TN Blockchain Policy 2020
TN Blockchain Policy 2020
TN Blockchain Policy 2020
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Contents
Executive Summary 7
1. Introduction 9
2. Why Blockchain in e-Governance? 11
3. Goals and Objectives of the Policy 12
4. Applicability of the Policy 15
5. Implementation Strategy 17
6. Tamil Nadu State-wide Blockchain Backbone 19
7. Use Case Selection and Prioritization 21
8. Guidelines for Building Blockchain Applications 23
9. Capacity Building and Awareness 29
10. Encouragements for adoption
of Blockchain Technology 31
10.1 Forum for Blockchain Ecosystem Development 31
10.2 App Development Platform 32
10.3 Regulatory Sandbox 33
11. Oversight Mechanism 35
11.1 TN Blockchain Policy Implementation Committee 35
11.2 Protocols and Standards Committee 36
11.3 Legal and Regulatory Committee 37
12. Conclusion 38
13. References 39
Tamil Nadu Block Chain Policy
Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
Executive Summary
Blockchain Technology will play a huge role in e-Governance in the near future. It is
expected to enable governments to build secure, auditable and efficient government
workflows and processes. These modernized workflows can equip the government to
design citizen centric applications that cater to different verticals of governance including
agriculture, healthcare, data security and integrity, identity management and benefits and
subsidy distribution. Blockchain will benefit the residents of Tamil Nadu by delivering better
and more secure governance and efficient service delivery.
To achieve these goals, this policy proposes a top driven strategy that will ensure
that all Blockchain implementation in governance meets guidelines and standards for
design, development and deployment to ensure uniform architecture and adherence to
security protocols. Additionally, the policy proposes a State-wide Blockchain Backbone that
can be used by Government Departments and public sector enterprises for building and
deploying e-Governance applications. This will enable the Government Departments to deliver
services to people securely and efficiently. In addition, the policy charts out regulations and
security standards and addresses ethical or legal concerns arising from the technology.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Introduction
Governments can play an important role as a regulator as well as a consumer of
Blockchain technology. Several governments around the world, notably Estonia, Georgia
and Singapore1, have introduced Blockchain Technology in governance. The Government
of India and a number of State Governments in India are planning to implement this
Technology for improving governance. The Hon’ble Prime Minister of India has highlighted
the Blockchain technology as an important tool for bringing in transparency and efficiency
to Government processes2 . Several State Governments have carried out proof of concept
implementations in areas like land registration, healthcare and digital identity. The Hon’ble
Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu has taken the Leadership in using this Technology and has
announced the creation of Tamil Nadu State-wide Blockchain Backbone for delivering
secure and efficient services to the people of Tamil Nadu3. The Government believes
that this technology will enable them to enhance the quality of the services provide to
citizens as well as bring in more efficiency and transparency to Government processes. While
using Blockchain Technology it is also to be kept in mind that a wise selection of use cases
is made and this technology is applied only when there is a clear advantage made out.
This Policy is a guide for the path ahead in using Blockchain technology within the
State of Tamil Nadu.
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Tamil Nadu Block Chain Policy
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Why Blockchain
in e-Governance?
As a network technology that promises interoperability, transparency and immutability
Blockchain has numerous end-benefits for governments. It can be harnessed for providing
accountable and efficient governance to our citizens. Consider the following areas where
Blockchain can have a sizeable impact.
2. Blockchain can be used as a source of authentication and verification for all the
information and data produced by government departments.
4. Blockchain can also be used to build better supply chains for government, exchanging
encrypted inter-department communication, and maintaining health records for
citizens and so on.
The end goal in all these cases is providing better services to citizens. This document
provides guidance for leveraging Blockchain to accomplish this for the residents of
Tamil Nadu.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Goals & Objectives
of the Policy
Following are the goals of this Policy -
1. To make Tamil Nadu a global leader in Blockchain Technology.
2. Provide faster, efficient, secure and transparent delivery of services to the people of
Tamil Nadu by building new e-Governance Blockchain applications and to augment
existing Governance workflows and processes with Blockchain.
