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Blockchain Policy, 2020 PDF

This document presents Bangladesh's national blockchain strategy to become a blockchain-enabled nation by 2030. It outlines technological visions like developing a blockchain-integrated national information infrastructure. Some strategic agendas include prioritizing blockchain use cases, developing expertise, and integrating relevant online services onto blockchain platforms. Short term goals focus on capacity building while long term goals aim for sustainability. Key action points are to build an expert team, prioritize initial use cases, develop training programs, and release funds to support these activities.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
245 views44 pages

Blockchain Policy, 2020 PDF

This document presents Bangladesh's national blockchain strategy to become a blockchain-enabled nation by 2030. It outlines technological visions like developing a blockchain-integrated national information infrastructure. Some strategic agendas include prioritizing blockchain use cases, developing expertise, and integrating relevant online services onto blockchain platforms. Short term goals focus on capacity building while long term goals aim for sustainability. Key action points are to build an expert team, prioritize initial use cases, develop training programs, and release funds to support these activities.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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National Blockchain Strategy: Bangladesh

Pathway to be a Blockchain-enabled Nation

Information and Communication Technology Division


Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh

March 2020
Executive Summary
With the advent of multiple emerging technologies, we are on the verge of information-
driven Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This revolution exposes new challenges as well as
exciting opportunities. Only the countries with expertise in these emerging technologies can
successfully meet the challenges and exploit the opportunities. Blockchain technology is widely
regarded as one of the core and foundational technologies that will be one of the driving forces
for the upcoming 4IR. Realising its potential, many developed as well as developing countries
around the world have started exploring how blockchain technology can prepare them for the
future challenges and benefit them to solve many existing complex problems to achieve the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. This strategy is an effort from the Government
of Bangladesh that recognises the need to explore blockchain technology in order to advance its
technical capacity, increase efficiency in e-Governances and foster innovations. Here, we would
like to highlight our extraordinary ambition: to guide Bangladesh into a blockchain-enabled
nation. With this vision in mind, this document explores different aspects of this vision with a
particular focus on formulating the strategies and different long, mid and short-term goals to
achieve this vision.

Blockchain or Distributed ledger technology (DLT) can be used to store permanent and
tamper-proof records of digital data (digital assets). A blockchain is a distributed ledger consisting
of consecutive ‘blocks’ of digital data chained together following a strict set of rules. The ledger
is distributed and stored by the nodes (computers) of a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Each block
of data is periodically added to the ledger in a decentralised fashion. The order of the blocks is
confirmed through the use of a distributed consensus algorithm. There are major two types of
blockchain: private and public; both systems exhibit desirable properties such as immutability
and irreversibility of ledger state, data persistence and provenance, accountability and
transparency, etc. An extended overview of the types and properties of blockchain are presented
in Section 2.

In our quest to create a blockchain-enabled nation, there must be some technological


visions which will be essential ingredients to realise this notion of a blockchain-enabled nation.
We also need to ensure that these visions enable the country to achieve and maintain a
sustainable development growth. In Section 3, we present the technological visions and analyse
how blockchain technology can be effectively leveraged to fulfil these visions. In addition, we also
propose a few strategic blockchain agendas that lay down the pathway to guide Bangladesh
towards a blockchain enabled nation.

Following the outlined pathway, we, at first, explore different use-cases in multiple
application domains and briefly investigated the suitability of blockchain in Bangladesh
perspective. This analysis is presented in Section 4. Then, we have surveyed different technical
and organisational challenges that we may face in our blockchain adoption pathway. Next, we

2
have considered different other aspects of the proposed agendas. These challenges and a
detailed discussion on the agendas are presented in Section 5.

To fulfil the desire of a blockchain-enabled nation, we must strive to achieve the outlined
visions and take appropriate measures to address the agendas. Transforming visions and agendas
into measurable goals is often useful as goals are easy to track and are more concrete in nature
in comparison to visions and agendas. Therefore, we have formulated a series of long, mid and
short-term goals. Long-term goals are mostly visionary in nature and generally can be achieved
in six to ten years. Short-term goals, on the other hand, are preparatory in nature and easier to
achieve in less than three years. Mid-term goals can act as a bridge between short and long-term
goals and can be useful in transition phases. These goals are then transformed into action points
for subsequent follow-up. The goals and their corresponding action points are presented in
Section 6.
Summary of action points
Here, we summarise the key action points.
● Build a team of blockchain experts, seasoned technologists, academicians,
government officials and other stakeholders.
● Prioritise use-cases for initial piloting. Highlight those use-cases that can bring
huge benefits to government service delivery models.
● Formulate plans to develop a blockchain integrated national information
infrastructure.
● Develop plans to integrate the most relevant online services with a suitable
blockchain platform.
● Develop capacity by promoting research, innovation and training and by
increasing awareness.
● Release funds to initiate and maintain these activities.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction 6
1.1 Scope of the document 7
1.2 Structure of the document 7
2. Blockchain in Brief 7
2.1 Blockchain Ideology 7
2.2 Blockchain Proposition 8
2.2.1 Technical property 8
2.2.2 Organisational value 9
2.3 Public blockchain systems: Bangladesh perspective 10
2.4 Blockchain misconceptions 11
3. Blockchain Agendas of Bangladesh 12
3.1 Technological Visions 12
3.2 Blockchain Agendas 14
4. Potential Blockchain Application Domains: Bangladesh Perspective 14
4.1 Identity Application Domain 17
4.2 Finance Application Domain 18
4.3 Land Application Domain 18
4.4 Expatriates Application Domain 19
4.5 Agriculture Application Domain 19
4.6 Commerce Application Domain 20
4.7 Health Application Domain 21
4.8 Banking/Insurance Application Domain 21
4.9 Judiciary Application Domain 22
4.10 Supply Chain Application Domain 22
4.11 Document Verification Application Domain 23
4.12 Smart City Application Domain 23
4.13 Infrastructure Application Domain 23
5. Pathway to a blockchain-enabled nation 24
5.1 Challenges 24
5.1.1 Technical challenges: 24
5.1.2 Organisational challenges: 25
4
5.2 Technical Readiness & Adoption 26
5.2.1 Adoption pathway 27
5.2.2 Prioritisation of use-cases 27
5.2.3 Technical framework 27
5.3 Capacity Development 28
5.3.1 Identifying experts 28
5.3.2 Training & increasing awareness 28
5.3.3 Research & innovation 29
5.3.4 Expansion of Centre of Excellence 29
6. Strategic Goals 30
6.1 Short-term Goals: Foundational 30
6.2 Mid-term Goals: Transitional 31
6.3 Long-term Goals: Sustainability and Continuity 31
6.4 Action Points 32
7. Conclusion 38
References 39
Appendix: Government Blockchain Initiatives in Other Countries 41
Asia 41
North America 42
Europe 43
Africa 43
Oceania 44

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1. Introduction
The pace at which fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is moving is unprecedented and this will only
keep moving faster in the future. There are some technologies that when introduced, have the
potential to make obsolete what is currently new-age. The impact on the societies and the
economy is providing novel ways by which we can address Sustainable Development Agendas
2030 [1]. According to the Digital Economy Report 2019 by UNCTAD (United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development) [2], only the countries that have prepared themselves can meet
these challenges and exploit the opportunities. To cope up and, most importantly, leverage the
4IR so that the gain from the transformation is far more than loss, there is a sincere effort from
Mr. Sajeeb Wazed, honourable Adviser on ICT Affairs to the honourable Prime Minister to
leverage the ubiquitous and empowering force of ICTs to keep pace with the changes and prepare
to emerge as a global leader among developing countries by 2021 and among all countries by
2041.

An impossibility was achieved in the form of independent Bangladesh in nine months when
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman instructed seven crores of his countrymen in March 1971
to “build a fortress in each and every home and face the enemy with whatever you have.” Turning
an impossibility into a reality was the realization that the nation possessed the resources and
talents necessary to make that leap. Bangladesh is already on the verge of information-driven
Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). In this regard, the Government seeks to ensure that the
various sectors in the country make the highest utilization of the emerging technologies and
create the right skills to create future generation technologies and minimizing future disruption
from 4IR.

Blockchain technology is an emerging and foundational technology which is regarded as one of


the core ingredients of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Blockchain provides a novel
mechanism to store data and facilitate transactions in a distributed and decentralised fashion
without relying on a single trusted intermediary. It can provide resiliency in the face of adversity
and has strong support for data integrity, authenticity and provenance. With all these
advantages, blockchain has opened up the door of opportunities in different domains and has
the potential to disrupt a wide range of existing applications domains.
Realising its potential, many countries in the world have either explored the ways to harness
blockchain technology or in the process of initiating the procedure. Many of these countries have
already published their national blockchain strategies to highlight how each of the countries is
going to explore the blockchain technology.
With an impressive track record for forward progress, Bangladesh has become a role model for
growth and development for the whole world. However, it still faces a lot more challenges. Many
of them can be effectively tackled with proper and intelligent usage of emerging technologies
such as blockchain.

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1.1 Scope of the document
The principal motivation of this document is to explore different aspects of blockchain
technology, its advantages, limitations and misconceptions and how this technology help
Bangladesh to achieve its development goals. This document outlines a series of agendas to
outline a visionary idea: blockchain-enabled Bangladesh. Towards this aim, it identifies a series
of technical visions to realise this ground-breaking idea and sketches out the challenges to realise
these visions. Then, it discusses different strategies to tackle these challenges. Finally, the
document lays down a number of long, mid and short-term goals to advance towards a
blockchain-enabled nation.
1.2 Structure of the document
We present a brief introduction and different aspects of blockchain technology in Section 2.
Section 3 presents technological visions and blockchain agendas. We discuss different use-cases
in multiple application domains and briefly investigate the suitability of blockchain in Bangladesh
perspective in Section 4 whereas Section 5 elaborates on the identified agendas and technical
challenges to fulfil these agendas. In Section 6, we present a series of long, mid and short-term
trackable goals and a series of action points to realise the notion of a blockchain-enabled
Bangladesh. Then, we conclude in Section 7. Finally, we present different blockchain initiatives
carried out in different governments of different countries in the appendix.

