ECM: Transition to content services continues

Blockchain on track to ensure document integrity

In addition to its better known role as a secure, distributed ledger, blockchain may come to be widely used to ensure that documents such as contracts or reports have not been changed. “To date, no one has figured out how to break the blockchain algorithm,” said Erik Severinghaus, senior VP of strategy for SpringCM, a DocuSign company. “Therefore, it can be used to ensure that the integrity of documents is preserved. Government operations could benefit from this technology because information such as social security numbers or vote ballots could be validated.”

Blockchain works by connecting or chaining together blocks of data in a way that makes it impossible for any of them to be removed, changed, or for another block to be inserted. The data is distributed across a network rather than being maintained centrally. “The characteristics of blockchain will allow for verification of documents such as land deeds to ensure that they are valid,” Severinghaus added.

A long string of numbers and letters called a hash is calculated by a hashing algorithm and is used to represent the contents of a document. It becomes part of the data stored in the next block. If even the smallest change is made in the data represented by the hash, then the block is invalidated and “unchained,” and the blockchain reverts to the previous version.

Large vendors are taking blockchain seriously for an increasingly wide range of applications; Oracle  is already marketing a blockchain cloud platform that works with its cloud applications. One of its customers, a shipment management company, is reporting a 65% savings in time on its paper documentation for shipments. Blockchain is used to ensure trust in the transactions. McKinsey & Company predicted several years ago that government agencies would use blockchain in a secure infrastructure to manage digitized government records and contracts, and in fact that is now the case. A number of states in the U.S. are using or testing blockchain, and governments in several other countries have made significant advances in practical application of this technology.