The Government of Ireland has announced it will host Blockathon Ireland – a blockchain hackathon to identify public services business problems that can be solved using blockchain technology.

The event will be organized by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in association with the Department of Finance at The Innovation Academy in Temple Bar with the participation of more than 10 technical teams.

The hackathon is expected to see potential business problems provided in advance to technical teams, ranging from medical device tracking in the HSE, to verifying CSO data and tracking State aid for Enterprise Ireland.

The goal of the event is to foster the real-life uses of distributed ledger technology in the public sector by improving the current user experience, efficiency and more. In order to promote cross-functional collaboration between Government, academia and the private sector, the judges are the expert stakeholders from the country’s blockchain community.

According to Paschal Donohoe Donohoe – Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform,

“Consulting and engaging experts on innovation from across the public sector, academia and the private sector to share ideas is a valuable action under the strategy, and this hackathon offers an opportunity to do so.”

He further noted:

“Blockchain technologies have proposed new economic, business, social and technological models that have the potential to significantly impact business and society.”