2. Blockchain in Brief
In recent years, blockchain technology, also known as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), has
received widespread attention among the industry, the Government and academia. Many regard
it as a foundational technology that can revolutionise the landscapes of several application
domains. It was introduced in 2009 as the underlying technology of Bitcoin [3], the world’s first
widely used digital currency and since then, it has been used in a wide range of applications. A
blockchain is a ledger consisting of consecutive blocks chained together following a strict set of
rules. The ledger is then distributed in a P2P (Peer-to-Peer) network which is then stored by all
nodes within the network. Each block is created at a predefined interval in a decentralised fashion
by using a consensus algorithm.
Advancing from the Bitcoin blockchain, a new class of blockchain has emerged which enables the
deployment and execution of computer programs, known as smart-contracts, on top of the
respective blockchain. Using these smart-contracts, a new breed of applications, the so-called
de-centralised applications (DAPPs), can be created that allows the execution of autonomous
programs without relying on any central entity.
2.1 Blockchain Ideology
Generally, Blockchain, as its name suggests, is a chain of blocks where every block contains
transaction data (not necessarily financial transactions) and each of the blocks linked with a
cryptographic hash (generated by a mathematical algorithm which acts as a pointer) of its

7
previous block. Each “block” on the blockchain is made up of digital pieces of information. There
are three parts of information in each block [4]:
● information about transaction such as date, time and amount (if it is a financial
transaction),
● information about participants (identities of participants in the transactions and their
digital signature) and
● in case of a public blockchain, information that makes a block unique from other previous
blocks (a unique code called ‘hash’).
Depending on the type of a blockchain, different mechanisms are required to add a block in the
blockchain. However, a generalised mechanism will require, basically, four things to take place:
I. A digitally signed transaction (not necessarily financial) must be submitted by a
participant
II. The submitted transaction must be verified by other participants of the network
III. The verified transaction must be stored in a block and finally,
IV. The block must be added into the blockchain following a strict set of rules, unique for
each blockchain and a consensus algorithm.
Based on the required application, there are two predominant types of blockchain, i.e. public,
and private. These are discussed below:
● Public Blockchain: A public blockchain allows anyone to create and validate blocks as well
as participate in the network. Nobody here has control over the network. This means that
the transactions and the corresponding data remain transparent, visible and accessible to
everyone. No single person can manipulate the data as the control is equally divided
among the network.

● Private Blockchain: A private blockchain can be restrictive in nature in the sense that it
allows only authorised and trusted entities to participate in the activities within the
system. In this way, a private blockchain system can ensure the privacy of blockchain data,
which might be desirable in some use-cases. The trust in a private blockchain, however,
is not measured using the mechanism of a public blockchain systems. Instead, only
trusted and authorised participants are allowed to join the network and participate in the
block creation process.
2.2 Blockchain Proposition
Blockchain has some exciting properties which are sought after in different application domains.
Next, we highlight a few of such exciting properties.
2.2.1 Technical property
Blockchain has some exciting properties which are sought after in different application domains.
Next, we highlight a few of such properties [5].
● Distributed consensus on the ledger state: A crucial properties of a blockchain is how it
achieves a distributed consensus on the blockchain state without relying on any Trusted

8
Third Party (TTP). This important property can open up the door of opportunities for a
system where every interaction is verifiable by any authorised entities.
● Immutability and irreversibility of ledger state: A distributed consensus achieved using
a large number of nodes ensures that the blockchain and its data becomes practically
immutable and irreversible after a certain period of time. This is true for smart-contracts,
thus facilitating the deployment and execution of immutable computer programs.
● Data (transaction) persistence: Data in a blockchain is stored in a distributed fashion. This
ensures data persistency as long as the blockchain remains functional.
● Data provenance: Each data in a blockchain is stored by means of a transaction which
must be digitally signed using public key cryptography. This facilitates data provenance as
well as data authenticity of the source of data. By combining this with the immutability
property, a blockchain can be an important tool for non-repudiation for any data stored
in the chain.
● Distributed data control: A blockchain enables the storage and retrieval of data in a
distributed fashion. This can guard against a single point of failure as blockchain data can
be retrieved even in the presence of a number of nodes.
● Accountability and transparency: Since the blockchain data, every transaction and the
interactions among the participants are all visible to any authorised node, it promotes
accountability and transparency.
2.2.2 Organisational value
In an organisation, business or functional value depends on the enhancement of organisational
performance through improving productivity, gaining competitive advantage, ensuring
transparency, achieving cost-efficiency and gaining profit. Different blockchain properties can
facilitate a number of values for any organisation as discussed below.
● Increased trust: A blockchain system can increase the level of trust among the users of an
organisation. This is because of the unique technical advantages, such as data
immutability, verification by multiple nodes, accountability, transparency and so on.
● Removal of intermediate-authorities: The state and data of blockchain is updated using
a consensus algorithm in a distributed fashion without relying on a single party. Thus,
blockchain essentially removes the need for an intermediate authority which is
traditionally being used to enforce trust or carry out any validation work, most notably in
financial domains.
● Reduced cost: The exploitation of smart-contract and the removal of intermediate
authorities can reduce the associated cost significantly for any organisation, particularly
for financial applications.
● Avoiding fraud and manipulation: Fraudulent activities and unauthorised manipulation
become difficult to carry out. This is because blockchain data is stored in multiple places
and unauthorised tampering data in just one copy of the blockchain will essentially be
eradicated by the underlying consensus algorithm. This is a major benefit for any

9
organisation as this is an extremely difficult task to maintain in any existing transaction
systems.
● Reducing corruption: Blockchain systems provide unparalleled accountability and
transparency. The utilisation of smart-contracts for carrying out complex transactions
automatically will foster the notion of immutable code that cannot be manipulated. All
these can attribute towards corruption reduction in many application domains.
● Increasing productivity: Blockchain can reduce the burden of transactional work for the
administrative staff. Therefore, they can focus more on decision making sectors.
Ultimately, by eliminating errors in clerical areas and by speeding up the process, the
productivity of an organisation can be increased.

2.3 Public blockchain systems: Bangladesh perspective


Even though there are different ways public blockchain systems can be utilised, crypto-currency
still remains the most widely used application not only in public blockchain domain, but also for
the whole blockchain domain in general. Bitcoin is the mostly wide-used crypto-currency so far,
however, Ethereum, the world’s first fully-fledged smart-contract platform, provides exciting
propositions. It is in fact Ethereum that is leading the innovation in the public blockchain domain
and is being explored in a multitude of application areas.

Unfortunately, Ethereum and other public blockchain-based smart-contract platforms heavily


rely on their underlying crypto-currencies. One major concern, particularly in the governments
throughout the world, for these crypto-currencies is their support for pseudonymous or even
fully anonymous payment mechanisms. Such mechanisms, being untraceable to a legal entity,
often are abused by criminals for a wide range of criminal activities. Because of this, many
governments remain extremely cautious for adopting any public blockchain system. Bangladesh,
like a few other countries, have explicitly banned the usage of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies
in Bangladesh.

Despite all these negativities, public blockchain domain is considered one of the very few
domains with strong disrupting capabilities. This is indicated by the amount of investments
attracted by this domain. A recent study reports that (mostly public) blockchain start-ups have
managed to raise a huge 23 Billion USD of investments since 2013 [6] which is expected to grow
in the future. These investments are used in legitimate existing propositions aiming to disrupt
many existing application domains. There is an opportunity for Bangladeshi software industries
to grab a certain portion of these investments. Banning the usages of any crypto-currency
ultimately prevents our software industries to explore this lucrative domain. We also understand
that, without a proper technical, legal and policy framework in place, opening up this domain
might open up the door of many hard-to-tackle criminal activities. Therefore, we should adopt a
“curious-but-cautious” approach and explore how this dilemma can be effectively tackled.

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2.4 Blockchain misconceptions
There is no doubt that Blockchain technology has the potential of heralding a new era in multiple
application domains. However, due to misconceptions and lack of knowledge, it is sometimes
hyped in wrongful ways. In order to harness the true potential of blockchain technology, it is
imperative to have a clear understanding of these misconceptions. Next, we present some of
these misconceptions with appropriate clarification.

● Crypto-currency and blockchain: Many have the misconception that the notion of
crypto-currency and blockchain is synonymous. One cannot live without the other.
However, a crypto-currency, in reality, is just, and currently the most popular, application
of a blockchain system. There are many other applications of a blockchain system which
do not rely on or require any crypto-currency to function.
● Data immutability: Data stored in blockchain is considered immutable. However, there
are two types of data that can be stored in a smart-contract supporting blockchain. One
is related to any transactional data that is recorded when a certain amount of crypto-
currency of a particular blockchain system is transferred between two accounts. Another
type can be considered as a smart-contract data that is required to execute the smart-
contract code. A smart-contract utilises such data using a variable and a variable, as its
name suggests, can be updated with different values. Interestingly, such data transferred
to a smart-contract using a transaction is recorded in the blockchain in an immutable
fashion. All this means is that a transactional data is immutable, however, a smart-
contract data can be changed. But, the ways the value of a variable change is recorded in
an immutable and auditable fashion.
● Large-scale data storage: The data immutability feature tempts many to store as much as
possible data in the blockchain. However, as explained before, a blockchain is not a
database and should not be considered as such. The rate by which data can be stored and
accessed in any traditional database is far better than any blockchain system as of now.
This applies not only to any public blockchain system, but also to any private system.
Therefore, it is advisable to store as minimum data as possible in the blockchain.
● Data integrity: A blockchain can guarantee the integrity of data only after it is stored in
the blockchain. It cannot provide any such guarantee if the data is corrupted in the source
or during transmission. In this sense, a blockchain system is essentially a “Garbage-in-
garbage-out” system where a corrupted data will be stored and remain as corrupted.
● Data encryption: Many believe that a blockchain provides data encryption by default. This
is a serious misconception. A blockchain system strongly depends on cryptographic
mechanisms, such as digital signature and cryptographic hash, to function. Digital
signature is used for data provenance while a cryptographic hash is used to ensure data
integrity. In a blockchain system, data encrypted is never provided. However, anyone can
use any encryption algorithm to any data before it is stored in a blockchain.
● Power consumption: Because of the huge power consumption by a number of popular
public blockchain systems, many people believe that every blockchain system consumes

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considerable electricity. As explained before, the power consumption of any private
blockchain system will be comparable to any existing system. Hence, this concern can be
effectively addressed by leveraging a private blockchain system.

