Reality DLT: A 2019 Summary

Wallet.Services’ Strategic Transformation Director Dr Hannah Rudman reviews 2019 – a year in which Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) proved they could enable real and measurable citizen and business value. She highlights how our SICCAR platform has created reality DLT networks, working with increased efficiency, trust, transparency and cybersecurity in the public and private sectors.

The Oil and Gas sector (O&G)  ranks last of all industries in digital maturity (Deloitte’s study also noted that the industry loses $1.6 trillion in revenue by “failing to fully embrace digital”). However, a study conducted by the World Economic Forum concluded “digital transformation” in O&G had a total value of $1.6 trillion and could expand to $2.5 trillion if “existing organisational/operational constraints are relaxed” and “futuristic” technologies are embraced.

In 2019, Wallet.Services’ DLT Project Book network, a North Sea consortium supported by OGTC, committed to proving the digital transformation value of DLT. With our SICCAR platform, we demonstrated a distributed ledger technology (DLT) enabled project book, known conventionally as a Manufacturing Record Book (MRB), for a critical subsea asset. Working with Lloyd’s Register on the standardisation of the evidence and with Baker Hughes and Chevron on actual processes and data involved in the manufacture of parts in a Christmas Tree set, together with the Advanced Forming Research Centre, we have developed a proof of concept system to qualify the technology as a suitable method for the digitisation of MRBs. We also worked together to quantify the business benefit of realising a digitally-enabled supply chain – achieving cost savings versus paperwork systems of at least 3.2%.

A survey conducted by Ernst & Young (via Forbes), reported that 70% of O&G companies plan on deploying IoT this year and next. In 2019, I wrote about how DLT can assure and cybersecure IoT devices such as sensors and smart machines as actors into multiparty DLT networks. In 2020, our DLT Project Book consortium will expand to include more O&G companies and their IoT devices.

Across manufacturing and resources supply chains and chains of custody, DLT can streamline, simplify and speed the accuracy of contracts, invoices, scheduling, and other multiparty transactions while ensuring product integrity. This year we worked with Scottish Power Renewables to help better assure the quality and secure their remanufacturing supply chains by using SICCAR to set-up a DLT network. In the context of the Climate Emergency, remanufacturing is a topic of significant attention and a priority for many organisations in the energy sector. But often, remanufacturers are smaller businesses that find it difficult to provide enough documentation to satisfy big energy companies’ quality assurance requirements. The DLT network with remanufacturers enabled Scottish Power Renewables to have a greater level of assurance in the effectiveness of the repair. This allowed for the extension of the service lives of their parts due to a more efficient process, and improved trust in the efficacy of their remanufacturing supply chain.

Wallet.Services became Associates of The Power Networks Demonstration Centre to work across the energy sector on projects assuring the validity, veracity and security of distributed energy resources.

Only broad ecosystems have the know-how to help build, scale and “future-proof” interoperable solutions based on open systems and standards. As the manufacturing and energy sectors digitally transform into “co-economies”, companies must share and shape best practices among ecosystems of horizontal and vertical players. One area of particular concern is ensuring cybersecurity in such ecosystems. We are working with the Scottish Business Resilience Centre, The OGTC, and a number of O&G sector companies to develop SICCAR’s wallet services, so that organisations can report cybersecurity breaches to sector networks anonymously. The value is that ecosystems hear about breaches earlier, and can react to take protective action quicker, benefiting all parties, without risking individual brand reputation.

We have also been working with the food, drink and agriculture sector. Concerns over food and drink safety, authenticity and carbon footprint means that consumers, food manufacturers and sellers require trusted transparent evidence about the life cycle of products. Wallet.Services’ SICCAR platform is enabling traceability and transparency to prove compliance with certain quality standards across food, drink and agriculture supply chains without compromising commercially sensitive information.

In the public sector, we have just started work helping the Digital Health and Social Care Institute (DHI) discover how DLT can enable different support agencies to securely and safely share sensitive data about vulnerable people. With SICCAR, the DHI will be able to assure citizens and prove compliance with existing security and data processing requirements. Data subjects and end-users will be able to understand and see personal data from collection, throughout its storage, use, and disclosure.

We are also applying SICCAR to grants and benefit management. We’re helping the Student Awards Agency for Scotland discover how SICCAR DLT networks can help students and further/higher education institutions safely share sensitive data to ensure less friction in the administration of student grants and easier access to SAAS funding.

Using SICCAR, the Scottish Government’s Improvement Service and Wallet.Services are discovering how people with disabilities can automatically prove their identity and disabled status to multiple organisations.

Finally, we are looking forward to 2020 and discovering with the new Modern Medicines Innovation Centre, and with the just launched Centre for Advanced Measurement Research and Health Translation at the University of Strathclyde, together with LGC, the UK’s world-leading company for chemical and bio-measurement, how our SICCAR DLT platform can offer Pharma 4.0, Industry 4.0 and Agriculture 4.0 new business relationships and data access opportunities through proving strict governance and controlled permissions. We are also working with the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre to consider how we can work with the emerging sector to bring new proven and assured biotechnology processes and products to the global market.

Across public and private sectors, we are proving the real value and repeatability of SICCAR as a DLT platform to support supply chain networks and chain of custody ecosystems gain unprecedented efficiency, transparency, trust and security.