Creation of the National Blockchain Committee and Approval of the National Guidelines for Blockchain.

Through Resolution 17/2022, issued on December 5, 2022, the Secretary of Public Innovation set up a National Blockchain Committee and adopted the National Guidelines on Blockchain to use the technology as a tool to enhance processes, policies, and services of the Federal Public Administration. This includes the Federal Administration, including both centralized and decentralized agencies; state-controlled corporations and companies; public entities expressly excluded from the Federal Administration, including any governmental non-business organizations with financial autonomy, its own legal standing and its own assets, where the Federal Government owns a majority shareholding or holds the majority decision-making power; and trust funds completely or mostly integrated by goods or funds belonging to the Federal State.

In this way, the Argentinian government keeps in line with the regional development on distributed ledger technologies (DLT) while developing its digital transformation.

 

The Resolution states that the head of the Secretary of Public Innovation will be the president of the Blockchain Committee, who will have the capacity of issuing complementary, clarifying, and regulatory rules, as well as of summoning entities of the Federal Public Sector deemed relevant for the contribution in the development of policies and blockchain-based solutions. Summoning these entities will not cause budget expenditures.

 

The recitals of the Resolution distinguish blockchain technology as a type of DLT. However, there may be other types of DLT not using chain of blocks.

 

Further, the Resolution approves the national guidelines for blockchain technology, which propose to set forth actions to implement a plan in Argentina.

 

In this sense, it includes the Annex I, which introduces the fundamentals of the national plan and the key aspects for executing it. It also highlights the features and basic elements of this technology and outlines its strengths and type classifications.

 

The Resolution also describes the immediate uses of blockchain in public administration. Mainly, it stresses that this technology is useful for (a) auditing, allowing the population to access –in a fast and simple way– to public information and (b) registration, certification, and management of citizen identity, as well as the property and possession of material and symbolic goods (preventing falsification and fraud in the management and use of different types of documents and titles granted by the Public Administration).

 

Likewise, it establishes that, due to the disruptive characteristic of this technology, it can be used as a tool for notaries; to register titles and assets; regarding health, to trace and correctly manipulate patients’ records; to encourage an open and transparent government and the possibility of creating smart cities; and to ensure the integrity of the content an institution, person, or company issues electronically.

 

On the other hand, the Resolution summarizes the pillars necessary to achieve a good blockchain technology regulation: identity, privacy, security and origin of the data, and governance.

 

Finally, Annex I recommends and a series of goals to be met to implement the national plan and adopt the technology. Among these recommendations are the promotion of pilot applications and experiences, the legal analysis of the technology, and the cooperation with other countries and international organizations to implement it.