United Nations Office for Project Services Announces Collaboration with IOTA 🚨 This article is 6 years old...
United Nations Office for Project Services Announces Collaboration with IOTA
2 min read
Updated: Nov. 25, 2019 at 4:24 am UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
In a joint venture to bring “transparency and efficiency” to the work of the United Nations, IOTA has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations Office for Project Services.
“Shared ? problems require shared ? solutions.” We've partnered w/ @iotatoken to explore how innovative data management tech can enhance the efficiency of humanitarian & development operations. | #distributedledger https://t.co/GHbbB2Pm9d
— UNOPS (@UNOPS) May 22, 2018
Operating across more than 80 countries, UNOPS has a stated interest in using IOTA’s DAG-based ledger to optimize its efforts in global peace, security, humanitarianism, and development.
Who is UNOPS?
A central operational arm of the United Nations, UNOPS is a self-financed subsidiary offering project management, human resources, procurement, infrastructure and financial management services to the UN.
Regularly liaising with the World Bank, United Nations Development Program, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the collaboration could be a significant milestone for the Germany-based IOTA.
In a bipartisan press release, both parties explained how IOTA’s technology would economize the administration of UN documents, real-time transactional payments, and supply chains.
While the news is a plainly positive sentiment-booster for IOTA, bulls would appear indifferent to the collaboration. Amidst late May’s sub-$8000 BTC price, IOTA’s value seems, in fact, to have declined since the announcement’s outbreak.
Why IOTA?
Aiming to become the “backbone” standardized ledger for the Internet of Things (IoT), IOTA facilitates transactions between the world’s 8.4 billion interconnected devices (according to a research report by Gartner).
Pointing to the scalability, security and cost-related issues of blockchain technology — currently limited to thousands of transactions per second — IOTA offers its ‘Tangle’ as the solution to accommodate the high transactional rate of IoT devices.
Where a blockchain’s transaction time is generally limited by block creation and confirmation time, IOTA’s blockless architecture permits parallelized issuance of transactions — permitting a “significantly higher transaction throughput” according to IOTA.
Yoshiyuki Yamamoto — UNOPS Special Advisor on Blockchain — explained how IOTA’s suitability to the IoT could be advantageous to the United Nations:
“We share a vision where machines, devices, sensors and people connect and communicate to each other – it’s the world of ‘Industry 4.0.’ Harnessing technology that allows for these processes to work simultaneously, without the need for intermediaries, will help expedite our mission as an organization.”
Such remarks seem to coalesce organically with the IOTA Foundation — an open-source not-for-profit bent on propagating the “ecosystem behind the economy of things.” Mirroring Yamamoto’s vision, IOTA Co-Founder David Sonstebo noted:
“Shared global problems require shared global solutions. With our open-source, permission-less innovation approach, IOTA’s distributed ledger technology lends itself uniquely to this kind of cooperative problem-solving.”
Where most may associate the IoT with markedly corporate projects, the United Nations’ expression of interest would appear a decided indicator of the industry’s significance. Delivering $1.8 billion of spending in 2017 alone, the UNOPS’ scope of the project could certainly lend IOTA’s vision of “the connected world” a weighty push.
For more information on IOTA including technical information, news, price, and exchanges where it is traded, please see our IOTA coin profile.