3. Blockchain Agendas of Bangladesh


With an impressive track record for growth and development, Bangladesh is marching forward
to become a higher middle-income country in the next few years and have become a role model
for growth and development for the whole world. However, Bangladesh still faces a lot of
challenges that need to be effectively addressed to continue its tremendous growth to achieve
the SDG goals by 2030 and become a developed nation by 2041. It is undeniable that the proper
usage of cutting-edge technology, such as blockchain technology, will play a significant role to
meet these challenges.
To elaborate this argument, we consider the case of SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). The
SDGs are a set of 17 global goals which are designed to be a "blueprint to achieve a better and
more sustainable future for all". These goals, set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015,
are intended to be achieved by the year 2030. Bangladesh has a strong commitment to achieve
these goals as much as possible within the stipulated time period. In this regard, we highlight one
crucial yet relevant goal regarded as SDG 9.
“SDG 9: Build a resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and
foster innovation”
Throughout this document, we will explore how the resilient and transparent nature of the
blockchain technology can help to create and maintain a resilient and inclusive information
infrastructure and to foster innovation.
3.1 Technological Visions
In the long run, Bangladesh has an ambitious dream which is not only to realising the SDG goals,
but also to promote itself in the same stature of a developed nation in the next few decades.
Information technology being a crucial enabler to achieve this ambitious dream, it is important
to assume a few crucial technological visions. Next, we elaborate a few of such visions:
a) Develop resilient infrastructure: A resilient information infrastructure will act as the
backbone upon which we can create, deploy and manage different applications and
services. Decentralisation of applications can add another dimension to the resiliency as
it can counteract the issue of a single point of failure which is prevalent in traditional
legacy online systems.
b) e-Governance: e-Governance (Electronic Governance, also known as Digital
Governance) outlines the method in which information and communication
technologies are used to provide public services to citizens and other entities within a
country. It enables digital interactions in different modes between a citizen and the
government (C2G or G2C), among different government agencies (G2G), between the
government and other private businesses (G2B) and so on. e-Governances can ensure

12
functional and financial efficiencies and reduce corruption. Hence, it is considered an
indispensable part of sustainable development.
c) Promote innovation: Many obstacles to accomplish SDGs will require out-of-the-box
solutions which can only be achieved with innovative ideas. The more innovation-
friendly a country is the more chance it has to achieve the SDGs. Therefore, it is crucial
that innovations are promoted in different ways.
d) Facilitate fair competition: Innovative ideas can only thrive in an environment which
supports a fair competition. It is therefore the duty of the government to ensure a fair
competition everywhere within the corresponding country. It is even more applicable in
the technology sphere where ideas often emerge from small start-ups and can grow very
fast. Unfortunately, the inadvertent side effect is that such ideas may die even faster if
the competition is not fair.
e) Reduce intermediary: There are necessities for intermediaries in a few applications
domains. However, they can create huge bottlenecks, introduce inefficiencies and attain
additional monetary burden in many application domains such as agricultural and
financial sectors. A sustainable development will need to reduce intermediary as much
as possible in a wide-range of application domains.
f) Ensure accountability and transparency: One of the key obstacles in any developing
country is the lack of accountability and transparency both in the public and private
sectors. For a sustainable development of a country, it is imperative to adopt
mechanisms that will increase the accountability and transparency in different sectors.
g) Increase trust: Ensuring accountability and transparency has added advantages. For
example, it increases trust and instils confidence in the Government and public sectors.
That is why it is important that the Government adopts mechanisms by which trust can
be increased.
h) Guarantee information security and privacy: A fundamental requirement for any
technology adoption is to ensure that different security and privacy issues are properly
considered. With more and more reliance on technology to carry out businesses and
financial transactions, hackers and attackers are more interested in abusing a system to
attain financial gain.
i) Involve all stakeholders: Technological solutions often consist of heavy technical jargon
which might be difficult for different stakeholders to understand. This may lead to a
situation when an application fails to fulfil its objective. That is why it is important to
involve the representatives of different groups of stakeholders when developing a
technical solution.
Blockchain technology with its wide range of advantages can be the most effective tool to realise
the most of these technological visions. For example, a blockchain integrated national
information infrastructure can provide the required level of resiliency and decentralisation which
effectively can handle the issue of any single point of failure. Any blockchain based application
can ensure accountability and transparency which in turn can increase trust. Furthermore, such

13
a system can reduce intermediary and facilitate a fair competition. A clever integration with a
blockchain system can guarantee different security and privacy properties of an application. All
these will also help to facilitate and maintain e-Governance in an effective way. However, not all
these visions can be realised by technical means. Indeed, visions like “Promote innovation” and
“Involve all stakeholders” will require strategic plans and well-formulated roadmaps both from
the Government and the private sectors.
3.2 Blockchain Agendas
Because of the prominent role the blockchain technology can play in realising the above-
mentioned visions, it is important to explore the ways how it can be achieved. Different countries
have already explored this avenue and formulated different strategies suitable for them. In a
similar vein, we must investigate how we can take advantage of this foundational technology for
realising the identified visions. Towards this goal, we propose a set of agendas for Bangladesh
that, we believe, will lay down the pathway for a blockchain enabled nation. The agendas are
presented next:
● Identifying application domains and use-cases where blockchain technology can play a
vital role.
● Identifying the challenges to create a blockchain-enabled nation with a strong root of e-
Governance.
● Formulating mitigating strategies for the identified challenges.
● Increasing awareness so that the stakeholders know the benefits of a blockchain-based
solution.
● Fostering blockchain-based innovations in order to mitigate issues in the existing systems
which ultimately will create the demand for blockchain workforces
● Developing capacity in order to cater to the demand.
In the subsequent sections, we will explore these agendas in a detailed fashion.

4. Potential Blockchain Application Domains: Bangladesh


Perspective
It has been envisioned that blockchain technology can disrupt a wide range of application
domains. These application domains cover a plethora of use-cases. It will be an overwhelming
experience to assess the impact of blockchain technology over all these use-cases. Instead, a
more practical approach would be to prioritise a subset of use-cases, among the whole set of
use-cases, which are fundamental as well as hugely important with respect to Bangladesh in
order to achieve the vision and goals as outlined in Section 3. Towards this aim, we have identified
a number of application domains and their respective use-cases. All these application domains
are envisioned to be implemented by 2030 concentrating our short-term and mid-term goals. A
tentative roadmap for the next ten years are shown in Figure-1 based on the value of use cases,

14
provable implementation benefits towards different ministries of Bangladesh and considering
the benefits of other stakeholders.

Figure 1: A tentative roadmap of different application domains

Following Table-1 also provides an outlook of the uses-case that will provide values to different
ministries of Bangladesh.
Table-1: Application domain with potential Stakeholders (Ministries)
Potential Stakeholders
Application Domain Use-cases (Ministries)
Ministry of Information;
E-KYC
Ministry of public
Identity Application Domain administration; Ministry
Reputation System of commerce

Pension
Ministry of Finance;
Payment Ministry of Commerce;
Ministry of disaster and
Finance Application Domain Stock Market relief; Ministry of
Education;
Subsidies

Mutation

Registration Ministry of Land;


Land Application Domain
Verification

Employment

15
Welfare Ministry of Expatriates’
Expatriates Application welfare and overseas
Domain: Employment; Ministry
Remittance of Labour and
Employment
Procurement
Ministry of Agriculture;
Ministry of Food;
Agriculture Application Disintermediation
Ministry of Fisheries
Domain and livestock;
Agricultural Insurance

Consumer Protection

VAT
Ministry of Commerce;
Commerce Application Ministry of Finance;
Domain
Fraud Detection of Consumer
Products

Privacy-preserving collection,
Ministry of Health and
storage and retrieval of health
Health Application Domain Family Welfare
data

Digital Asset Management

Inter-bank Settlement

Trade finance

P2P Lending
Ministry of Commerce;
Banking/Insurance Ministry of Finance,
Application Domain Anti-Money Laundering

Digital Currency

Credit rating

Insurance

Ministry of Information;
Judiciary Application Securing Digital Evidence Ministry of Law, justice
Domain and parliamentary;

Agricultural Supply Chain

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Ministry of power,
Supply Chain Application Medicine Supply Chain energy and mineral
Domain resources;

Government Certificate Ministry of Education;


Document Verification Ministry of Primary and
Application Domain Educational Certificate Mass education,

Smart Infrastructures Ministry of posts,


telecommunications
Smart City Application and information
Domain Citizen Services technology;
Protection of Critical Information Ministry of road,
Infrastructure
Infrastructure transport and bridges;

4.1 Identity Application Domain


● E-KYC: KYC refers to Know Your Customer which is a mandatory procedure to carry out
by maximum financial institutions for the customers. In order to comply with KYC, banks
and other Financial Institutions must dedicate a huge amount of resources. This is
particularly wasteful since each single financial institution has to satisfy KYC requirements
for each new customer, even though that customer has probably completed a KYC
process somewhere else before. A blockchain-based KYC solution will enable a seamless
exchange of KYC state between different financial institutions. The transparency of a
blockchain system provides a perfect opportunity for any financial institution to
streamline the KYC process and enhance and speed up the customer on boarding
experience are clear [7]. It is particularly a lucrative proposition for Bangladesh, since the
KYC process is mainly carried out manually and sharing KYC data is almost non-existent.
Reputation System: Currently, consumers rely heavily on online reputation systems (such
as rating and recommendation through social media) in order to make online purchase
decisions. Unfortunately, there are several issues in the existing online reputation
systems as the manipulation of reputation data can be easily carried out by malicious
entities to make customers fool. Some fake customers even give fake ratings based on
payments. A blockchain-enabled reputation system can obsolete this malicious activity
and aggregate reputation data across the web through verifying and creating unique
digital identities for all users. Therefore, the trust and transparency in the reputation
system will be ensured [8]. With respect to Bangladesh, online shopping is just starting to
get popular. The trust and confidence of the consumers in this emerging domain will be a
key factor to ensure its long-term sustainability. A blockchain-based reputation system
can be a huge catalyst in this regard.

