MyPass

[Dean Collins]

The use of “blockchain” is a bit hokey but interesting idea to help homeless people store ready access to data - https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/austin-sees-future-of-homeless-digital-ids-after-losing-grant-contest/1568579041

 

Someone should pitch this to one of the Sydney/Melbourne outreach charities to localize this idea.

 

 

Regards,

 

Dean Collins
Cognation Inc
de...@cognation.net
+1-212-203-4357        New York
+61-2-9016-5642        (Sydney in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001      (London in-dial).

 

 

 

[drllau]

there is higher upfront development cost for a decentralised application ... as always I ask the question what would a blockchain do that a centralised database can't and the only plausible rational is privacy, or more precisely the right to forget. I was in UK for a few months and found out that surprisingly that a fair chunk of the homeless (or rough living in cars or caravans) was not because of mental illness or abject poverty but because some professional people (especially older) lost their jobs/spouse or had a serious medical misadventure which cascaded a pile of debt rendering them uncredit worthy or filing for bankruptcy.

This would be a scenario I can imagine a blockchain would be of interest because on one hand you do want to record temporary situation when applying for aid, but on the other hand once you get back on feet, you don't want permanent black mark ... private credit scoring tends to be rather punitive. So have a history which shows immutable history without the shame that goes with attending CentreLink's "job" preparation alongside teens might have a user story.

>Someone should pitch this to one of the Sydney/Melbourne outreach charities to localize this idea.

This might work in place like India which accepts social ventures as normal but good luck in applying this to Aust where govt historically been held responsible for social/community financing. As for who pays for development (privacy testing, etc) that is the question since the user (agencies needing to access records) and customer (homeless who benefits) are separate, I see conflicts of interest and potential distrust (which is where the blockchain comes back in).

Lawrence

http://www.linkedin.com/in/drllau