Over 100 organizations and experts representing large
shippers, supply chain providers and governments, have teamed up with the World
Economic Forum (WEF) and the International Organization for Public-Private
Cooperation to co-design and pilot an open source “toolkit” to accelerate blockchain
deployment across supply chains, WEF said on Wednesday.
WEF’s Redesigning
Trust with Blockchain in the Supply Chain project focuses on using
blockchain technology to bring standardization and transparency in the fragmented
supply chain industry, while ensuring that the technology is deployed in an
interoperable, responsible and inclusive way.
The initiative convenes a broad, multi-stakeholder community
to co-design governance frameworks to accelerate the uses of blockchain in port
systems. A focus will be put on supporting an approach that considers the
entire ecosystem and which ensures an inclusive perspective that benefits all
stakeholders.
The frameworks developed will be prototyped
and piloted with relevant stakeholders, iterated based on learnings, and
then disseminated broadly for international adoption.
Organizations involved in the project include Maersk,
Hitachi, Mercy Corps, Korea Customs Service, Llamasoft as well as Ports of Los
Angeles, Oakland, Valencia and Rotterdam.
“As blockchain technology is so new, supply chain
decision-makers need clear guidelines, tools and frameworks to help them
maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of this technology,” said Nadia
Hewett, project lead of blockchain and distributed ledger technology at WEF.
“This toolkit will be built by the industry and piloted, so we can see what works and what does not. We are going to piece together the puzzle, so others don’t have to start from scratch.”
Bernhard Kowatsch, head of the World Food Programme (WFP)’s
Innovation Accelerator, said that a big part of WFP’s core operations revolves
around logistics and supply chain. WFP, a humanitarian organization part of the
United Nations system, distributes food and other
life-saving items to more than 91 million people in around 83 countries each
year.
“Becoming a part of the Forum’s Redesigning Trust:
Blockchain for Supply Chain community has provided us with the opportunity to
share real-world challenges and use cases, making invaluable connections
between the private and public sectors to assist us in the development of our
own innovative blockchain for supply chain projects,” Kowatsch said.
The multi-stakeholder group will co-design an open-source
roadmap to guide supply chain decision-makers towards blockchain deployment. It
will highlight technical and non-technical drivers of success, risks and
recommendations as well as requirements.
As part of the initiative, WEF will be releasing monthly
whitepapers on the findings from the group, and will formulate recommendations
and guidelines on topics such as on data privacy, security, creation and use of
data, public versus private platforms, interoperability, digital identity and
signatures.