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Smart Dubai, in collaboration with IBM, has announced the Dubai Blockchain Platform, an enterprise-ready government-endorsed blockchain platform as-a-service in the UAE.
Built locally in the UAE, the platform is delivered through an IBM Cloud environment and will help domestic as well as overseas organizations to transition their blockchain testing and development into full-production. It will also transform and digitize applicable government processes and citizen services.
The platform will conform to the Information Security Regulation (ISR) standards issued by the Dubai Government. It will be powered by IBM's mainframe technology, LinuxONE, which is capable of running more than 6.2 billion web transactions per day.
Organizations will benefit from keeping their data in-country and conducting transactions locally, which in turn will help them drive operational costs down. The platform will also help integrate digitized services and experiences run on IBM Blockchain into citizens' day-to-day lives.
According to the official release, the Dubai Pay Blockchain Settlement and Reconciliation System, which was launched in September, will be one of the first projects to migrate onto the new platform. Through this service, a process that used to take entities approximately 45 days to reconcile and settle payments with other government entities, banks and financial institutions, is now reduced to real time.
Dubai has been spearheading blockchain efforts in order to make the emirate a paperless government by 2021. It has launched various blockchain applications in a number of government entities as part of the Dubai Blockchain Strategy, for which IBM is the official Blockchain Strategic Partner.
"The Dubai Blockchain Strategy set a clear path for the emirate to have the world's first fully digitized government by 2021. The Dubai Blockchain Platform we are launching today with IBM – who bring a wealth of insight and expertise in the advanced tech industries – drives us forward in our mission and allows us to power all blockchain applications in the city from one united portal,” Her Excellency Dr. Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director General of the Smart Dubai Office (SDO), said.
Last week, Smart Dubai signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IBM with the aim of setting up a Data Science Lab.
