The Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs of Austria have granted US$67,700 to a project called Qualisig. The said project uses an element of Austria’s digital biometric system to created COVID-related prototypes to prevent fraud, fake news and health data.
Ardor of Blockchain is being used for this project that has been built by the Swiss firm Jelurida and the Ignis tokenizing system. Thomas Wernbacher and Alexander Pfeiffer of Danube University Krems are the main developers for this project with partnership with Austria’s A-Trust that manages the citizens digital identity infrastructure.
However, this project has been projected not to go live until at least 8 months from now. The challenge of preserving the user’s privacy has been considered and the widespread adoption of this new technology has been an issue. The system already has exhibited some flaw that needs to be debugged and fixed.
From the 3 prototypes, one has been proposed to be considered line for improvements. Pfeiffer believes that the verification of door-to-door Covid-19 may be a way for the public to be victims of fraud. The said prototype requires a testing agent to present a QR code that will be scanned by a citizen using a mobile device. This will lead to a verification page showing the digital signature of a public authority. It would also show the details of responsibilities that the agent needs to complete to conduct the test unless signed by the Red Cross or any government health agency.
Attached to an Ignis blockchain utility token, the data will not be able to be transferred and received without the correct authorization on a digital ID wallet.
The second prototype is designed to help prevent fake news by circumventing e-mail and using a authenticated token by blockchain. The third one combines the test results for Covid-19 that needs to be signed by a doctor or a health official that allows will allow citizens to take a flight or attend any assemblies.
Pfeiffer also mentioned that this can be very limiting if people have to show health test everywhere they need to go. The privacy of medical records would be affected with this type of projects in which, needs to be studied again.
“From a mental perspective, it’s about socially and morally constructing trust,” Pfeiffer said. “We need to decentralize the manner in which information is put away and significantly offer clients the opportunity to have their own hub on the blockchain, so everybody is entirely control of information; you see your own information with the private key that you hold or shared key in case you’re going to share information.”
The Austrian government has so far supported 40% of the entire expense of the task, which will overall work out at about €150,000 ($168,500). The rest of the entirety is appealed in-kind from the individual accomplices, said Pfeiffer.
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