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4.2 Finance Application Domain
● Pension: In Bangladesh, the retirement system is reconciled on the time of paying
pensions. During this time, the calculation of pension is done manually where there
always remains a chance to manipulate data. In some cases, pensions were even paid to
dummy workers by manipulation and fraud which ultimately cost millions to the
Bangladesh government. A blockchain-based pension system can guard against this
manipulation and guarantee transparency.
● Payment: There is a huge potential for blockchain technology in the payment industry.
Traditionally, financial institutions rely heavily on middlemen to conduct any type of
settlement. A blockchain-based payment system can facilitate a more direct approach
which effectively could cut out any middlemen during the settlement process. This can
ensure huge savings for such institutions. Furthermore, international payments can be
carried quickly and cheaply in comparison to how long it takes and how much it costs
now. The payment system can also be revolutionised using a blockchain-based payment
system.
● Stock Market: Currently, the transaction settlement process in the stock market mainly
depends on the presence of intermediaries, such as brokers, regulators and so on. Overall,
the settlement process takes time and the presence of intermediaries entails additional
cost to the trader and the organisation. A blockchain based system can reduce the cost
by eliminating intermediaries, increase speed by regulating and settling transactions
without a need for central authority through smart contracts. Bangladeshi stock markets
are no exception and can easily be benefited with a blockchain-based solution.
● Subsidies: In economic systems subsidies are often used as a tool to deal with deficit and
short time poverty. In order to assess the eligibility of recipients of the fund and the
utilisation of the fund, the government needs proper tracking systems. With a blockchain
subsidy distribution platform, governments can easily assess the eligibility of recipients to
get various forms of subsidies and track them easily. This will be particularly useful for
Bangladesh where there are manipulations during subsidy assessment and delivery.
4.3 Land Application Domain
● Mutation: In Bangladesh, the property documents can be easily counterfeit and
manipulated by malicious people. Blockchain technology can play a key role to guard
against such unauthorised manipulations because of its immutability and transparency
properties. The introduction of a blockchain-based system thus can enhance trust in the
trade of property in Bangladesh.
● Registration: Land registration generally describes systems by which different associated
activities such as ownership, possession or other rights in land can be carried out with a
respective government agency. Such systems must facilitate transactions and to prevent
unlawful disposal of land [9]. A blockchain based system can be beneficial by reducing
Land selling/buying processing time from months to few days through eliminating
paperwork and in purchase system, preventing fraud, manual intervention, and providing
a high level of security in ownership by digital signature. Blockchain technology can be
18
really promising for Bangladesh as land registration and ownership transfer are still
manual and less transparent.
● Verification: Once the registration of property is completed using a blockchain based
solution, a legal authority which has access to the same system can easily verify it. In
addition to this, such a system can be used to provide the title certification and right of
ownership deeds and land recording [9]. In Bangladesh, where verification can be quite
challenging because of the manual and error-prone process, such a solution will be really
useful.
4.4 Expatriates Application Domain
● Employment: In Bangladesh, the government manages various employment
opportunities for the citizens in different countries. However, all the activities related to
employment are not interconnected and monitored. Sometimes the agency charged a
huge amount of money for providing these government services, which threaten the
reputation of the government service provider. Through blockchain, it is possible to
create employee profiles and track all the steps in the employment process. Government
can then track the amount of money taken by the agency and remove the unauthorized
middlemen. By smart contract, inter-government can decide the terms and conditions of
the employment exchange process. Based on this the records of the employment
payment made by employee, training and certificate provided to the employee can be
tracked and facilitated.
● Remittance: Remittance is one the potential sectors of Bangladesh where blockchain
technology can play a crucial role. Because of the excessive expense of sending through
banks and legal channels, many expats send money through personal channels or illegally.
The implication is that this reduces government revenue substantially and the actual
remittance income of Bangladesh cannot be properly tracked. A blockchain-enabled
remittance service will have no-intermediaries which ultimately will reduce cost and
expats will be encouraged to send money through a proper channel. The currency
fluctuation risk also can be minimised with the help of digital currency on top of a
blockchain.

● Welfare: The Government of Bangladesh conducts various activities to ensure the


welfare of the overseas employee. However, it is challenged by the proper maintenance
of integrated databases, exploitation by middlemen, tracking after arrival employee
management etc. therefore, Blockchain can be one solution to all these issues. proper
wages, allowances and other benefits can be ensured based on the terms of the smart
contract. The employment status can be monitored and various after arrival service, i.e.
employment periods extension, help in crisis moment, etc. can be provided with proper
track record.

4.5 Agriculture Application Domain


● Procurement: The main challenge for the agriculture sector is proper tracking of
agricultural products and ensuring payment after product delivery. The whole process of

19
coordination currently depends on third parties. Both the seller and the buyer have their
agent for delivery and payment of food, ultimately these agents add additional cost to
the system. If blockchain technology can be leveraged, buyers and sellers can directly
interact with each other which would speed up the process and reduce time and cost for
the farmers. A blockchain system thus will ensure that farmers will receive a large share
of sale [10]. In Bangladesh, it is a common phenomenon that farmers do not get fair price
of their products. To handle this situation, a blockchain system will be highly impactful.
● Disintermediation: With the features like traceability and auditability of Blockchain,
farmers of Bangladesh can directly sell crops or foods to the consumers, thereby reducing
the need for intermediaries. Therefore, it will reduce the cost incurred by intermediaries
and ensure proper distribution of agro-products within Bangladesh and surplus in foreign
countries.
● Agricultural insurance: In Bangladesh Agricultural insurance systems are mainly the
collection of non-formal private mutual and community-based crop and livestock
initiatives. For ensuring social protection to various natural disasters affected people, still
some low-cost agricultural insurance schemes are used. The adoption rate of insurance is
very low as the benefits are not well communicated. A blockchain based insurance system
can help the insured farmer to get the benefit instantly in adverse weather
though automatic data feed and local hype data without the need for any claim
assessment [11].
4.6 Commerce Application Domain
● Consumer protection: In Bangladesh, consumer rights are not always protected from
fraud and dishonest sellers. When transparency will be provided, fraud sellers can be
detected and the consumer rights will be protected. Through a blockchain based system
consumer information and overall rights also can be protected from any misuse.
● VAT: Currently, in Bangladesh VAT collection is ensured through a challan number in
every transaction of registered point only. However, there are lots of pitfalls and scope
for manipulation exit in the payment of VAT. If a smart-contract supported blockchain
system can be integrated with the VAT collection system, VAT can be automatically
calculated, collected and recorded without any human intervention. This will reduce
manipulation and ensure the timely collection of VAT during each sale of a product.
● Fraud detection of consumer products: Fraud happens when there is no presence of
transparency. As transparency is one of the major benefits of Blockchain, therefore it can
be used in prevention of fraud in consumer products. Bangladeshi organisations face a lot
of loss for the dishonest sellers who sell counterfeit products. If a product record is stored
in a blockchain which can only be updated by authorised entities, it will prevent any
fraudulent occurrence or if this happens, it can be easily detected. In addition, such
information recorded on a blockchain can easily be traced back to its origin because the
information is shared in the distributed ledger.

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4.7 Health Application Domain
● Privacy-preserving collection, storage and retrieval of health data: Health data is
collected when a patient undergoes some medical treatments including tests and
diagnosis. Generally, in Bangladesh, the results are signed by the doctor and are delivered
to the patient which they can keep with full control. Unfortunately, such a process
imposes several challenges: it has a very limited scope to preserve, storage and retrieve
such information for further consultation. An automated system is the solution; however,
a centralised system has a single point of failure and they do not promote transparency.
A blockchain based solution which stores and retrieves medical data in a privacy-friendly
way is the perfect solution in this scope.
4.8 Banking/Insurance Application Domain
● Digital Asset Management: Nowadays organisations are being transformed digitally
where the management of digital assets have become a crucial part. Many Bangladeshi
organisations are also focusing on asset digitisation. However, the concern lies on
managing those assets through controlling misuse and protecting privacy. A blockchain-
based system can be used to manage the ownership and transfer of intellectual property
of these digitised assets and to guard against the misuse of the assets.
● Inter-bank settlement: In Bangladesh, the inter-bank settlement is mainly done through
the reconciliation process which is time-consuming. We can speed up and enhance this
process by using a blockchain system that will streamline the transaction process through
their shared ledger. Therefore, we can get rid of the reconciliation process by which a
settlement is not carried out manually and separately.
● Trade finance: Trade finance refers to financial transactions that relate to both domestic
and international trade. In Bangladesh, the whole trade finance mechanism currently is
composed of complex lengthy process through the presence of intermediaries. A
blockchain-based trade finance could streamline this process as soon as transactions
occur in the network. There is no need to have multiple copies of documents related to a
single transaction in the database of different stakeholders. Ultimately, it will speed up
the transaction settlement time, increasing transparency between all parties. In this way,
the available capital, that in the traditional setting waiting to be transferred between
concerned parties in the transaction, can be unlocked, thereby increasing efficiency [12].
● P2P lending: Through Blockchain borrowers and lenders can exchange funds without a
need of intermediaries such as bank, underwriter and others. This will reduce the time
and cost. The rate of interest will also be determined according to the profile of the
borrower in the smart contract. Therefore, the lending process in Bangladesh will be more
efficient and effective.
● Anti-money Laundering: When customer data such KYC data is kept in a blockchain, it will
be beneficial for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedure as well. In Bangladesh, as the
KYC data is still not shared with various financial organisations, it is impossible to keep
track of individual transaction records. Blockchain technology can help immensely in this
regard and will be an essential tool to track any illegal financial activities.
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● Digital Currency: A blockchain-based digital currency (not a crypto-currency) can be
beneficial for the banking and financial industry. In Bangladesh we have already
experienced the emergence of several digital currency services such as bKash, Rocket and
so on. However, all of them are centralised in nature providing less transparency than
desired. A blockchain-based digital currency can be more efficient than the existing and
could provide better transparency and accountability.
● Credit rating: Currently, the credit rating mechanism in Bangladesh is mostly manual and
is done without accurate data about borrowers and investors. A blockchain-based rating
will be better than the manual system with a decentralised credit rating agency, the credit
rating process is transparent to all parties including the regulators and would leave no
room for manipulation [13].
● Insurance: The claim settlement process in Bangladesh is a complex manual. In a
blockchain-based insurance system, an insurance claim cannot be modified. It can
facilitate a faster claim settlement. The terms and conditions will be in the smart contract,
the claim settlement process will be executed automatically and the fund will be released
to the policyholder instantly. In the case of reinsurance, data sharing can be done
between insurers and reinsurers [14]. Ultimately, blockchain technology will unlock the
lots of hassle-free insurance opportunities to insurance companies and potential policy
takers.
4.9 Judiciary Application Domain
● Securing digital evidence: Blockchain technology can be used to secure digital evidence.
For example, CCTV footage, mobile phone data, internet usage data, important files
retrieved from the seized computes all represent important evidence which can be used
as evidence in many countries in the world. However, digital evidence can be manipulated
easily, thereby the authenticity and integrity of such evidence is often questioned.
Blockchain technology can be an effective tool to mitigate this situation. Currently, in
Bangladesh, digital evidence has limited opportunities to be used as evidence for judiciary
purposes. However, with the increasing usage of computers, mobile phones and the
Internet, such evidence will be crucial in Bangladesh. A blockchain-based solution will
open many ways to verify and secure digital evidence when this happens.
4.10 Supply Chain Application Domain
● Agricultural supply chain: In agricultural supply chain Blockchain can help to remove the
intermediaries and ensure that the Bangladeshi farmers get the proper payment as
discussed earlier.
● Medicine supply chain: In the medicine industry of Bangladesh, there is a constant risk
for the supply of fake and adulterant medicine. This is very hazardous for the customers
and is also risky for the medicine manufacturers. Through blockchain technology, the
origin of the medicine can be tracked and the risk of fraud can be reduced. Ultimately,
both the customer and medicine producer will be benefited.

