Secure, Safe, and Truthful
To create an end-to-end solution that utilizes automated transactions for sharing and viewing deeds, the Tech Mahindra team knew blockchain technology would play a major role in Abu Dhabi’s digital transformation. “We didn’t want to push blockchain just for the sake of technology,” says Rajput. “Instead, we always try to understand where blockchain can bring the maximum value.”
A single piece of property brings together multiple parties such as owners, banks, secondary buyers, and government departments, all of whom depend on access to the same land documents that they then edit, expand on, and evolve into a complete real estate record. One single change in data can cause a chain reaction of updates, not to mention unintentional errors or confusion among the stakeholders in the current paper-based ecosystem.
“With blockchain we can onboard all these parties on a single system, and all the transactions can be verified providing a single source of truth,” says Rajput. “We also wanted to improve the efficiency with an automated and streamlined structure. There should not be any gaps or hindrances.”
Stakeholders can trust that they are working with the most current and validated information because of blockchain’s smart contracts and immutable records, which also eliminate the susceptibility to lost or stolen documents or fraud.
“Since it’s a government organization, security is of the utmost importance,” says Rajput. “The data is the citizens’ data. The land registry system tracks their names, phone numbers, and addresses. There is a high level of sensitivity. Hence, we chose blockchain technology to provide us with end-to-end security of data in transit and in rest.”
Additionally, the possibility of human error is no longer a concern in this new paperless solution because individuals and organizations don’t have to keep referring to hard copies or rely on manual efforts to process each transaction related to a property.
“The land registry should not be human dependent; everything should be touchless, and people should have trust in the predictable technology — even more than they have in the organization,” says Rajput.
The trust that’s inherent in blockchain then creates a desired halo effect for the city government as foreign investors flock to Abu Dhabi for different services.
“The top reason why government organizations focus on enhanced transparency and efficiency is to attract foreign investment,” says Aman Malhotra, General Manager for Blockchain Platforms and Alliances at Tech Mahindra. “The Abu Dhabi Municipality already has great systems in place; however, there could be breakage or data leakage through the external stakeholders. This is an area where a blockchain-based solution can help government organizations by bringing in additional layers of transparency and providing the necessary confidence to potential buyers to go ahead with their investment decisions.”
With the help of Smart Dubai, the government organization facilitating Dubai’s citywide smart transformation, and the Dubai Future Foundation, a government organization focused on blockchain, Tech Mahindra compared various distributed ledger technologies that could scale to match the multi-tenant and growing needs of the ADM’s complex land registry. In the end, the team selected Hyperledger Fabric — an open-source modular blockchain platform hosted by the Linux Foundation.
Hyperledger Fabric also has a suite of tools to assuage the ADM’s concern around privacy. While all members on the blockchain can interact with one another and access the same documents on the ledger, each member can establish a separate, private relationship with another in-network entity and maintain transactional isolation through the channels feature.
If a bank is negotiating a loan with a real estate developer, the details of their smart contract will not be available to the entire network, but the validity of their transaction is ensured on the blockchain. “We created multiple channels between the member organizations, and Abu Dhabi is part of all the channels which enabled them to oversee the adoption of the new technology and ensured that the citizens’ private information is safeguarded,” says Prasad. “We wanted to provide a complete, secure, safe, and transparent environment for all these parties.”
Within this permission-based blockchain platform, the ADM maintained the governance and defined the rules for joining the network while Tech Mahindra’s team maintained the back-end operations. As part of providing full-time support to ADM, Tech Mahindra also engaged with Hyperledger Fabric’s active open source community.
“We were inclined towards adopting open source technology,” says Prasad, who has been a Hyperledger Fabric expert for almost four years. “With open source, we have great features and functionalities that get released every quarter. If we want to develop anything from the client perspective and require modifications to the framework, we can do that. That’s what is really great about working with the Hyperledger Fabric — the active community support.”