Blog
ISO/TC 307 Blockchain And Electronic Distributed Ledger Technologies – Tokyo Meeting

ISO/TC 307 Blockchain and Electronic Distributed Ledger Technologies – Tokyo Meeting

Earlier this month, I took part in the second meeting of the ISO/TC 307 blockchain and distributed ledger technologies in Tokyo, Japan.

The group’s membership has significantly expanded since the inaugural meeting in Sydney. There were some 150 delegates, across 41 participating and observing members, present. Standards Australia, once again, provided skilled secretariat support.

The meeting was a success, creating three formal working groups, in keeping with the primary structure ISO uses for standards development.  These working groups will focus on the following key areas:

  • Fundamentals: defining standards around reference architecture, taxonomy and ontology.
  • Security, Privacy and Identity: developing several informative reports initially, before moving on to standards development.
  • Smart Contracts and their applications: developing an informative report around smart contracts, with a stretch goal of standardising how smart contracts relate to the law.

Three study groups will run in parallel with the above working groups, producing reports and recommendations to the parent technical committee.  The activities of the study groups include:

  • Use Cases: investigating the range of applications of blockchain, to make sure the standards incorporate each vertical. (This study group was formed at the first meeting in Sydney).
  • Governance: providing a scope recommendation for standards around governance.
  • Interoperability: scoping recommendations along with interoperability requirements.

The third meeting will be held in London in mid-2018. Details from the first meeting, in April 2017, can be viewed on our blog post. Please get in touch if you would like more information about our contribution to the Security, Privacy and Identity working group.

 

Nick Cliff

Nick Cliff

Mr Cliff is the Emerging Technology Lead at AusPayNet.

Related Posts
Mobile Payments Standardisation

Not m-payments again!

Mobile payments must be the most heralded innovation of all time. We have been talking about it for 10 years or more, and still don’t have a reliable definition, let alone a clear, widely-accepted process flow. Mobile payments' can be: - A text/SMS direction to a stored value service; - A transfer or top-up of airtime (air minutes) between mobile accounts; - A charge on your phone bill; - A contactless (near field communication or NFC) card transaction initiated from a mobile device, either by a chip that resides inside the phone or a sticker attached to the outside; - An internet payment executed from the mobile using any number of web-based services; or - An app-driven service for 3- and 4-G phones using a range of wireless connections. All of these are in operation, somewhere in the world. Do we need them all here in Australia? Probably not, but in the vibrant world of retail payment innovations, that's probably the wrong question. Rather, we might ask "which one(s) can win in an open, competitive marketplace?"
Innovation In Networks

Innovation in a networked world

Here at APCA we have been thinking about network innovation a lot lately – not least because the Reserve Bank is also thinking about it, in their Strategic Review of Innovation in the Payments System. There is a lot of management theory on innovation: diffusion of innovations, disruptive and sustaining innovation, even plenty of recent thinking about clustering of expertise and innovation networks (not the same thing as innovation IN networks, by the way). But none of the theory I’ve read so far really grapples with the special problems of services that have a network effect – ie where the number and kind of other users of a service affect its attractiveness to any one user. Payments is a classic network service – merchants want to accept a card with the biggest possible issued base (or perhaps issued to lots of high net worth people); consumers want a card that is accepted in every shop near their home, and so on.
Back To Top