4. Provide new opportunities to people of Tamil Nadu and organizations of Tamil Nadu
and help create a thriving ecosystem including Blockchain entrepreneurs and
community development.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
3. To build a regulatory sandbox that can be used for building and deploying Blockchain
applications.
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Tamil Nadu Block Chain Policy
Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Applicability of the Policy
This policy will be applicable to the following –
1. Any authority or body in Tamil Nadu, established or constituted under any central or
state law and owned or controlled by the Government of Tamil Nadu or which receives
any aid directly or indirectly from the Government of Tamil Nadu.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Implementation Strategy
Following is the high-level strategy the policy will employ to achieve the end goals and
objectives listed in Section 3 –
4. Laying out a plan for Blockchain capacity building within Tamil Nadu for Government
Executives and Officers.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Tamil Nadu State-wide
Blockchain Backbone
The policy recommends building a Blockchain Backbone infrastructure (network) for the
state of Tamil Nadu. This infrastructure would funtion as the single source of truth and trust
anchor for all government processes and data. This Blockchain Backbone would be used
by the State of Tamil Nadu for reimagining governance and for encouraging adoption of
Blockchain within the State. Following are some of the design recommendation for this
network.
2. The Blockchain stack would have a modular architecture with modular components
that can be used to build applications and workflows, significantly reducing the
go-to-market time and cost for application development.
3. The platform would be capable of creating and deploying blockchain applications for all
government departments and public sector enterprises of Tamil Nadu.
4. The seed nodes of the network (Initial nodes) shall be created and hosted by TNeGA.
As new applications are deployed to production, the respective user department shall
setup nodes on the peer to peer network to access their applications and secure the
network from unauthorized modifications.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
6. To ensure sanctity and accuracy of data captured on the Blockchain, data added to the
infrastructure needs to be cleaned, de-duplicated and processed before submitting it to
the Blockchain.
7. The platform would have a modular, evolving, and open architecture which would
provide access to other third parties and interoperate with other Blockchain networks
if required.
Over a period, this platform would evolve as a trust anchor for all Government
departments interacting with the citizens.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Use Case Selection and Prioritization
For Blockchain Technology to be successfully adopted in Tamil Nadu, Government of
Tamil Nadu would select and prioritize the use cases for Blockchain implementation.
The Government would prioritize the areas of Governance where Blockchain will have
a significant positive impact. Initially following areas would be taken up for blockchain
Implementation.
1. Data integrity and audit trails for government data and documents including inter and
intra-organizational data and files and certificates, receipts, licenses, identification
documents, blueprints etc. generated from the e-Sevai platform and other
TN government portals.
3. Creating a portable digital identity and implementing privacy protection for residents of
Tamil Nadu.
4. Securing TN government websites and portals from cyber security threats and
unauthorized modifications using Blockchain technology.
7. Creating a secure healthcare platform that caters to all the residents of Tamil Nadu.
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Tamil Nadu
Nadu Blockchain
Blockchain Policy
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Tamil Nadu
Nadu Blockchain
Blockchain Policy
Policy
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Guidelines for Building
Blockchain Applications
For the Blockchain initiative to be successful it is essential to have a set of
guidelines and standards that need to be followed for building Blockchain
applications on the State-wide Blockchain Backbone.
a. Consensus/Ordering Mechanisms
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
i. Deployment processes
Organizations within the purview of this policy would need to abide by the above
standards. This list would be updated based on developments in the field of Blockchain
and the stakeholders would be notified.
3. The Committees would chart out a SOP for evaluating and approving requests
submitted for network creation and application development. They would also create a
plan for periodically auditing these applications and networks.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
1. All Blockchain network formation requests for government departments and public
sector entities need to be submitted to the committees for approval and sign-off.
Requests will be evaluated based on the impact and value-proposition of the network
and the intended application(s). The Committees will oversee the compliance of all
networks subject to this policy and approve creation of any such network. The same
process is to be followed for dismantling and retiring a network.
