Question

The Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University (Professor Bruce Dowton) is preparing the University's operating plan and wants to know students' and employees' opinion about the plan. Write a short letter to him and explain why do you think he can (or cannot) use Blockchain technology for this purpose.

Answer 1

Dear Vice-chancellor

Macquarie University

I am writing to express my opinion on the new record keeping technology i.e. the block chain technology. This is the same distributed, decentralised and public ledger used by the famous crypto currency Bitcoin

Block Chain technology can store each piece of information digitally. This technology would contain precise information about our university and would be helpful in the following manner

1. The blocks in the blockchain could store information about transactions like date, time and amount of fees paid by each student year after year. It can store details of books held by university in it’s huge library. It can store professors information.

2. It will store information about who is participating in transactions as during quiz or online courses many users could participate and will be attached to the university without disclosing their identity. They will have separate username or digital signature

3. Block chain can efficiently store huge amount of data

4. The spread of block chain network is to thousands of computers connected to it. Once a block enters the chain it becomes very difficult to edit and impossible to delete and hence the data manipulation is most difficult. It will be the most secure one

But along with such pros there is a con to the block chain methodology

Anyone can view the contents of the block chain, the users connected to the nodes of the blockchain receives a copy of any new block added to the chain and hence there would be lack of privacy

Moreover There is no identifying information about participating users only their digital signature or username is available, they also have right to modify blocks and hence the university would not know who is adding blocks to the blockchain and the hence we cannot trust the blockchain or computer network uploading it

Thus, listed are the pros and cons which would make easier for you to decide on implementation of the said technology. Since university data is very sensitive it is advisable that privacy is utmost taken care of.