchain Strategy.” It is expected that people in Dubai “will only need to enter personal data or business credentials once” onto the blockchain, before it becomes an immutable record. The government doesn’t disclose many details about the program so far.
Hamdan bin Mohammed states that the Dubai Future Foundation will develop a strategy for the program implementation while the Smart Dubai Office will execute the directive.
The Dubai government first demonstrated its interest to the blockchain technology in February 2016, when its Museum of the Future Foundation launched the Global Blockchain Council. The list of Council members included Smart Dubai, Dubai Smart Government, Dubai Multi Commodities Center (DMCC), BitOasis, Cisco, IBM, Kraken, Microsoft and SAP among others. Even DU, the leading telecom provider in the region, announced its intention to develop a blockchain-based patient healthcare records management system that allows doctors easy access to patient records. In a month, in March, the Council presented plans for initiatives to research, explore and develop distributed ledger technology.
However, it is still doubtful that the Dubai government will begin such a sweeping shift to move all its official records to the blockchain.
Nowadays, there are more and more financial institutions working on the blockchain solutions. IBM has recently conducted two new researches that demonstrate rapid adoption of the blockchain technology throughout banking and financial markets.
Despite the fact that the technology is comparatively new and is still studied, about 15 percent of banks and 14 percent of financial market institutions interviewed by IBM admit that they are planning to implement full-scale, commercial blockchain solutions in 2017. Talking about the further adoption, roughly 65 percent of banks are going to develop and apply blockchain solutions in the next three years.
The surveys were conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV). The first IBM study, “Leading the Pack in Blockchain Banking: Trailblazers Set the Pace“, represents the summary of information from 200 global banks. A second study, “Blockchain Rewires Financial Markets: Trailblazers Take the Lead (2),” refers to 200 global financial markets institutions.
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