The official institution responsible for the records of the United Kingdom, The National Archives (TNA), announced that it is investigating the use of blockchain technology for the exchange of records and information.
A research project under the name "Archangel" is run by the University of Surrey and integrates partners such as Open Data Institute. Among other objectives, the initiative will explore to what extent the blockchain technology can address essential issues related to the management of files and records.
A blog post reads:
"How can we prove that the record they see today is the same one that had been entrusted to the archive 20 years before? ... How do we ensure that citizens continue to see archives as trusted custodians of the digital public record? Archangel is exploring how we can know that a digital record has been modified and if the change was legitimate, so that ultimately it can still be trusted as the authentic record. " - Alex Green, manager of digital preservation services at The National Archives.
After this, Green says that the project is specifically oriented to investigate the way in which blockchain can achieve this.
As one of the largest and oldest records institutions in the world, The Archives is an expert in improving common practices and setting trends with its registration protocols.
In this sense, the project has as main objective "to provide a vertical impact to specific sectors within the panorama of the Archives and Institutions of Memory (AMI), promoted through the end user's partner, The National Archives".
Archangel has a proposed calendar of 18 months. It is established as a prototype of a distributed accounting technology (DLT) service that "will gather robust digital signatures derived from physical-digital content and digitally generated content," according to Green.
