Mexico. Recently, the intention of the Mexican Government to integrate Blockchain technology into its governance model has been mentioned more strongly, especially since it has submitted this model to a public consultation that was in force between August and September 2018 in a digital format, where you can see the result and online participation in the micro site of the Governance Model to create the Blockchain Network Mexico.
Adrián Díaz Luján, CBO of Katun, affirms that these intentions have been developing since previous years, such as the BlockHACKMX hackathon at Campus Party 2017, where the winning team sought to apply the technology to the bidding process and was put into test this year.
Blockchain technology provides ideal features for this type of process, since an application of this type boosts transparency by showing in real time the executed transactions, with enough privacy so that users feel tranquility and confidence when using it. For example, in a public consultation (such as those proposed by the president-elect in the next six years), if it were driven by this technology, users could express their opinion and observe in real time that their participation is reflected in the consultation, but without showing their information.
However, in all the attempts made or mentioned so far, only analysis and implementation efforts have been made on platforms that cannot provide sustainability and efficiency to the solution, because their objective is focused on financial aspects.
An issue that is not mentioned is that each Blockchain platform has its own characteristics, and these must meet or align with the objectives of the solution, as it must not only meet requirements such as decentralization or distribution, security based on cryptographic algorithms or smart contracts, but also with the specific needs of its objective.
There is talk, for example, of the energy inefficiency of some cryptocurrencies, of the variable prices of transaction fees of dominant Blockchain platforms or of the complexity and high costs in contracting semi-private Blockchain solutions; but the main needs for its implementation in corporate or governance purposes, as is the case of citizen consultations, are not mentioned.
In this sense, for the purpose of citizen consultations it will be necessary to integrate in an agile way different technologies to integrate the entire current process and cover the needs of a citizen consultation. For this, the chosen Blockchain platform must have communication mechanisms with existing technologies, recognize unique identities, comply with current regulations and, above all, not exceed costs, which represent its benefits and have the ability to support the use of a representative population of a nominal list of 90 million Mexicans.
Blockchain, in short, is the technology that could power the platforms and the current governance model. The real question is which platform is right for this purpose?
