Estonian Experience
In Estonia, a trusted third party interface to the blockchain system has been connected to the basic X-Road interdepartmental interaction system, which allows any public authority to use this service for the purposes it needs. The main task, which was solved at the same time, was to ensure reliable control of the integrity and authenticity of the information in state systems in view of possible cyber attacks.
As a result, the blockchain system de facto performs the functions of a trusted timestamp service provider. This provides an additional level of control over the integrity and authenticity of documents and information. The documents themselves, however, are not placed in the blockchain solution.
In particular, the blockchain is used to document information about who had access to documents about the health of citizens of the country.
In Estonia use “Infrastructure signature without using key” (Keyless Signature Infrastructure, KSI) firms Giardtime) — KSI Blockchain — e-Estonia.
At the recently held in Croatia conference INFuture, 2017 Estonian representatives reported that the popular technology “blockchain”, which is the basis of the most famous cryptocurrency and whose usefulness is now being studied and tested by the world’s largest banks and governments, has been used for some time in the public systems of Estonia. This allows every Estonian to check at any time which public authority has access to his / her electronic data, and any such access to personal data is documented, as this ensures the transparency, security, and authenticity of the data.
At the DLM forum 2017 conference, Kuldar AAS, Deputy Director of the electronic archive of the National archives of Estonia (Kuldar Aas), spoke about the already accumulated national experience in the use of blockchain systems in such areas as e-health, land cadastre and registers of legal entities, wills — and raised the question that it is also time for archivists to get acquainted with this technology and assess its potential for solving the problem of ensuring the long-term preservation of electronic materials.