K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Cryptocurrencies — and blockchain, the decentralized distributed-ledger technology that powers them — are more popular than ever in mayor’s offices around the country. But technology officials, in cities like Miami, Philadelphia and San Jose, California, still have unanswered questions about how the technology applies to their local governments.
Though public blockchains — which provide a mostly tamper-proof method of keeping records without the need for a trusted third party — have existed for more than a decade, Miami Chief Information Officer Mike Sarasti said he only recently began taking them seriously. Sarasti told StateScoop that until 2021, he had mentally cast aside the technology as a “generic smart-city” sales pitch, most often encountered through cold emails or events held by blockchain enthusiasts within Miami’s budding technology sector.
And until recently, he said, he wasn’t swayed by blockchain’s potential government use cases, few of which have taken hold in cities. A handful of states have formed blockchain committees to study the technology in recent years, but locally, Sarasti said, “it didn’t really have a lot of meaning for me.”
“Everyone was just like ‘blah, blah, blockchain,’” Sarasti said.
A change of heart
Sarasti’s attitude changed, however, when Miami Mayor Francis Suarez took steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to embrace the technology. Suarez has courted cryptocurrency mining operations, considered paying city staff partially in bitcoin and recently went public with support for CityCoins, a cryptocurrency nonprofit that helps fund local governments with digital currency.
Now, “it’s a whole different ball game,” Sarasti said. Miami will soon invite companies to propose how they could help the city accept and invest in cryptocurrencies. Sarasti said the city is also exploring how validation, verification and auditing could be automated through the use of blockchain, potentially improving the efficiency of decades-old government processes, he said.
“Blockchain is creating a real possibility that those things at some point could be automated without the need for trust,” Sarasti said. “That’s the thing that well-designed, secure blockchains are enabling. They’re enabling an environment where you don’t need an individual guaranteeing trust — you now have the technology itself and you can now have trustless transactions.”
Sarasti said it will take time for those innovations to make their way into city government, largely because the knowledge required to navigate local government bureaucracy aren’t well-documented or easily translatable to software developers who’ve never been in government.
Continued reading: https://statescoop.com/cities-blockchain-cio/
Though public blockchains — which provide a mostly tamper-proof method of keeping records without the need for a trusted third party — have existed for more than a decade, Miami Chief Information Officer Mike Sarasti said he only recently began taking them seriously. Sarasti told StateScoop that until 2021, he had mentally cast aside the technology as a “generic smart-city” sales pitch, most often encountered through cold emails or events held by blockchain enthusiasts within Miami’s budding technology sector.
And until recently, he said, he wasn’t swayed by blockchain’s potential government use cases, few of which have taken hold in cities. A handful of states have formed blockchain committees to study the technology in recent years, but locally, Sarasti said, “it didn’t really have a lot of meaning for me.”
“Everyone was just like ‘blah, blah, blockchain,’” Sarasti said.
A change of heart
Sarasti’s attitude changed, however, when Miami Mayor Francis Suarez took steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to embrace the technology. Suarez has courted cryptocurrency mining operations, considered paying city staff partially in bitcoin and recently went public with support for CityCoins, a cryptocurrency nonprofit that helps fund local governments with digital currency.
Now, “it’s a whole different ball game,” Sarasti said. Miami will soon invite companies to propose how they could help the city accept and invest in cryptocurrencies. Sarasti said the city is also exploring how validation, verification and auditing could be automated through the use of blockchain, potentially improving the efficiency of decades-old government processes, he said.
“Blockchain is creating a real possibility that those things at some point could be automated without the need for trust,” Sarasti said. “That’s the thing that well-designed, secure blockchains are enabling. They’re enabling an environment where you don’t need an individual guaranteeing trust — you now have the technology itself and you can now have trustless transactions.”
Sarasti said it will take time for those innovations to make their way into city government, largely because the knowledge required to navigate local government bureaucracy aren’t well-documented or easily translatable to software developers who’ve never been in government.
Continued reading: https://statescoop.com/cities-blockchain-cio/