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4.11 Document Verification Application Domain
● Government certificate: In Bangladesh, government certificates and documents can be
counterfeit easily for dishonest purposes, which is challenging to deal with. Here, a
blockchain-based system can be used as a solution to issue different certificates with a
proper verification mechanism which is impossible to counterfeit. This will help various
Bangladeshi government organisations to eliminate the risk, thereby increasing trust and
transparency to the concerned authority.
● Educational certificate: Educational certificates in Bangladesh are used for different
purposes. However, it is not free from the risk of fake and falsified certificates. A
blockchain-based solution can be used to store educational certificates on a distributed
ledger so that people can access it anytime, anywhere without the fear of unauthorised
modifications. Such a solution can also ensure that only authorised entities can verify the
certificates. It will ultimately help to track any fake certificate holders in the job market
of Bangladesh and other important positions within and outside of Bangladesh.
4.12 Smart City Application Domain
● Smart infrastructure: In a smart city all the resources are integrated using information
technology to ensure effective and efficient use of the resources. With the help of
emerging technology i.e. IoT, cloud computing, machine learning, real time direct benefit
can be provided by the government to the citizens. Blockchain technology can add more
values by connecting all the technologies together. It will also provide additional security.
Bangladesh in her march towards a developed nation, should embrace a blockchain-
based smart infrastructure.
● Citizen services: A blockchain-enabled smart city can facilitate many citizen services in an
automated and decentralised fashion. Such services can issue e-ID for identity verification
for their citizens which in turn can be used for e-voting systems, recording and sharing
medical information, property management, the use of crowdfunding platforms and so
on. Therefore, for the future planned smart-city of Bangladesh, blockchain technology
can help to unlock the above advantages for its citizens.
4.13 Infrastructure Application Domain
● Protection of Critical Information Infrastructure: Blockchain technology can be utilised
to protect the national information infrastructure which is critical to digitise different
aspects of the country and to facilitate e-Governance.
Above are some potential application domain of blockchain in perspective of Bangladesh.
However, these are not the only application domain where blockchain can bring enormous
positive change. There are more application domain like- uniformity management of citizens,
managing energy sector through managing energy uses, in the educational sector to manage
learning outcome and degree awards, enforcing laws and regulations, voting, ensuring food
safety etc. Overall, the promising blockchain is a boon to achieve the technological vision and
performing the functions of different ministry of Bangladesh.

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5. Pathway to a blockchain-enabled nation
The Fourth Industrial Revolution demands a technology-infused paradigm and cultural shift in
societies. It will create new models of economy and business and unprecedented value
propositions. All these can be pursued only with right preparations and accessed only with proper
technologies. Blockchain technology being a foundational technology for the upcoming fourth
industrial revolution, Bangladesh must prepare herself to embrace it wholeheartedly. In this
document, we lay down our ambition towards a blockchain-enabled nation where every aspect
of the government is one way or another integrated and managed with a blockchain system as
to create a corruption free, transparent and accountable society. Next, we explore the challenges
we might face and present a pathway towards realising this dream.
5.1 Challenges
It is always a challenging task to disrupt any established paradigm. The scenario becomes more
complex when the major tool for disruption is completely nascent and evolving technology like
Blockchain. Understandably, there will be many challenges to face. Some of these challenges are
technical while others are more organisation oriented. We explore these challenges below.
5.1.1 Technical challenges:
● Immaturity: One major limitation of blockchain technology is that it is still evolving. The
majority of the existing blockchain systems are still immature and not production-ready
for any wide-scale adoption. However, there are just a few, particularly in private
blockchain domains, which have matured to be used in production-ready environments.
● Vendor lock-in: Because of only a few production-ready blockchain systems, there is
always the risk of locking to the product (a blockchain system) of a particular vendor. If a
system is built upon such a product, the risk is that the system ceases to function when
the product is removed from the market. The lack of option is thus a major hurdle for the
wide-scale adoption of any new technology. The adoption of a fully-open source
technology can effectively handle this challenge.
● Scalability: As discussed previously, the scalability of major public blockchain systems is
not satisfactory. In theory, the private blockchain systems seem to offer better scalability.
However, there is no conclusive proof of their scalability as it is not well documented so
far for any large-scale adoption.
● Privacy: A private blockchain system does not allow everyone to access the blockchain
data, only authorised users can access it. Nevertheless, it must be noted that anyone, who
has access to the blockchain network, can access every single piece of data in the
blockchain, unless special measures are taken. This may undermine the privacy of
different organisations who are part of the same private blockchain network, but do not
want to share sensitive information with one another. There are advanced cryptographic
solutions such as Zero-knowledge Proof that can be used to tackle this challenge.
Alternatively, a privacy overlay can be created on top of a blockchain platform to ensure
the privacy of data between different organisations.

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● Lack of interoperability/compatibility: The existence of different blockchain systems
provide a wide-range of options for organisations. It also offers an opportunity for them
to select the appropriate one for their particular use-cases. On the other hand, the
inadvertent side-effect of this is the creation of blockchain silos that might need to be
inter-connected in future. However, the lack of interoperability and compatibility among
these blockchain systems will be a major hurdle to bridge these disconnected silos. An
interoperability framework can be created to bridge different silos and address this
challenge.
● Lack of technical expertise: Every new technology faces a shortage of expertise,
especially during its evolving period. Blockchain technology is no exception; there is an
acute shortage of blockchain experts all over the world. This is even more true in
Bangladesh. In addition, the lack of knowledge about blockchain and its benefits among
the practitioners, both in private and government organisations in Bangladesh, is a major
challenge for a wide-scale blockchain adoption.
● Support infrastructure: Because of the lack of required technical expertise or lack of other
technical resources, many organisations are hesitant to explore the ways a blockchain
system can help them. This is prohibiting them from harnessing the potential benefits of
any blockchain system. A support infrastructure provided by the government would be a
great enabler in such cases.
● Usability: The usability aspects of any customer-facing software, such as online services,
is often overlooked in many developing countries like Bangladesh. Blockchain is a cutting-
edge technology which is full of technical jargon which even the seasoned tech-
enthusiasts and programmers find hard to grasp. For any successful adoption of any
blockchain-based service, it is absolutely imperative that the usability of such service is
analysed so that all types of users can use it effectively.
5.1.2 Organisational challenges:
● Lack of awareness: Many organisations are not aware of the advantages private
blockchain technology can bring for their businesses. Many regard cryptocurrencies as
the only application for blockchain and hence they treat these two synonymously. Also,
the lack of expertise and local resources also play a key role to demotivate an organisation
towards a blockchain-based solution. All this makes it challenging for these organisations
to adopt blockchain to transform their business models.
● Organisational acceptability & readiness: The organisational acceptability and readiness
for blockchain technology will depend on several factors: their understanding of the
blockchain technology and the advantages it might bring to them, the motivation to adapt
to changes accordingly, access to technical expertise and the blockchain-friendly
government incentives and policies. The lack of a combination of these factors impose a
challenge to embrace blockchain technology for any organisation.
● Governance: The governance of any blockchain system is a critical issue which is often
overlooked. How a blockchain is governed defines its success and adoption in many ways.
Interestingly, different aspects of a blockchain governance is analogue to how an

25
organisation or a consortium or organisations distribute responsibilities among
themselves. Each organisation must understand this before they decide to adopt
blockchain for their solutions. This calls for a new governance model which itself might be
challenging for any organisation. A managed blockchain platform (either by the
government or by any private organisation) can be an immense help for other
organisations as they do not need to worry about any governance issue.
● Lack of regulatory framework: A regulatory framework surrounding any novel technology
instils confidence among the adopters. On the contrary, the lack of any such framework
creates uncertainties. This is why a blockchain-friendly regulatory framework can be an
effective tool to overcome many challenges within an organisation.
● Legal Issues: Since it is possible for the nodes of a decentralised (particularly public) ledger
to span multiple locations around the world so it becomes tough to establish a specific
application of jurisdictions’ laws and regulations. But the risk of transaction of an
organisation falling under every jurisdiction still remains. This results in an overwhelming
number of rules and regulations that can be applicable on transactions in a blockchain
based system. The laws that might apply to transactions of public blockchain systems have
to be considered beforehand so that necessary measures can be taken to mitigate the
risks. On the contrary in a private or permissioned blockchain the process is quite easy
because it has the provision of creating a form of legal framework and internal
governance structure [19].
● Integration with legacy systems: One of the crucial challenges for any organisation to
adopt a blockchain system will come to this factor: how easy it is to integrate with their
legacy systems. If it is too complicated which outweighs its benefits according to their
business model, it is unlikely that they will adopt it. A simple mechanism for integration
will thus be invaluable to drive changes for any organisation.
● Business model transformation: A blockchain adoption for any organisation implicates a
new model of thinking which would require to transform their business model. If a drastic
transformation is required, many business organisations will be unwilling to adopt any
blockchain system soon.
● Risk estimation: Risk estimation is an intrinsic process for any organisation when it
decides to adopt a new technology which would require significant business model
transformation. The challenges to estimate risks in adopting the blockchain technology
for any organisation are manifolds: i) the technology is not mature enough, ii) it evolves
rapidly and thus volatile in nature and iii) its understanding is not clear.
Next, we elaborate on different strategies to overcome these challenges.
5.2 Technical Readiness & Adoption
The major challenges that we will face to achieve our vision of a blockchain-enabled nation will
be difficult to address within a short period of time. It will require a combination of a clear
strategy and substantial investment with a short and long-term planning to overcome these
challenges. Many of the challenges presented above tend to be technical, however, there are

