Federal agencies are casting their eyes to the convenience of blockchain in order to effectively track data.

According to FedTech magazine, federal agencies in the United States such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Treasury have started to use blockchain technology as part of their administrative systems. Trajected by the Coronavirus, the Food and Drug Administration has found a new to track data.

Blockchain was a solution considered in 2017 when the H1N1 swine flu virus had begun to spread and it appears that the federal agency is moving to adopt the technology to track and analyse data in real-time. With factors to consider before diving in, the agency wants to explore the advantages the technology holds more fully.

The associate director for data mining and informatics evaluation and research at the Agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Dr. Henry Francis commented:

“We designed an application that enabled us to acquire automatically encrypted data, in real-time, from many sources, and have an absolute record for all the participants. There are key policy and management issues we need to address, and we need to figure out how we govern a distributed network. We want to explore the value proposition more fully — does blockchain offer a real advantage over what we do today?”

Other departmental agencies turn to blockchain technology

In addition to the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Treasury has also fixed its eyes on the blockchain. The solution blockchain offers is to provide better tracking for mobile devices and to assist managing and analysing software licenses.

Further to this, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has begun implementing blockchain and distributed ledger technology to improve its purchasing power which ultimately stands to cut costs and improve record-keeping and data analysis. The FedTech report also notes that there are also other departments within the federal agencies using blockchain and exploring the technology as an option to improve systems.