Some successes and challenges during humanitarian aid Blockchain pilot
By: Nicholas Chrysochou
Tags: Supply Chain, Frontier Tech, Humanitarian, Livestream, Blockchain

In my previous article, I gave a brief introduction and some insight into the initial stages of implementing Blockchain in a humanitarian aid supply chain. This pilot is part of the second cohort of project ideas launched by Frontier Technology Livestreaming, an innovation programme supported by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK.

Blockchain is a technology that has sparked both scepticism and excitement regarding its potential to disrupt organisations that require accountability tracking. The humanitarian aid sector is such an example and could greatly benefit from improvements in the tracing and sharing of when, where, who and how aid packages are distributed.

This pilot provides an opportunity to trial the use of Blockchain and gather valuable observations to attempt to relieve pain points in humanitarian processes. As with any pilot implementation there are several successes and challenges that emerge along the way and I wanted to take the opportunity to share some of these as the pilot reaches its conclusion.

Supplies being distributed in a disaster relief scenario

SUCCESSES

Rapid stakeholder feedback

A rare skill in any large ecosystem of stakeholders is the ability to rapidly and effectively request and prioritise feedback.

Stakeholders can typically come from various organisation who have different priorities and therefore varying ideas. Being able to gather that information into a concise report allows for better planning and a higher hit rate in satisfying the majority.

Datarella (the technology implementer) was able to create easy-to-access, concise, on-line surveys to involve and engage the various stakeholders.

This method is further explained in the following article.

Hypothesis matrix

An innovative approach that can be used during sprint planning is the hypothesis matrix i.e.

what are your beliefs

how will you verify them

what is the minimum proof, and

who are the affected stakeholders.

This enables a clear understanding and measurement of what the team and stakeholders want to achieve. This was presented during the sprint plan and goals pitch which was successful in allowing the alignment of the purpose and strategic direction of the pilot.

An example of such a hypothesis for this project is shown below:

BELIEF

In order to gain trust in the system we need to demonstrate how secure it is

VERIFICATION

This will be verified by users signing transactions with their own private key

MINIMUM PROOF

This will be proved by demonstrating how public key cryptography works between the User Interface and the Blockchain

STAKEHOLDERS

All participants, including logistics handlers and suppliers, are considered stakeholders for this belief

Each belief would be then measured at the end of a sprint by evaluating the results against the acceptance criteria, while also considering the future impact.

CHALLENGES

Collaboration

Arguably the most important operating challenge in any multi-stakeholder supply chain is collaboration.

The success of this pilot largely balances on having an engaged Implementing Partner (IP) to facilitate the handover of the aid packages between countries (and being able to easily follow the new process in parallel to their existing one).

Collaboration is key

Atlas Logistique (AL) who were previously identified as the IP, would facilitate the transport of aid packages in the port of Cox’s Bazaar, in Bangladesh. The aid packages would then be stored and transported to the next logistics step and eventually to the intended recipient.

Due to decisions out of our control, AL will no longer be able to act as the IP for the pilot. Another large humanitarian NGO also showed interest in acting as the new IP, which gave us hope that the pilot could still be on track to finish in the 1st quarter of 2019.

Unfortunately, a number of concerns were raised regarding aligning an aid delivery with the suggested pilot release plan. What this boiled down to practically is that, in spite of a great deal of mutual enthusiasm to find a workable solution, we were not able to identify a suitable shipment opportunity to track that met the criteria we were looking while simultaneously aligning to their real needs on the ground in-country. Within the timeframe of our pilot, they would only be able to offer up a shipment that would be very limited in scope e.g. promotional materials, making the process not really worth the time and effort.

This eventually led us to look to other organisations like the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Global Logistics Cluster to find support in organising a shipment to run the pilot. We’re working hard to find a collaborator to keep the momentum up!

Measuring success

If you had to ask any humanitarian organisation how they would measure success, it is certain they would reply that saving lives and protecting people is the highest priority. This means that determining the successful outcome of cutting edge technologies becomes quite subjective and challenging to quantify.

A key area of success measurement in a humanitarian supply chain is the so called “last-mile” delivery directly to the recipient. Tracking and transparency in this area is traditionally obscured due to the inaccessibility of modern technologies. Therefore valuable real-time statistics like the time it takes for the recipient to receive the aid packages, if the items went to the correct location, satisfaction and correct use of these items, could all drastically improve trust and supply chain efficiency.

CONCLUSION

Seamless integration and adoption of modern technologies in humanitarian organisations can be difficult to reconcile with existing procedures and may have some way to go before eventually breaking-through.

Regardless of the challenges currently being faced, these types of innovative pilot projects are catalysts to greater initiatives and potentially enormous improvements to the lives of people who need them most.