3. Organizations would only work with Blockchain platforms that have been extensively
peer reviewed and have been approved to be used in production by the committees.
Underlying cryptographic algorithms used should not have security loopholes that can
be exploited by malicious actors.
5. In the event that citizen private data is shared on a Blockchain, all stakeholders
involved in building the application are responsible for ensuring that the applications
have suitable access controls, consent seeking mechanisms and security measures in
place to prevent any leak of confidential data and unauthorized access. Organizations
should work towards implementing privacy preserving mechanisms such as zero
knowledge proof workflows, so that citizen’s identity and data is secure.
6. Consensus / ordering mechanism used for operating the Blockchain networks should
be in line with guidelines issued by the committees.
7. Networks should have clearly defined rules for participation, participant roles
and access control. It should have rules for node custodians, identity management
(issuing and revoking keys) network access for non-node custodian participants
etc. These rules should accompany the request for network creation.
The committees should be notified in case participants are added
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
9. Blockchain implementation should clearly list the different category of nodes including
validating nodes. The updated node directory with the list of participants and their node
details should be shared with the committees periodically.
10. Organizations should mandatorily implement a secure process for storing and
retrieving keys used to access and submit transactions to the Blockchain network.
11. All blockchain networks and applications should be interoperable and compatible with
the Tamil Nadu Blockchain Backbone to allow easy integration.
12. All applications deployed in production need to ensure that they are not in violation of
any National Laws or State Laws of Tamil Nadu. This applies to funding and revenue
generation mechanisms and any other guidelines published by the committees.
13. Complete confidentiality should be maintained with regards to the architecture and
components of the application, network and Blockchain Backbone, especially in
cases where publicly disclosing certain information might lead to compromising the
security of the network or any dependent applications.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
14. It is essential that applications follow a mobile first strategy, wherever feasible, to
ensure greater inclusivity. Applications and workflows should provide support for
feature phones as well as smart phones through mobile apps, SMS, IVRS and other
inclusive communication channels.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Capacity Building
& Awareness
Senior executives and officials of the government need to be aware of
blockchain technology and have a good understanding of the opportunity
it provides to augment their existing workflows and processes
and build new services. At the same time, they need to understand the
risks and suitable mitigations for using this technology and the security
protocols that would be in place to leverage it successfully. The Policy
propose the following initiatives –
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Encouragements for
Adoption of Blockchain
Technology
10.1 Forum for Blockchain Ecosystem Development :
2. Providing a forum for exchange of ideas for making Tamil Nadu a Global Leader in
Blockchain Technology.
3. Outlining a high-level plan for evolving Tamil Nadu’s Blockchain infrastructure with the
focus on enabling private sector, start-ups and academia.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
This modular architecture is expected to reduce the development life cycle for apps built
on this platform. It would enable stakeholders to create custom node infrastructure specific
use cases and reduce the overhead for nodes hosting the Blockchain Platform.
Developers can access these modules and the underlying Blockchain layer through API
gateways. The Policy recommends that the TNeGA shall develop and distribute Software
Development Kit (SDK) for the API gateways that can be used for app development.
The modular approach and SDKs will allow Government Departments to work with multiple
start-ups and enterprises. They can leverage the underlying Blockchain Backbone for
building Apps and integrating legacy solutions.
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10.3 Regulatory Sandbox
The policy recommends that the Government should provision for a semi-regulated
sandbox environment for building e-Governance applications using Blockchain. Applica-
tion developers for the Blockchain Backbone need access to controlled testing environ-
ment for building and testing products and services. This controlled environment would be a
complete or partial replica of the live environment with slightly relaxed regulations, so
developers are able to recreate live-like scenarios and observe the behaviour of the
applications and test the project’s viability.
