Some thoughts about blockchain and public procurement
This past semester I have been teaching a module on blockchain and the law as part of our LLM in LegalTech. It is not directly about public procurement, but preparing classes forced me to organise my thoughts about the possible uses of blockchain overall. What I think about blockchain as a technology in general maps out quite well to public procurement too.
As a broad stroke, blockchain (permissionless or permissioned) cannot really compete in terms of efficiency with centralised or decentralised databases. The shared ledger approach of blockchain is simply too slow and (thus far) unable to scale to process transactions as efficiently as a database. In my view this makes it highly improbable that we will see blockchain replace existing technologies already deployed.
Its killer feature however is to provide a good enough technological solution where none is currently available. In other words, to do electronically what we have been unable to do at all thus far. For that, slowness and cumbersome may be good enough.
Where does this takes us in procurement then? Out of the top of my head to two areas. One I mentioned 4 years ago in this same blog (reputation mechanism - which I have to elaborate upon). More recently I have thought about another area where the current approach is lacking: cross-border technology.
Currently, each Member State is stuck on its own silo and even inside each Member State you have multiple non-communicating silos. I see a potential use for a (permissioned) blockchain solution is for this problem we are yet to solve. ESPD is a mess and e-Certis simply a 2010 mindset at attempting to solve the problem of sharing what is *public* information. How do we then 'integrate' multiple databases across multiple countries, preferably with a single codebase?
A centralised database with APIs for connection to the various national databases is always an option but then I look at TED which remains as, cumbersome and user (un)friendly as ever. It painfully shows its late 90s/early 2000s roots and mental models.
So what would we do with a magic blockchain solution to do away with the syncronization of information contained in the myriad databases?
We could force compatibility via APIs with a single blockchain maintained at EU level. Only the entities holding the information would be able to inscribe new data in the blocks. Ie, Companies Registries would sync company data, Criminal Registries criminal data, etc. This should be done automatically as new data is inscribed in the original database itself. In effect, all that boiler plate data that suppliers are expected to produce today or indicate the contracting authority where it can find it. Restricting writing permissions to the official entities holding the canonical data solves the oracle problem regarding data soundness.
Who could read the data included there then? Only each contracting authority in the context of a procurement procedure and *after* obtaining consent from the economic operator. This authorization could be limited in time/milestones for example. Another alternative might be a querying system whereby the contracting authority would query the blockchain if candidate X met certain conditions and all the blockchain would answer would be yes or no.
What this allows for is for the automation of what is still in 2019 a manual, menial job that does not really add value to procurement process. Yes, perhaps a database is a more efficient way of doing it but so far we have been unable to really iron the kinks of cross-border information management.
There are two important points I have not touched in this blogpost. The first compliance with GDPR - that needs a lot more thinking on my part and I'm simply not ready at the moment for such task.
The second the competencies of the Union to force Member States to change their administrative systems since this might fall under administrative rules where the competence of the Union is more limited than the general internal market competence. But then, the same could be said about the ESPD in itself.