Japan exports Mijin blockchain technology to two major Belgian municipal governments to make municipal services more efficient

According to the Huobi Blockchain Research Center, Japan Tech Bureau is providing Mijin technology, a private blockchain technology developed by Digipolis' "Blockchain Lab", to the municipal governments of Ghent and Antwerp in Belgium. This private chain was provided to Digipolis, an organization that provides intercity information and communication technology (ICT) between the two Belgian cities, as part of the blockchain lab, which aims to demonstrate the potential of blockchain technology to provide efficient and reliable administrative services.

Digital Antwerp

The city of Antwerp's goal is to create a "digital Antwerp", which involves using new technologies to create a smoother and more efficient administrative system for the city.

According to Huobi Blockchain Research Center, the city plans to implement an open ICT platform project called "ACPasS: Antwerp City Platform as a Service".

To this end, the city is working with private companies and will provide APIs to private companies, including startups, to create digital documents using blockchain. This ambitious project includes the creation of a certificate of life for registering events such as births, marriages and deaths; certificates of residence and lifelong learning, which can be used to build an education database; and a public decision-making system for storing administrative decisions of the mayor, city council and other departments.

So far, 32 companies have expressed interest in the project.

Japan Tech Bureau's Mijin technology becomes a strong competitor

Mijin will be provided as a proof of concept to the Belgian cities of Ghent and Antwerp. The Japanese Tech Bureau also has a public blockchain tool called NEM. The Tech Bureau is trying to combine public and private blockchain technologies to provide low-cost, secure administrative services in Belgium. A Tech Bureau spokesperson said:

“Mijin can work smoothly with NEM and public blockchains so that municipal governments can choose or use them at any time. By using Mijin, they can reduce the cost of design, development, and debugging and jump directly into the definition stage to start using blockchain.”

Japan Tech Bureau’s NEM blockchain has also been used in the past to provide administrative services, with the Apostille tool in NEM being used to create a land and property registry system called “Landstead.” Interestingly, the project was part of a hackathon and was solved in just one week.

The next big thing in Japanese blockchain exports?

“Japan has been a world-renowned technology exporter for decades. Interestingly, the country is now also leading in the blockchain space.”

Recently, according to Babbitt’s previous report, Tech Bureau cooperated with Japan’s Hitachi Group to create a points system using Mijin. Huobi Blockchain Research Center learned that now, other countries such as the United States, Thailand, Laos, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines are also paying attention to Mijin.

If Japan’s blockchain technology can be used to securely streamline administrative procedures, it could certainly clean up some of the lingering bureaucracy and make life easier for many of the country’s citizens, who are now exhausted by expensive, cumbersome municipal processes and the hassle of collecting stamps and signatures.