Microsoft opens the door to government Blockchain use

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Discovered today at Microsoft’s Government Cloud Forum 2017 in Washington, D.C., the technical giant is launching Azure Government Secret, a service designed to provide government agencies with more access to cloud computing. However, Microsoft opens the door to its blockchain offering - along with the new service, it also allows its existing Government Cloud clients access to the Microsoft Azure blockchain-as-a-service suite.

Created in 2015 for private firms, the experiment with blockchain tools proposed by Microsoft Azure now offers technology proposals from partner vendors, including Chain, ConsenSys and Emercoin in a sandbox environment. But while private sector users of cloud services of Microsoft have been able to build with those tools for years, the strict security requirements of the US government have previously prevented these agencies from utilizing such products.

In particular, six Microsoft data centers have now been "isolated" and received a temporary US Department of Defense "Level 5" authorization. In addition, a number of certificates were issued, including for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

There is no doubt that the reduction of the bureaucracy is necessary in the work of the US government. And, it seems, some agencies are interested in finding a solution. For example, only last week the US State Department (which is a Microsoft client) called the blockchain a possible way to reduce inefficiencies.