26
other challenges that can be linked to capacity development, regulatory and legal framework,
policy formulation and so on. In this section, we focus on mostly technical challenges, analyse
how we can make ourselves technically prepared to meet these challenges and finally, highlight
the guidelines for adoption pathways. Other challenges are explored in the subsequent sections.
5.2.1 Adoption pathway
The first step towards the adoption pathway is a clear understanding on blockchain technology.
However, the knowledge on blockchain is not wide-spread and there is an acute shortage of
competitive and knowledgeable workforces in this domain, both in Bangladesh and around the
world. In addition, blockchain technology has many perspectives which may not be clear in the
first instance. Because of these issues, it becomes a challenging task for anyone inexperienced to
understand how blockchain technology can help someone to solve a particular problem or
enhance the existing method in a corresponding use-case. The long-term solution for this
problem is capacity building which has been explored in details in Section 6.3. Here, we outline
an alternative short-term solution to mitigate this issue. We propose to create a blockchain
feasibility testing framework according to certain criteria. If someone has the domain knowledge
on a particular use-case he/she should be able to use this framework to test if blockchain
technology is suitable for the respective use-case. SWOT analysis can also be an effective
companion to this framework. Other additional capabilities that can be integrated with the
framework are threat modelling and risk analysis so that the framework will cover a wide
spectrum of perspectives. This framework needs to be developed by a team of experts on
blockchain technology with at least one of the members having expertise in SWOT analysis,
threat modelling and risk analysis. This team can then be leveraged for different associated
blockchain related activities.
5.2.2 Prioritisation of use-cases
As per our analysis in Section 5, there are a plethora of use-cases for which we can leverage
blockchain technology. However, it will be impractical to rush and to try to develop blockchain-
enabled solutions for all these use-cases all at once. A reasonable approach would be to prioritise
a subset of use-cases from a few applications domains which will have the maximum impact in
Bangladesh. Then, we should focus on developing prototypes or MVP (Minimum Viable Products)
for these use-cases by allocating a certain amount of funds which can be competitively
distributed according to the plan discussed in the next section.
5.2.3 Technical framework
Blockchain technology is currently in an evolving stage at a very fast rate. Many of its aspects are
rudimentary in nature and in many ways are regarded as immature by many blockchain experts.
Because of these issues, it is a challenging task even for an expert programmer to handle and
develop a blockchain system, particularly at the initial stage. Unfortunately, the number of
blockchain experts is few and far between throughout the world. In addition, the distributed
nature of a blockchain system imposes significant cost, in comparison to any traditional system,
to maintain such a system, particularly for the storage of transactions and the underlying
blockchain across multiple nodes. All these contribute to the reason that many organisations do
not have access to the proper computing, storage and human resources to explore this avenue.

27
This often can be regarded as one of the major technical obstacles to materialise the vision of a
blockchain enabled nation. A quick solution to this is to utilise the managed blockchain platforms
provided by different cloud service providers. Major cloud providers such as Amazon, IBM, Azure
and others provide services for such managed blockchain platforms which are relatively easier to
deploy and maintain. However, one crucial issue to consider in this regard is the Bangladesh
Digital Security Act which does not allow the storage of sensitive data into any public cloud server.
This unfortunately limits the usage of such managed blockchain platforms. All these issues can
be effectively addressed if there would be a National Blockchain Platform, a cloud-based
managed and private blockchain platform hosted under the authority of the corresponding
agency of the Government of Bangladesh. Such a platform could facilitate a Blockchain-as-a-
Service provisioning mechanisms that other Bangladeshi organisations, both public and private,
could leverage to experiment, deploy and maintain different blockchain based services. The
associated data then could be stored in the national fourth-tier data centre, thus ensuring the
compliance of the Digital Security Act. In order to streamline the integration process with the
national blockchain platform, we envision the creation of a blockchain integration framework
which would be the enabler tool that will help any organisation to integrate their applications
into the hosted blockchain platform. Another useful mechanism would be to provide a
sandboxed environment within the blockchain platform for different organisations supporting
different blockchain systems. This environment would be made accessible to these organisations
so that they can deploy and test their blockchain Proof of Concept (PoC) applications, in a safer
environment, utilising the blockchain integration framework and their associated APIs, before
these applications are released commercially. Initially, the blockchain platform should be
released on a trial basis accessible only to a highly selective public and private organisations and
its performance should be continuously monitored for a certain period of time. Based on the
performance data, different levels of tweaks might be required. Once a satisfactory level of
performance is achieved, the blockchain platform, the integration framework and their
associated APIs should be opened for a wider range of organisations.
5.3 Capacity Development
The core of many challenges highlighted above can be attributed to a single source: lack of
expertise in blockchain within the country. There is indeed an acute shortage of experts who have
a deeper understanding on the technology with hands-on experiences. If we are to build a
blockchain-enabled nation, it is of high priority that this shortage is addressed and its technical
capacity is developed. There are many ways the capacity can be developed which are discussed
next.
5.3.1 Identifying experts
The first step in this regard should be to identify existing blockchain experts within the country.
Measures must be taken so that we can utilise their expertise and leverage their experiences in
as many ways as possible.
5.3.2 Training & increasing awareness
One of the key mechanisms for capacity building is training which can facilitate the re-skilling and
up-skilling of the existing as well as new workforce and students for developing a talent pool for

28
the future demand.. The training itself can be divided into different categories: beginner,
intermediate and advanced. In addition, there are different aspects to consider for a blockchain
system, e. g. core blockchain development, smart-contract development, blockchain
governance, blockchain integration & deployment, blockchain testing and so on. Depending on
the category, different aspects need to be covered. For example, an advanced training should
cover all these aspects whereas a beginner level training should mostly concentrate on the core
blockchain development. Local experts and academicians can play a crucial role for developing
the course contents for this training program. Another important aspect is that the high level
practitioners and policy makers, located both in public and private sectors, do not have proper
knowledge about blockchain. They might be not aware of the potential a blockchain system may
offer. To increase awareness, the dissemination of blockchain potentials to the correct
stakeholders is crucial. In addition, creating a common knowledge base both in English and
Bangla might help to increase awareness among the general people and the practitioners. The
government will partner with the industry to establish an ecosystem to exchange technical
knowledge among industry experts, blockchain enthusiasts, interested IT professional,
academicians and students. Government with will encourage its industry partners to offer
internships to students who may secure a pre-placement offer at the end of the internship.
5.3.3 Research & innovation
Promoting research and innovation plays a key role for developing capacity in any domain. This
culture helps to create new knowledge which often proves invaluable. This is particularly true for
any disruptive technology such as blockchain. For example, disrupting any existing mode of
government service delivery will require to develop a new model which was not explored before.
In such cases, it is often the case that there will be no blue-print to follow; it might often feel like
travelling to an uncharted territory. Carrying out research in many ways will be the only way to
move forward in such situations. Therefore, it is imperative that research on blockchain is highly
promoted. Supporting research also fosters exciting innovations which can create novel services
and delivery methods which in turn can generate revenues. Local universities, research centres
and industries have crucial roles to play in this regard. Government can provide a platform for
Academic institutions and Industry to come together and provide students hands-on industry
experience through internships on the real-life implementation and problem solving around
the technology. Universities and technical institutions will be promoted and encouraged to build
partnerships with the technology companies to undertake research in this technology and build
solutions and skills supporting the future initiatives of the private and public sectors.
Government, in partnership with the industry and academia, will organize an annual conference
for all Blockchain researchers, practitioners, industry experts, and government stakeholders to
showcase their innovative activities in this area. All research, innovation and prototype
development activities should be promoted and recognized in this type of yearly event.
5.3.4 Expansion of Centre of Excellence
The activities and their related action points suggested above are of wide varieties. To get the
best result out of these, an effective coordination will be essential. The Centre of Excellence (CoE)
established at BCC can play a leading role in this regard. To widen the reach of this CoE, several
other Centres of Excellence can be established in different universities across the country. These

29
other Centres of Excellence will function under the authority of BCC CoE which will strictly control
different aspects of activities carried out in these centres. These centres can be the focal point
by which research and innovation can be expanded across the country. These centres can also
take initiatives to sign MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with different universities,
research centres, forums societies and other public and private organisations, both at home and
abroad. This will help the CoE to initiate different joint initiatives, research programs and
knowledge exchange programs as suggested above.

6. Strategic Goals
To fulfil the desire of a blockchain-enabled nation, we must strive to achieve the outlined visions
and take appropriate measures to address the agendas. In this section, we outline a synopsis of
strategic next steps that will be essential to accomplish what we desire. These strategic steps
have been transformed into a series of long, mid and short-term goals which we present next.
Transforming strategic steps into measurable goals is often useful as goals are easy to track and
achieve in comparison to, say for example, visions and agendas which can be abstract. Finally, we
have transformed those goals into concrete action points.
6.1 Short-term Goals: Foundational
It might be difficult to put a numerical value in the time-span of a particular goal, however, a
numerical time-span is often useful to strategize how to achieve goals within the stipulated
duration. With this in mind, goals that will require less than two years (by 2021) to achieve will
be regarded as short-term goals. Short-term goals are easier to achieve and are mostly
preparatory in nature. These goals can be used to formulate plans, carry out feasibility tests,
develop capacities and increase awareness. These goals are presented next.
SG-1 Prioritising use-cases for each application domain.
SG-2 Creating a feasibility framework to carry out feasibility analysis for prioritised use-
cases.
SG-3 Developing capacity by promoting education and research, arranging training and
increasing awareness.
SG-4 Exploring the ways, a national blockchain platform can be developed, deployed,
maintained and provisioned.
SG-5 Analysing how different government services can be integrated with the national
blockchain platform and piloting different projects to facilitate this.
SG-6 Formulating plans to integrate other online services from the private companies
with the national blockchain platform or with their corresponding blockchain
networks.
SG-7 Expanding the national Centre of Excellence with blockchain-based initiatives.
SG-8 Facilitating blockchain based innovations and start-ups.
SG-9 Allocating appropriate funds for these activities.

