Page 9 - August 2018 Disruption Report Flip Book

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF GOVERNMENT JAUNGUUASRTY 2018
Blockchain as technology is an enabling technology... You can use blockchain to actually layer over existing applications from a technology perspective. You can use an [application program interface] gateway to access the data in those existing applications and you can allow your existing applications to operate and deliver mission. And you can modernize
by stacking technology. You can modernize on top of your blockchain because now you have a data layer that you’ve created some structure—leveraging machine learning or as a mechanism to actually extract data from your existing applications—you have this data layer, whether you’re using Hyperledger or Ethereum. You can actually modernize by using machine-learning microservices [e.g. an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services, which implement business capabilities], robotic processing automation microservices, and cognitive intelligence microservices off the top of your data layer. So your existing applications stack doesn’t have to be turned off. It’s not impacting your existing mission space, but you’re able to modernize either one-business process at a time or entire functions of applications at a time. That is very powerful.
Having gone through multiple modernization efforts, you typically have to raise a bunch of capital and you go on a three-year adventure, where you’re collecting requirements. And you’re going to do one large contract and you’re going to kind of build a new system all at once. Well now you have the actual flexibility to in real time rebuild an existing business system in a risk controlled way—one business process at a time off of a data layer. That is my attraction to blockchain and the technology in particular. It is not so much about trust in an entity that I’m doing business with. It is more about trust in the set of data that I’ve actually that I’m actually receiving and accessing.
I know a bunch of folks that have been around awhile says well trash in is trash out, right, and from a data perspective, if it if it’s bad coming in it’s going to be bad for your outcome. But the way that I look at it is—if you take a sample set of that data you create structure around the characteristics of that that are acceptable and have been organized correctly— you can apply that to all the data that you’re extracting from these systems. Anything that doesn’t meet those standardizations are flagged, so that you can look at it, you can go back and actually look at it with human eyes, but you can actually get to a data layer and start proofing some of the functionality quicker.
So the experience that I’ve had with blockchain and what we did when I was at GSA—
and I’m no longer there as you guys know— is we were able to leverage blockchain and kind of layer it over 22 different acquisition systems. We were able to take an acquisition process that on average took 110 days. We were able to recreate the user interfaces of the data we receive, because what we realized is the 300 users that were actually awarding these contracts were entering the same information multiple times throughout the process
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