Dear Community Members,

I recently met a professor from Manchester University who together with her team built a wonderful platform helping to fight modern slavery using Hyperledger Fabric. On Thursday November 28th at 14:30 to 16:30 there will be a meeting with a live demo of their platform. Below you can find a description of the solution. If you would like to join the webex meeting please let us know (Ser-Huang email:ser-huang.poon@...).

 

Modern slavery is a complex crime and there are many organisations, viz. charities, NGOs, law enforcement agencies etc., involved in tackling it. This, when combined with the extreme sensitivity of the data, poses major challenges in the communication between organisations. We believe that a trusted decentralised network, based on the blockchain distributed ledger technology, can greatly facilitate such communication making collaborations more effective in the respective local networks, with the strong potential of producing a separate global network as a natural outcome over time.

A blockchain, as implemented here, is an immutable collection of time ordered records, called the “ledger”, submitted by network participants. Each participant has an identical copy of the “ledger” that is updated in real time, hence the system is free from single-point failure.  The blockchain is managed by consensus, so new participants can join the network based an agreed protocol.  Its legacy does not depend on any specific participant(s) so long as, at all time, there are a minimum of two participants in the network. Indeed, creating a self-sustaining network of information exchange to fight the blight of modern slavery is the drive underlying the proposed project.  Together with minimal barriers to entry, robust self-governing structure, absolute control over confidential data, and minimum demand on network connectivity should allow an initially established network to organically expand its reach.

To this end, we formed a pivotal partnership with the Greater Manchester Police’s specialist anti-slavery unit, Programme Challenger, to produce a realistic deployable prototype, "Enduring Net Communication Organiser ENv.1" which is basically a "WhatsApp lookalike" sitting on a blockchain. The demo will include
- hyperledger fabric installation
- admin: manage organisations and users on the network
- operations: add/manage records/incidents, request for actions, view notifications and history
- all other functionalities (e.g. case management, link/unlink records/incidents, victim/survivor personal details) will be on a "mock up" version only.

This meeting is mainly scheduled for the Greater Manchester Police key personnel. We are in the process of reaching out to Street Support which includes several NGOs working with homeless people in Manchester. There will be Manchester researchers and visitors from outside university. But due to the technical nature of the demo, the meeting will be restricted to 16 on site participants; no restrictions on participants joining via webEx. 

 

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Marta Geater-Piekarska
Director of Ecosystem, Hyperledger
 

SCHEDULE A MEETING WITH ME:  calendly.com/mpiekarska

marta@...
+447802336641 (U.K) - Signal and Whatsapp
Wickr: martap

Skype: martapiekarska

 

Based in the U.K.