Illinois Launches Blockchain Pilot to Digitize Birth Certificates

[tyz]

The state of Illinois has begun work on a new blockchain pilot focused on the digitization of birth certificates. Working with blockchain identity startup Evernym, the tools being designed would, if put into production, allow parents and doctors present at the time of birth to officially log the birth on a permissioned blockchain. But the project, which forms part of the state's broader blockchain efforts, is about more than just birth certificates. According to Jennifer O'Rourke, who serves as Illinois' blockchain business liaison, the platform being designed could ultimately lead to a broader identity tool-set that a person can use over the years.

[pitham1]

The state of Illinois has begun work on a new blockchain pilot focused on the digitization of birth certificates. Working with blockchain identity startup Evernym, the tools being designed would, if put into production, allow parents and doctors present at the time of birth to officially log the birth on a permissioned blockchain. But the project, which forms part of the state's broader blockchain efforts, is about more than just birth certificates. According to Jennifer O'Rourke, who serves as Illinois' blockchain business liaison, the platform being designed could ultimately lead to a broader identity tool-set that a person can use over the years.

A permissioned blockchain is just a fancy name for another database. This is just a means for Evernym to get some free publicity. As long as everything is done digitally, it doesn't matter what kind of database they are storing information on.

[Hydrogen]

I like blockchain a lot.

But for things like birth certificates a paper system may be preferable to a blockchain as it can be more difficult to falsify a paper document than it is to falsify a digital one.

Governments pressure companies like apple to remove cryptographic encryption from devices from iphones.

States don't do well when it comes to software development/electronic engineering/internet technologies. Australia's internet censorship program is the reason many aussie ISP's have extremely high pings and poor connectivity. China has the same problem with its great firewall of china. When the US government built a healthcare reform website it costed taxpayers $1 billion dollars and didn't work properly. There were many issues in the Donald Trump vs Hillary election due to voting machines having glitches and not performing well. There have also been many demonstrations on how easy it is to hack said voting machines.

For whatever reason, government programs involving software/internet do not do well and I would guess digitizing birth certificates won't be an exception to the rule.

[joseafonso123az]

This is just another try from US to experience with blockchains. It looks like it will work as a digital database, and it might give out tokens to the people born?
Birth certificates look good on paper, let's see if this gets adopted by other states, but In my opinion it looks like an experiment in blockchain.

[Yakamoto]

The state of Illinois has begun work on a new blockchain pilot focused on the digitization of birth certificates. Working with blockchain identity startup Evernym, the tools being designed would, if put into production, allow parents and doctors present at the time of birth to officially log the birth on a permissioned blockchain. But the project, which forms part of the state's broader blockchain efforts, is about more than just birth certificates. According to Jennifer O'Rourke, who serves as Illinois' blockchain business liaison, the platform being designed could ultimately lead to a broader identity tool-set that a person can use over the years.

This is interesting, especially for a state such as Illinois, to be using. I'm not sure how this would provide a lot of value as a piece of software, though, since they are essentially just putting it into a database, which isn't necessarily any different from what we can see now being used by government institutions. The portion where they state that this could lead into more ID-ing tools is also somewhat worrying, to say the least, but it doesn't sound like it is really capitalizing on the blockchain and more using it as a "secure" means of storing information.