The United Nations leaned into blockchain technology to review its own pension system, and a study of this process concluded that innovation is “Ultimate Technology for Digital Identity Verification” that has spurred the UN to expand the system and share it with other international groups.
The UN – which has explored various blockchain uses over the years – has tried it on their UN Joint Personnel Pension Fund (UNJSPF), according to a White Paper released this week, which suggested it was used to confirm people’s identities, can help with security, efficiency and transparency. In collaboration with the Hyperledger Foundation, the UN tried to “improve and secure the UN pension process globally by putting a blockchain-supported digital identification infrastructure for production.”
The UN pension fund had worked on a 70-year-old system to identify recipients in 190 countries, relying on a paper-based approach to prove that more than 70,000 recipients were the one they said they were still alive and where they claimed to be. It was inclined to mistake and abuse and resulted in approx. 1,400 payment suspension each year, according to the document. So the organization switched to the blockchain-driven digital certification, starting with a 2020 pilot program and a 2021 implementation.
“The shift away from physical documentation has significantly reduced treatment times previously spent on reception, opening, scanning and filing of paper documents,” the paper said.
Blockchain helped eliminate the single-point-of-Fiasko problem, as a centrally administered approach, according to the paper, according to the paper that detailed the process and results, can be repeated elsewhere. Its open access and usability from multiple devices reduces the repeated need for identity control, the authors found.
The UN is investigating spreading similar technology throughout its own system and sharing it elsewhere as a “digitally public good” that seeks to expand the digital certificate for the right to other international organizations.
“The project has not only provided a technical prototype, but also an operational model for how organizations across the UN family can work together to design safe, scalable and inclusive digital public infrastructures,” wrote Sameer Chauhan, the director of the United Nations International Computing Center, in a conclusion included in the paper.