30
SG-10 Developing blockchain-friendly legal and policy frameworks to ensure a fast and
smooth execution of all blockchain-related activities.
6.2 Mid-term Goals: Transitional
In a similar fashion, goals that will require three to four years (by 2025) to achieve will be
regarded as mid-term goals. Mid-term goals can act as a bridge between short and long-term
goals and can be used to facilitate the transition of the technological and cultural paradigm shift:
from the existing legacy systems towards blockchain-enabled systems. These goals are presented
next.
MG-1 Realising a national blockchain platform integrated with the national information
infrastructure so as to create a resilient infrastructure for different services.
MG-2 Integrating at least half of the relevant government services with the blockchain
platform.
MG-3 Integrating a certain portion of private services in the national blockchain
platform. Alternatively, if the private companies have already equipped
themselves with their own blockchain platforms, it is to take appropriate measures
to integrate their platforms with the national blockchain platform.
MG-4 Promoting research and analysing impacts about public blockchain outsourcing
opportunities and adoption in a few application domains upon feasibility.
MG-5 Promoting blockchain innovations with additional rewards and subsidies so as to
create demands for blockchain resources.
MG-6 Expanding the scope of blockchain research and education in different universities
by facilitating graduate programmes such as Master’s and PhD in the blockchain
domains.
MG-7 Reduce intermediary as much as possible, particularly in the agricultural and
financial sectors.
MG-8 Creating a thriving environment for blockchain so as to enable a smooth
integration with other cutting-edge technologies such as IoT, AI and Big Data.
MG-9 Allocating enough funds to carry out these activities.
6.3 Long-term Goals: Sustainability and Continuity
Within the scope of this document, goals which would require a significant time-span to achieve
are regarded as long-term goals. Intuitively, we consider a goal as a long-term goal if it will require
ten to ten years (by 2030) to accomplish. These goals will attempt to achieve a nationwide
technological paradigm shift that will be essential for a sustainable development growth. We
have formulated a number of such long-term goals which are presented next.
LG-1 Developing a blockchain-supported national infrastructure which is resilient
against the modern security and privacy threats and can be used for a wide-variety
of applications.

31
LG-2 Adopting e-Governance at all aspects of the government covering all modes. The
blockchain-supported national infrastructure can act as the backbone to support
e-Governance mechanisms.
LG-3 Facilitating fair competitions and ensuring accountability and transparency for a
wide range of applications using the blockchain-based infrastructure.
LG-4 Allocating appropriate funds for achieving these goals.
6.4 Action Points
Next, we have transformed the mid and short-term goals into concrete action points. The
transformed actions points are presented in Table 1. It is to be noted that the action points do
not embody any long-term goal as such a goal is often visionary in nature. The expectation is that
achieving the mid-term and short-term goals and expanding them in a sustainable fashion for a
long period of time will eventually enable the realisation of long-term goals. Each action point in
Table 2 also highlights the challenge (if any and a ‘-’ signifies not applicable) it aims to address
and the responsible government body who will take charge of initiate and execute the respective
action point.
Table 2: Transformed action points for short-term and mid-term goals

Action Challenge
Description Goals Responsible Body
Point Mitigation
Form a blockchain working group
with the participation of key
Technical ICT Division, ICT
AP-1 personnel from different sectors SG-1
expertise Industries
to drive different blockchain
activities within the country.
Create a database/collection of
blockchain experts within the
Country. The database/collection
should contain their CVs
highlighting their detail
experiences of working in
different blockchain projects. In Technical ICT Division, ICT
AP-2 addition, the database/collection SG-1
expertise Industries
should emphasise the blockchain
systems they are familiar with.
This database/collection will act
as the focal point in order to
identify an expert should any
need arise.
Select a subset of prioritised use-
Technical
AP-3 cases covering different SG-1 ICT Division
expertise
application domains. For this we

32
should utilise the blockchain
feasibility framework (AP-4, see
below), if it is already available.
Formulate a blockchain feasibility
framework which can evaluate
the feasibility of blockchain
technology for a particular use- ICT Division,
case. Different additional Support
AP-4 SG-2 Academia, ICT
capabilities, such as SWOT infrastructure
Industries
analysis, threat modelling and
risk analysis, can be integrated
with the feasibility framework.
Identify the potential universities,
research centres and private ICT Division,
AP-5 organisations who are actively SG-3 - Academia, ICT
involved in blockchain research Industries
and development.
Increase the capacity of the
identified and other universities
and research centres so that they ICT Division, UGC,
AP-6 SG-3 -
can carry out advanced research Academia
on blockchain.
With the help of local experts and
academicians, develop course
contents for blockchain training
considering different categories ICT Division,
Capacity
AP-7 and aspects. To save money, it is SG-3 Academia, iCT
increase
strongly recommended that the Industries
majority of the trainings are
carried out in Bangladesh.
A separate training program can
be initiated which will train only
trainers. To bootstrap this
process, a small batch of trainers Capacity
AP-8 and practitioners can be sent SG-3 ICT Division
increase
abroad for their initial training,
only if such facility is unavailable
in Bangladesh.
Accreditation and certification
Capacity
AP-9 are effective tools to promote the SG-3 ICT Division
increase
training program and to ensure

33
its quality. This will also help to
recognise a pool of trained
resources. If this is considered, a
set of rules and respective policies
need to be defined.
A separate training program,
with appropriate contents,
targeting different policy makers ICT Division, ICT
and high-level practitioners of Capacity
AP-10 SG-3 Industries,
different public and private increase
Academia
organisations should be planned
and executed.
To increase the awareness on the
potential of the blockchain
technology, organise seminars, Awareness
round-table meetings, dialogue increase/
AP-11 SG-3 ICT Division
exchange programs, focused Organisational
group meetings and so on among acceptability
different stakeholders.
Create a knowledge base, both in
English and Bangla, on blockchain
fundamentals and different
aspects for different stakeholders ICT Division,
and networks. This knowledge Capacity
AP-12 SG-3 Academia, ICT
base can even be made available increase
Industries
for all citizens of the country so
that a country-wide awareness on
blockchain is created.
Develop and introduce blockchain
courses at the Bachelor level in
the syllabus of technology-
oriented and business-related
subjects at different universities
and colleges that provide higher Capacity
AP-13 SG-3 UGC, Academia
degrees. Facilitate blockchain- increase
focused research and graduate
programs at Master’s and PhD
level in top universities of
Bangladesh.

34
Initiate and support a joint
internship program between the
academia and industry for the ICT Division,
Capacity
AP-14 students on the real-life SG-3 Academia, ICT
increase
implementation and problem Industries
solving around the technology.
Organize an annual conference
for all Blockchain researchers,
practitioners, industry experts, Awareness
AP-15 government stakeholders to SG-3 ICT Division
increase
showcase their innovative
activities involving blockchain.
Develop and deploy a national
blockchain platform so that it can
be leveraged to provide
Blockchain-as-a-Service (BAAS) to
different universities, research SG-4, Support ICT Division,
AP-16 centres and organisations. The SG-6 infrastructure Academia
National Data Centre would be
the ideal place to host this
platform with their associated
data.
Formulate strategies and policies
defining how this blockchain
platform can be effectively shared SG-4, Support Cabinet Division,
AP-17 among many entities without SG-5 infrastructure ICT Division
compromising the associated
privacy issues.
Create a privacy-preserving
framework, using any existing
solution or using advanced
cryptographic solutions such as
AP-18 Zero-knowledge Proof, to ensure SG-4 Privacy ICT Division
and guarantee privacy of each
organisation and their associated
data while using national
blockchain platform
Collect and analyse performance Support
AP-19 data of the blockchain platform SG-4 infrastructure/ ICT Division
and tweak different parameters Scalability

35
until a satisfactory level of
performance is achieved.
Develop an inter-operability
framework which can be plugged
with the national blockchain
platform. This will ensure that the Interoperabilit
AP-20 SG-5 ICT Division
blockchain platform can interact y
with other (possibly private)
blockchain platforms.
Define governance rules to select
the responsible authorities and Support
Cabinet Division,
AP-21 maintain the blockchain platform SG-5 infrastructure/
ICT Division
in a continuous seamless fashion. Governance

Design and expose APIs with


respect to the platform for any
application as well as for Support
managing the underlying infrastructure/
AP-22 blockchain. The platform can SG-5 ICT Division
Legacy systems
utilise the national e-service bus integration
(BNDA) to expose these APIs in
order to ensure their security.
To widen the capacity of CoE at
BCC, establish other subordinate Capacity
AP-23 Centres of Excellences in different SG-7 ICT Division
increase
universities across the country.
Provide substantial incentives to
Capacity
any organisation which innovates
increase/
AP-24 novel and disruptive services SG-8 ICT Division
Organisational
which have far-reaching
acceptability
implications for Bangladesh.
Allocate funds to initiate and
Ministry of
AP-25 carry out blockchain innovations SG-9 -
Finance
of ministries.
Develop a blockchain-friendly
regulatory framework that will Regulatory Cabinet Division,
AP-26 help to tackle any legal issues and SG-10
framework ICT Division
accelerate innovations.
Formulate a blockchain-focused
Policy
policy framework which will pave
AP-27 SG-10 framework ICT Division
down the ways blockchain
technology can be leveraged,

36
integrated and provisioned in
different application domains.
Initiate plans to
migrate/integrate a certain
portion of public and private
services with a blockchain system.
For public services, the proposed MG-1,
AP-28 national blockchain framework MG-2, Migration ICT Division
will be the ideal choice for MG-3
integration. On the other hand,
private services can opt in for
their preferred approved
blockchain systems.
Analyse the impact of opening up
cryptocurrency in a restricted ICT Division, ICT
AP-29 MG-4 -
fashion for application adoption. Industries

Investigate how to open up in a


restricted fashion for the
AP-30 MG-4 - ICT Division
software industries without being
an enabler for criminal activities.
Research outsourcing
opportunities in the public
AP-31 MG-4 - ICT Division
blockchain domain and explore
how to seize these opportunities.
Promote blockchain research and MG-5
innovation by allocating
substantial funds, additional Ministry of
Capacity
AP-32 rewards and subsidies so as to Finance, ICT
increase
create demands for blockchain Division
resources.
Expanding the scopes of
blockchain research and
education in different universities
by facilitating graduate Capacity
AP-33 MG-6 UGC, Academia,
programmes such as Master’s increase
and PhD in the blockchain
domains.
Target some financial and Ministry of
AP-34 agricultural domains to embrace MG-7 - Finance, Ministry
blockchain-based solutions to of Agriculture, ICT

37
remove intermediaries as much Division and all
as possible. other Ministries
Creating a thriving environment
for blockchain so as to enable a
AP-34 smooth integration with other MG-8 - ICT Division
cutting-edge technologies such as
IoT, AI and Big Data.
Allocate funds to initiate and
Ministry of
AP-36 carry out blockchain innovations MG-9 -
Finance
of ministries.

