With the advent of multiple emerging technologies, we are on the verge of an information-driven Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
This revolution exposes new challenges as well as
exciting opportunities. Only the countries with expertise in these emerging technologies can
successfully meet the challenges and exploit the opportunities. Blockchain technology is widely
regarded as one of the cores and foundational technologies that will be one of the driving forces
for the upcoming 4IR. Realizing its potential, many developed, as well as developing countries
around the world, have started exploring how blockchain technology can prepare them for
future challenges and benefit them to solve many existing complex problems to achieve the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. This strategy is an effort from the Government
of Bangladesh that recognizes the need to explore blockchain technology in order to advance its
technical capacity, increase efficiency in e-Governances, and foster innovations. Here, we would
like to highlight our extraordinary ambition: to guide Bangladesh into a blockchain-enabled
nation. With this vision in mind, this document explores different aspects of this vision with a
particular focus on formulating the strategies and different long, mid, and short-term goals to
achieve this vision.
Blockchain or Distributed ledger technology (DLT) can be used to store permanent and
tamper-proof records of digital data (digital assets). A blockchain is a distributed ledger consisting
of consecutive ‘blocks’ of digital data chained together following a strict set of rules. The ledger
is distributed and stored by the nodes (computers) of a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Each block
of data is periodically added to the ledger in a decentralized fashion. The order of the blocks is
confirmed through the use of a distributed consensus algorithm. There are major two types of
blockchain: private and public; both systems exhibit desirable properties such as immutability
and irreversibility of ledger state, data persistence, and provenance, accountability and
transparency, etc. An extended overview of the types and properties of blockchain is presented
in Section 2.
In our quest to create a blockchain-enabled nation, there must be some technological
visions that will be essential ingredients to realize this notion of a blockchain-enabled nation.
We also need to ensure that these visions enable the country to achieve and maintain
sustainable development growth. In Section 3, we present the technological visions and analyze
how blockchain technology can be effectively leveraged to fulfill these visions. In addition, we also
propose a few strategic blockchain agendas that lay down the pathway to guide Bangladesh
towards a blockchain-enabled nation.
Following the outlined pathway, we, at first, explore different use-cases in multiple
application domains and briefly investigated the suitability of blockchain from Bangladesh's
perspective. This analysis is presented in Section 4. Then, we have surveyed different technical
and organizational challenges that we may face in our blockchain adoption pathway. Next, we
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have considered different other aspects of the proposed agendas. These challenges and a
detailed discussion on the agendas are presented in Section 5.
To fulfill the desire of a blockchain-enabled nation, we must strive to achieve the outlined
visions and take appropriate measures to address the agendas. Transforming visions and agendas
into measurable goals is often useful as goals are easy to track and are more concrete in nature
in comparison to visions and agendas. Therefore, we have formulated a series of long, mid, and
short-term goals. Long-term goals are mostly visionary in nature and generally can be achieved
in six to ten years. Short-term goals, on the other hand, are preparatory in nature and easier to
achieve in less than three years. Mid-term goals can act as a bridge between short and long-term
goals and can be useful in transition phases. These goals are then transformed into action points
for subsequent follow-up. The goals and their corresponding action points are presented in
Section 6
Summary of action points
Here, we summarise the key action points.
● Build a team of blockchain experts, seasoned technologists, academicians,
government officials and other stakeholders.
● Prioritise use-cases for initial piloting. Highlight those use-cases that can bring
huge benefits to government service delivery models.
● Formulate plans to develop a blockchain integrated national information
infrastructure.
● Develop plans to integrate the most relevant online services with a suitable
blockchain platform.
● Develop capacity by promoting research, innovation and training and by
increasing awareness.
● Release funds to initiate and maintain these activities.