A neural blockchain for a tokenizable e-Participation model

Currently, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) and, especially, Blockchain technology represent a great opportunity for public institutions to improve citizen participation and foster democratic innovation. These technologies facilitate the simplification of processes and provide secure management of recorded data, guaranteeing the transmission and public transparency of information. Based on the combination of a Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) platform and G-Cloud solutions, our proposal consists of the design of an e-Participation model that uses a tokenizable system of the actions and processes undertaken by citizens in participatory processes providing incentives to promote greater participation in public affairs. In order to develop a sustainable, scalable and resilient e-Participation system, a new blockchain concept, which organizes the blocks as a neural system, is combined with the implementation of a virtual token to reward participants. Furthermore, this virtual token is deployed through a smart contract that the block itself produces, containing information about the transaction and all the documents involved in the process. Finally, our Neural Distributed Ledger (NDL) framework facilitates the interconnection of blockchain networks in a transparent, certified, secure, auditable, scalable and traceable way

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains

Blockchain Enabled Quality Management in Short Food Supply Chains

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0).Food system (re)localisation involves moving food systems back to local areas and a result are the short food supply chains. Food system (re)localisation is occurring to offset the perceived negative impacts of global food systems. Short food supply chains may face challenges in terms of quality set at national and international levels. Short food supply chains will benefit from technologies that can be developed to meet specific requirements which can be significantly different from those in conventional level food supply chains. One such digital technology is blockchain. This paper aims to present a blockchain based quality management architecture developed for short food supply chains. Requirements for the blockchain architecture are based on existing literature on quality management in food supply chains, with an emphasis on the specifics of quality and re-localisation in short food supply chains. Also considered in the architecture are the characteristic features of blockchain, with some emphasis on trust management and smart contracts. The adoption considerations regarding the resulting architecture are highlighted. It is concluded that the architecture has features relevant to the short food supply chain that differs from conventional food supply chains. Future work regarding implementation and validation of the architecture developed is suggested.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

A review of supply chain quality management practices in sustainable food networks

© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Supply chain quality management practices are necessary to improve processes, meet consumer quality needs, and enhance supply chain quality management performance in sustainable food networks. Food supply chain quality management and associated practices are considerably studied in global food systems, less so for alternative food networks. There are salient differences between global food systems and alternative food networks, which may reflect on the applicable supply chain quality management practices in the food systems and networks. This paper reviews the literature on supply chain quality management practices, with a focus on alternative food networks. A systematic literature review methodology is adopted, resulting in the analysis of seventy-eight papers, identifying a total of one hundred and three supply chain quality management practices. The identified supply chain quality management practices were analysed in relation to their link to a) place, production, and producer and b) link to (bio)processes. Emerging themes from the analysis are discussed, and some areas of future research were put forward.Peer reviewe

Evaluating blockchain as a participatory organisational system: looking for transaction efficiency

The article presents a decision-making model that can be used with blockchain technology. Blockchain is used as an alternative transaction mechanism to authority and the market, where the decision is decentralised within the organisation. Thus, the process is parameterised around the acceptance or not of a project, depending on individual levels of expertise, consensus level and including deliberation time. In addition, commission and omission errors are also evaluated.We show that this technology should be imposed naturally because, at the same level of information, it can obtain better results than any other decision mechanism in a systematic way. In addition, the blockchain ensures that both commission errors and omission errors are reduced with decision times that do not increase the expected opportunity loss on omission errors

Blockchain Applications to Mitigate the Effects of Supply Chain Disruptions

The inherent nature of complex relationships among partners made the supply chain (SC) prone to disruptions. The SC disruptions have severe negative consequences on SC performance. Firms are constantly seeking appropriate strategies that can mitigate the effects of SC disruption. The extant literature in information systems suggests that modern technologies can be used in the supply chain to mitigate the risks caused by SC disruptions. Blockchain is a novel disruptive technology that has promising applications in the supply chain. Because of its special characteristics, blockchain is perceived to be immutable, secured, and transparent. As a part of mitigating strategy, this paper shows how adoption of blockchain technology can lessen the detrimental effects of SC disruptions by developing SC capabilities. The blockchain-enabled SC capabilities are flexibility, traceability, transparency, visibility, collaboration, and trust

Museums on-chain? A designerly contribution in the development of blockchain-based digital strategies in cultural institutions

Blockchain technologies have been referred to as potential drivers for paradigm shifts in the arts and cultural sector. Their multiple applications in the cultural and creative industries have recently started to be discussed by scholars, mainly coming from social and computer science disciplines. From crypto collectibles for archiving and documentation, to rights management and digital protection, fundraising and decentralization purposes: the potential use cases of blockchain technologies are varied, so as are varied the actors in the cultural and creative ecosystems that have started experimenting with these disruptive technologies. Nevertheless, despite the turmoil experienced from the practitioners’ side, cultural institutions remain largely sceptical about the expected benefit. Museums refrain from engaging with decentralized technologies like blockchain due to their perception of the numerous risks involved, as well as to the inevasible barriers to entry. The present paper relies on the hypothesis that design knowledge, methods, and tools may foster the envisioning of valuable applications of blockchain technologies within cultural institutions, and museums. It includes a systematic review of blockchain technologies use cases in cultural institutions, and the preliminary results from a set of semi-structured interviews to practitioners active in the implementation of blockchain in cultural institutions. To discuss the results, the work aims to reckon on design knowledge to stimulate reflection on alternative, and future-oriented ways of experiencing culture and cultural assets, providing museums and their stakeholders with a fulfilling cultural experience and with novel revenue sources through blockchain