7. Conclusion
The Fourth Industrial Revolution will entirely depend on a few cutting edge technologies. This
revolution will introduce new challenges as well as exciting opportunities. Tackling these
challenges and exploiting the opportunity will solely rely on the effective usage of these emerging
technologies. Countries who are better equipped and prepared to embrace these emerging
technologies will have a greater chance of success in this upcoming revolution. Blockchain is often
considered as the foundational technology for this revolution. Realising its potential, many
countries around the world are exploring the ways blockchain technology can be effectively
leveraged.
Bangladesh, unfortunately, is lagging behind in this regard. There have been a few explorations
in sporadic fashion by different public and private organisations and universities in Bangladesh.
However, they are mostly preparatory in nature and not properly coordinated. To accelerate this
process, the government is planning a series of steps. The release of this document is the first
official effort from the Government of Bangladesh towards that goal. It recognises the need to
explore blockchain technology in order to advance its technical capacity, increase efficiencies in
e-Governances and foster innovations. The document highlights our extraordinary ambition: to
guide Bangladesh into a blockchain-enabled nation. With this vision in mind, this document
explores different aspects of this vision with a particular focus on formulating the strategies and
different long, mid and short-term goals to achieve this vision.
Going forward, the next steps would be to take appropriate measures for the initiation and
execution of the action points by different government agencies in a controlled and coordinated
way. The LICT (Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment and Governance) department of
Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) can take the coordinating role in this regard.
It is important to realise this is an extremely fast moving domain where technologies are changing
at an unprecedented rate. Therefore, we must act fast, otherwise, we may not be able to prepare
ourselves for the fourth industrial revolution in due time. We hope that this document will be
the perfect start to accelerate our journey towards a blockchain-enabled nation and to prepare
us for an exciting time ahead.

38
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Hertz, L. How will Blockchain Agriculture revolutionize the Food Supply from farm to plate? 30
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Islam, M. S. Land verification system using Blockchain Technology in Bangladesh. Medium, 11


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/2018/08/13/a-decentralized-reputation-system-how-blockchain-can-restore-trust-in-
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40
Appendix: Government Blockchain Initiatives in Other Countries
Currently, new ecosystems are developing blockchain solutions to create innovative business
models to replace traditional ones, which are occurring in most jurisdictions globally. Realising
its potential, many governments around the world are exploring the ways this technology can
advance and improve different aspects of their governance. In this section we summarise a few
such initiatives around the world.

Asia

In the year 2016 Japan’s Ministry of Economy (METI) published a report about the effect of
blockchain technology on policy recommendations. Numerous initiatives have been undertaken
by the Japanese Government following this statement. For example: The evolution of clear and
fair laws in order to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges or legal explanation of bitcoin being an
asset and a payment method. Due to these revolutions in 2018 Japan’s biggest energy firm TEPCO
invested in a British Blockchain startup. There are also companies which are actually working as
brokerages spearheading the venture into new cutting edge technologies like the blockchain.
These companies include: 7 SBI, Rakuten, Nomura and Daiwa etc. In addition to this SBI launched
its Ripple blockchain-based payment app for consumers1.

China has put great emphasis on developing use cases by taking an initiative of rapidly adopting
Blockchain Technology throughout the country. China’s current president Xi Jinping personally
urged the greater need of developing blockchain in front of the Communist Party of China Central
Committee. This sentiment became the headline of the front page of the People’s Dailies. The
article was on “Placing Blockchain as one of the countries core initiatives, with a target on key
breakthroughs”. Along with this the national TV station CCTV-2 aired various segments regarding
the discussions on blockchain technology emphasizing on solely blockchain and bitcoin not being
the key focus of China2. China is exploring blockchain technology to such an extent that currently
the Chinese Government has more than 500 (five hundred) blockchain based open projects3.

Malaysian government took their first attempt of movement on blockchain in the year 2015 with
Security Commission and Bank Negara Malaysia. These Primary initiatives were directed to the
financial system via fintech development. According to the MBA statistics by undertaking digital
strategies like blockchain a 15-20% increase in GDP can be expected. To drive the blockchain
technology forward and to engage both government and public in this digital strategy MaGIC an
innovation centre under MED and Malaysian Blockchain Associations worked as catalysts4,5.

1 https://www.eu-japan.eu/sites/default/files/publications/docs/blockchaininjapan-martagonzalez.pdf
2 https://boxmining.com/china-blockchain-initiative/
3 https://consensys.net/blog/enterprise-blockchain/which-governments-are-using-blockchain-right-now/
4 https://www.malaysia.gov.my/portal/content/30633
5 https://www.opengovasia.com/malaysia-welcomes-blockchain-advancement/

41
The government of Singapore is promoting the widespread usage of cryptocurrencies unlike
China6. It has not only introduced various tax benefits and legislation to help companies that
utilise blockchain, but it has also allocated funds to accelerate the adoption of this disruptive
technology. The Singaporean Central Bank Monetary Authority has started to explore the
potentials of blockchain technology in its central banking initiatives. This project has successfully
implemented real-time gross settlement systems and introduced greater privacy and ease of
settlements.

The Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has decided to build a brand-new
infrastructure project based on the blockchain platform to transform its smart city. Blockchain
will be used for communications, energy, transportation and payments to increase efficiency in
the smart city project and streamline all the activities for greater transparency 7.
Israel is leading the blockchain initiatives in the Middle East6. Also, spurred by their government,
the private sector has aggressively rallied behind this technology. Most of the digital assets such
as cryptocurrencies are actively being promoted, and the government has invested heavily
behind research and development of type of blockchain systems. An Israeli governmental agency
has already started to use blockchain to improve their messaging services. Due to proper
regulations adopted by the Israeli government, many start-up companies are using blockchain in
the cyber security, shipping, data storage as well as other industries. The efforts of the Israeli
government have helped Israel to be one of the leading countries in Asia that has adopted
blockchain to shore up their data security and traceability initiatives.
The United Arab Emirates Government has started the Smart Dubai project which will see them
leveraging the technologies of blockchain and A.I. to turn Dubai into a technologically advanced
city3. The Emirates Blockchain Strategy 2021 aims to capitalise on the blockchain technology to
transform 50 per cent of government transactions into the blockchain platform by 2021.

The Government of India is exploring the blockchain technology in their voting platform and is
consulting with the citizens of India for policy-making decisions3. The government is actively
researching the future potential of this technology to be used in sectors such as the banking and
financial industry. The state of Maharashtra partnered up with a hybrid open-source platform
based on the blockchain technology to complete a project on the land records of the state.

North America

The United States of America being the biggest economy in the world has been one of the first
countries to adopt the blockchain technology3. The Homeland Security department which acts
on behalf of the US government has awarded a contract to implement blockchain technology to
improve the data capabilities of Border Security. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has
also awarded another contract to enhance the real-time sharing of data between two health
departments.

6 https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/se/Documents/risk/DI_2019-global-blockchain-survey.pdf
7 https://www.ledgerinsights.com/vietnam-smart-city-blockchain-framework/

42
The Canadian government has already started using blockchain to issue digital CVs for its
employees and secure the data permanently. Other state governments in Canada have
collaborated to form the Verifiable Organizations Network, which is a framework to enhance data
integrity between businesses to conduct their operations reliably3.

The Government of Mexico is using the blockchain technology to verify bids placed in the public
procurement sector3. Several departments are also utilising this decentralised network to reduce
corruption inside the government.

Europe

The Government of the United Kingdom conducted a successful pilot project on the blockchain’s
system of distributed ledger to ensure greater compliance in the food sector. This technology is
also being used for land registration and to buy and sell properties in the country 8. The Ministry
of Justice, in a joint project with the Cabinet Office and Police, also has explored how blockchain
technology can be utilised for securing digital evidence9.

The Liberal Alliance party in Denmark was the first country that used the blockchain technology
in order to successfully conduct a democratic election 3.

The Estonian government started exploring the possibilities of blockchain since 2008 3. It has used
blockchain to store almost 99 percent of its data and conduct more than 90 percent of all its
services online. Due to the utilisation of this technology on a national level, the country enjoys
faster judicial proceedings than many other developed nations.

Malta is the first country in the world with clearly established regulatory frameworks for DLTs,
ICOs and virtual currencies10. They have introduced legislation along with other initiatives that
will start attracting various Fintech companies to its shores. The country has already been praised
for its activities in the crypto space. A Blockchain island will be created that will attract
investments which will enable this initiative to be a grand success.

Africa

The Government of Ethiopia is using blockchain to improve farming practices in the country and
enhance productivity in the agricultural sector3.

The Ghanaian government has started a project, and the purpose of this project is to allow its
citizens the ability to register land that is supported by the blockchain network 3.

8 https://cointelegraph.com/news/uk-food-standard-agency-completes-blockchain-pilot-for-food-supply-chain
9 https://insidehmcts.blog.gov.uk/2018/08/23/how-were-investigating-digital-ledger-technologies-to-secure-digital-evidence/
10 https://iconfinancemalta.blob.core.windows.net/libx-128-public/Tags/General/Malta%20Destination%20Blockchain%20Island.pdf

43
The Kenyan government created a bond supported by blockchain technology. The government is
trying to introduce more digital currency so that its citizens can have access to the financial
industry without the need to open a bank account3.

The Government of South Africa has started exploring the concept of blockchain to enhance its
financial services industry. The government has created various frameworks and policies to
implement blockchain on a wide scale. The government has introduced a pilot project to register
land on the blockchain network3.

Oceania

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia issued a bond based on the cryptocurrency for the
Treasury Corporation of Queensland3. The Government of Queensland has awarded $100,000 to
install the cryptocurrency point of sale systems.

44

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