Regulators and policy makers benefit from sandboxes as they can draft policies
and regulations in response and take a pro-active approach to new technical
innovations. Sandboxes allow for evidence based decision making.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
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Oversight Mechanism
For effective implementation of the policy and ensure that all stakeholders
meet the goals and objectives of the policy, the policy recommends Formulating
Committees and Regulatory bodies that will drive the implementation and adoption of
Blockchain in the State.
These Committees should include representation from the Government, public sector,
private sector and academia to enforce guidelines and ensure that the end goals are met.
Following are some of the important committees and bodies that should be set up:
This would be the core committee that drives and guides the implementation of
Blockchain with the e-Governance structure in Tamil Nadu. The committee would be led
by CEO, TNeGA and include Secretaries/Senior Officers from IT and other departments,
participants from public sector enterprises working with Blockchain technology and
renowned Blockchain experts from the industry and academia. The main mission of this
committee would be to shape the vision of implementing Blockchain in the state and
updating the policy in line with advancements in Blockchain Technology and prevailing
conditions of Blockchain adoption in the State. Additionally, the committee should monitor
the Blockchain Backbone project, ensuring the timelines and milestones are met and create
future roadmap for the platform.
1. Ensure current and future blockchain implementations and applications in Tamil Nadu
are aligned with the policy.
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
3. Guide other committees to ensure that the guidelines and standards issued for
Blockchain applications are adhered to.
4. Define and guide the roadmap of the Blockchain backbone and the end goals and
objectives for each phase of development.
A protocol and standards committee would be setup. It would create and enforce
security, architecture, coding and smart contract standards and SOPs for deploying
and operating government Blockchain applications and applications deployed to the
Blockchain Backbone. The committee would be led by CEO, TNeGA and include Secretaries/
Senior Officers from IT and other departments, Participants from public sector enterprises
working with Blockchain Technology, and renowned Blockchain Experts from the Industry
and academia, representatives from the Tamil Nadu state data centre and third party audit
partners.
The protocols and standards that would be devised should include the following. This list
is just indicative and not exhaustive –
1. Creating a broad technology stack that developers can leverage to design and build
solutions.
2. Establishing data sharing and privacy norms. Defining what data can and cannot be
shared. Ideally organizations should avoid sharing any citizen data on a Blockchain. In
specific use cases requiring sharing of data, the data should be encrypted or identifying
fields should be removed before posting it on Blockchain. Appropriate access controls
should be implemented to ensure read/write access is available on a need to know/edit
basis.
3. Designing suitable authentication protocols and access controls for accessing the
Blockchain backbone APIs.
4. Creating best practices for designing Blockchain solution architecture and for
production and test deployment as defined in the section on guidelines.
5. Defining a detailed Security Policy for all Tamil Nadu Blockchain applications.
1. Study and recommend how notarization and authentication can be authorized through
Blockchain technology so identity, documents and data generated and managed through
Blockchain can be used as artefacts in the court of Law.
2. Defining a legal framework for arbitrating and settling disputes arising from smart
contracts and Blockchain applications.
3. Establish a clear data privacy policy to define what can and cannot be shared on
the Blockchain and who can have access to the same. Ensure that any Blockchain
implementation is not in violation of a citizen’s right to privacy.
The Committee should have representation from policy makers, technologists and
the legal community to ensure successful adoption and implementation of Blockchain
technology within the State.
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Conclusion
This Policy provides a high-level plan for introducing and adopting Blockchain
technology within the state of Tamil Nadu. The Government looks forward to
implementing this technology within the e-Governance system and enable other Government
departments and agencies to leverage it to build apps and solutions. The policy aims to
strengthen Tamil Nadu’s prowess in Blockchain technology and make it a leader globally
and deliver citizen centric services that are faster, efficient and secure.
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References
1 Global advancements in Blockchain for Government application
Estonia - https://qz.com/1535549/living-on-the-Blockchain-is-a-game-changer-for-estonian-
citizens/
Georgia - https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/inov_a_00276
Singapore - https://www.ledgerinsights.com/tribe-accelerator-Blockchain-ecosystem/
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Tamil Nadu Blockchain Policy
TNeGA
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