Chi Onwurah – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chi Onwurah on 2016-07-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to his Department’s distributed ledger technology benefits payments trial, what blockchain technology is being used for that trial; whether he plans to dismantle that blockchain technology once that trial has ended; and which organisations outside the Government will have access to (a) that blockchain technology and (b) the data stored as part of that trial.

Damian Hinds

The DWP works continuously with industry partners to identify and test new innovations that could save taxpayer money, safeguard information and better protect payments to customers.

The DWP is undertaking some small scale research involving blockchain technology which is expected to last 3-6 months with the results available in the last quarter of 2016. It uses a private permissioned distributed ledger to allow participants to store their transactions, including payments from DWP. Those transactions can then be viewed securely on a mobile application so that they can, if they wish, monitor and allocate their spending into categories, check their available balance and plan future spending. There are currently about 12 people in the trial which we expect to increase to around 24 people by the close.

The participants in the trial have complete control over their data and how it is used; the government does not receive or see any of that data. The DWP takes privacy and security extremely seriously and this will form part of the learning from the trial.