Public Sector SIG Update October 2019 Q2

Special Interest Group

Public Sector SIG

Working Group Health

Working Group has been in operation for over a year now. The core Membership has stabilised. A suggested new push should be made to broaden participation and utility for a larger membership.

Two Vice Chairs have been recruited, and are starting to independently program and Chair meetings. This has been successful as a way to diversify the meeting presentations and distribute the responsibility equitably. 

Issues

Chair and Vice Chairs continue to note the need for administrative support. There is a significant background support needed for documentation, and Chairs are most comfortable with curating and running meetings, attending to Membership.

On boarding the new Chairs was challenging, insofar as there appears to be no comprehensive training for how to admin and operate a SIG. As such, many requests and responsibilities came in ad hoc, or have not been fulfilled due to lack of awareness, capacity, or knowledge about requirements. Current Chair and HL point of contact have been filling in the gaps also ad hoc, but proper documentation shareable by all SIGs would reduce future burden and assist in knowledge transfer. 

Overall Activity in the Past Quarter

Regular meetings have been held, some meetings have been missed . The chat channel still has low activity. The mailing list is still primarily used for Agendas as well as call follow up discussions.

1. We have a new sub-group formed, which is developing active momentum. Its topic is to write a White Paper on Public Sector uses of blockchain. The group has sought support from Hyperledger Community Architects to add their weekly calls to the Community Calendar.
2. The Public Sector SIG continues to attract a diverse range of presenters for each call. This Quarter's activities include the following Agenda highlights:

July 19

Direct from Hyperledger
Hyperledger's very own Marta Piekarska, Director of Ecosystem, will be guest moderated this week -- Thank you, Marta!

This is a great opportunity to hear directly from a very knowledgeable member of the Hyperledger team. Please come prepared with your questions regarding Hyperledger and trends. Marta will set aside time to answer them, or connect you with the right resources. 

Blockchain technology making the global supply chain transparent
Public Sector SIG member Hanna Norberg has recently published a paper on how Blockchain can update the process of international trade for the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy and Global Affairs Canada. As it happens, Hanna interviewed Marta for the paper, so expect this will be both a great presentation and conversation for the group around the findings. 

8/2

AGENDA:

Welcome and  Introductions:

Sovrin Foundation
Public Sector SIG member Sean O'Kelly has made a great connection with Drummond Reed, who will join us this week with leading edge updates from the Sovrin Foundation self-sovereign identity working group. Sean has informed them of the work on our white paper, and they are open to cross-organizational collaboration. We look forward to a summary of their work to date, and to making links with Sovrin.

Most of the meeting was the SSI presentation by Drummond Reed, a must watch!!!!! 
zoom_0.mp4

Bobbi Muscara stepped in at the last moment to fill the moderator position, which was very appreciated, as the scheduled moderator had a power outage. 

8/30

AGENDA: 

Welcome and  Introductions by Marta  Piekarska, and hand-over to new Vice Chair Alfonso Govela Thomae, who will be chairing the meeting

Public Sector SIG White Paper

Sean O’Kelly shares the advances of our White Paper group: a concise functional view of Public Sector, a wide panorama of opportunities, and four use cases of relevant integration of ID, Compliance and Governance.

Local Authorities and local working groups

Alfonso opening up the floor to ideas and discussions on how local stakeholders engage everyday to solve public issues and there are relevant opportunities to help them with Hyperledger. How do you think we should go about engaging them? On our side there are 170+ Hyperledger Meetups around the world...Let’s start a reflection.

Updates

Marta on the group presenting something on the inspiring work that the WhitePaper group has done a the Hyperledger Global Forum, in March in Arizona. Deadline for submissions of abstracts are coming up

Bobbi shared an update on the very successful Princeton meet-up summer project “The Giving Chain”. 

As always, all members are encouraged to be on the look out for interesting ideas, projects and speakers for these meetings. We are currently seeking presenters for the fall. Please email with your ideas and suggestions.

