Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) is taking an important step aimed at facilitating the daily lives of citizens by using digital identity and blockchain technologies. In his speech titled “Digital Identity – IMM Integration: Benefits and Opportunities” at Istanbul Blockchain Week, where Kriptokoin is a media partner, Erol Özgüner, Head of IMM Information Processing Unit, explained Istanbul’s digital transformation journey and new projects.
Özgüner stated that the blockchain journey, which started with the “Istanbul Yours” application developed by IMM, aims to carry out many transactions with single user verification. He stated that they continue to take steps to make life easier for citizens.
Özgüner also shared the analytical studies carried out by İBB on consumption data such as water and gas with its huge population of 16 million. He stated that digital transformation has accelerated, especially in the public sphere, with the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020.
Digital Identity Facilitation for Municipal Transactions
Under the sub-title of the talk, “The Role of Digital Identity”, it was emphasized that digital identity will be an indispensable part of our lives in the future, unlike the situations in which physical identity has to be carried. Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is developing a project with Omchain to verify and tokenize population and identity data in the blockchain environment. It was stated that this project had advantages such as scalability, low cost and local developer support.
The benefits of digital identity verification include one-time authentication, access anywhere, ease of integration with third-party applications, anonymity and identity privacy thanks to digital identity. Enstitü Istanbul Course Center converts certificates to NFT and provides verification by protecting the privacy of individuals.
Possible and possible uses of digital identity verification for IMM include İSMEK certificates, İSKİ-İGDAŞ subscriptions, Istanbulkart ownership, student verification, gym membership verification, and services such as İSPARK.
Erol Özgüner emphasized that his works are at the stage of being implemented, but the necessary legal basis has not been formed:
“There are some processes for the implementation of our digital identity applications in these areas. First of all, the city council has to approve, then the government has to make the necessary legal regulations in this area.”
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