The Ministry of Justice is working to implement blockchain technology in order to secure digital evidence, according to a blog post published by Balaji Anbil. Balaji Anbil, the Head of Digital Architecture & Cyber Security at Ministry of Justice UK, said that distributed ledger technology could be utilised to ease court processes when it came to dealing with digital evidence.
The department in question that would be taking part in the pilot program is Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). According to the blog post published by Anbil, a group leading the task held its first meeting on the topic in conjunction with the Open Innovations team at Cabinet Office.
The meeting was attended by Dr Sadek Ferdous, a Technology Policy Fellow and Research Associate at Imperial College, who provided a technical overview of Distributed Ledger Technology. Dr Ferdous delved into the security, scalability and cost profiles offered by DLY alongside speaking about the implementations of Hyperledger Fabricand Hyperledger Sawtooth Digital Ledger Technologies.
Anbil detailed on his blog the ambitions of the venture they are undertaking down at HMCTS, he added:
“At HMCTS, we are passionate about the application of novel solutions to traditional challenges including evidence sharing, identity management and ensuring citizens have maximum control over their own information. Our service designs are focused on value, simplicity and use of the best modern technology approaches. This brings numerous benefits including cost-effective and timely delivery and future-proof solutions.”
Anbil then went on to detail how the government project planned to draw from the experience gained from the undertakings in nations such as Estonia, who was an early adopter of blockchain technology. He writes:
“..researchers at the University of Surrey are working with the National Archives on Digital Ledger Technology solutions to secure digital archives. We are following this work with interest and plans to trial Digital Ledger Technology solutions for inter-agency evidence sharing later in 2018”.
Anbil’s blog post also mentioned how HMCTS will be piloting technology that would allow ‘inter-agency evidence sharing’ later on in this year. The head of Cyber Security finally ended with a positive outlook about future discussions that would be around topics of Artificial Intelligence, data science and criminology research along with cloud security.