9/13

Hyperledger Global Forum!

The Hyperledger Global Forum is now accepting submissions for talks, as well as attendee registrations. Tomorrow's call is a chance to talk through potential ideas and coordinate on submissions. 

Register to Attend

Hyperledger Global Forum will offer the unique opportunity for users and contributors of Hyperledger projects from across the globe to meet, align, plan and hack together in-person. Open to members and non-members alike, attendees will have the chance to talk directly with Hyperledger project maintainers and the Technical Steering Committee, collaborate with other organizations on ideas that will directly impact the future of Hyperledger, and promote their work among the enterprise blockchain community.

The agenda will comprise of both a technical and enterprise track, roadmaps for Hyperledger projects, cross-industry keynotes and panels on use cases in development, social networking for the community to bond, and hacking activities with mentors to help deliver specific pipeline features and bring developers up the learning curve.

EVENT DETAILS
March 3 - 6, 2020
Phoenix Convention Center
Phoenix, Arizona
#hyperledgerforum

9/27

AGENDA

Welcome and Introduction  by co-Vice Chair Hanna Norberg who is chairing her first meeting. Hanna is an independent trade policy advisor, based in Lund, Sweden but working globally.

Whitepaper submission for presentation at the Hyperledger Global Forum

Based on the great work going on in the White Paper Group here, Martha suggested that the group put together and submitted an abstract for a presentation at the Hyperledger Global Forum which is coming up in March. The deadline for the submission has just been pushed forward a week, but the group here are ready to submit their application on the topic Rethinking Public Sector through Blockchain

Public Policy, Global Trade and Blockchain

Hanna has been invited to speak at a WTO conference on global trade and blockchain in December (from the description: The conference will bring together ambassadors and trade officials of the 164 WTO member countries, representatives of international organizations, and private sector representatives to discuss the potential of blockchain for international trade. It will present various initiatives taken by the private sector and governments to facilitate international trade using blockchain and will discuss the role of international organizations in promoting a conducive regulatory framework). I have been asked to speak on a session entitled “How to Promote a Conducive Regulatory Environment”, where the “The idea of this session is to discuss governance issues, explore how best to promote a conducive regulatory and policy framework, and discuss potential follow-up actions, including for the WTO and WTO official- and specifically to pass some policy messages to trade officials.”

As you might have guessed, tapping into the knowledge here and bringing it to the WTO forum is my mission for this fall. What are the policy issues that need to be dealt with in order to roll out a wider adaptation of Blockchain? (an example is the issue of landownership which works well with the technology but not with regulation since land ownership still needs to be handled on paper). What forums currently exist for governments and developers, private sector to discuss and cooperate? what issues are important for policy makers to know about? how can we bridge the gap between private sector, public sector and academic research?

The goal is to have someone with interesting insights come and talk to us on the next meeting I am scheduled to chair- in the beginning of November-  so ideas, suggestions and introductions are very welcome!

Updates:

Bobbi on NYCs BigApp Challenge, how her project "The Giving Chain" was picked as a project of special interest in the challenge. 

Planned Work Products

• White Paper subgroup
• Other projects as suggested by the membership.

Participant Diversity

The balance of Public Sector representatives, civil society, and private sector representatives remain a fairly even level. Gender diversity remains good, with about a third to half of participants on a given call being female identified. Participants are joining from all around the world, both as presenters and as membership.

Additional Information

The Public Sector SIG has maintained evolving this year. The notable addition has been bringing on two Vice Chairs, who function very similarly to Chairs.  We anticipate a continued diverse range of presentations, and look forward to continued collaboration around our first work product - the White Paper. The SIG welcomes new members - both with an interest in the Public Sector, as well as looking for generalist members who seek out key community strengthening activities, such as documentation, communication, reporting, etc. Additional suggestions and nominations of presenters and use cases are welcome on an ongoing basis.