Posted on

UBITECH undertakes the technical coordination of the GLASS Research and Innovation Action towards a Single Sign-on eGovernance paradigm based on a distributed and trusted file exchange network

UBITECH participates at the virtual kick-off meeting (January 28-29, 2021), hosted by UniSystems, of the GLASS Research and Innovation Action, officially started on January 1st, 2021. The project is funded by European Commission under Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. 959879) and spans on the period January 2021 – December 2023. The GLASS project caters for a ‘European Common Services Web’, bringing closer together citizens, businesses and European governments. The project introduces a citizen-centric e-governance model that enables beneficiaries to participate in a network for big data exchange and service delivery, which is by design digital, efficient, cost-effective, interoperable, cross-border, secure and promotes the once-only priority.

The GLASS solution comprises (i) a distributed file storage system, capable of addressing the complexity of the processes and their high demand on resources; (ii) a distributed ledger, which records every transaction among users to increase the overall transparency and trustworthiness; (iii) a distributed application (dapp) ecosystem for delivering mobile services tailored to the needs of its users; (iv) a single sign-on Wallet as a Service (WaaS) platform responsible for managing multiple services provided by each dapp; and (v) a Middleware Gateway Framework, responsible for the establishment of secure communication pathways among operational stakeholders and the integration of already existing egovernance systems with newly developed ones.

Within GLASS, UBITECH is  responsible for the creation of the Distributed Application (dapp) Ecosystem, including  dapps, libraries, files, reusable smart contracts, piece of software, etc., that will allow the exchange of documentation, sensitive data between different parties.  In particular, UBITECH will create the open source framework that allows the organisations from the participating countries to adopt it and contribute to the code, accelerating the process for scalability of product development in terms of quality and quantity. Additionally, it will provide the necessary interface that will connect the dapps with the blockchain infrastructure, allowing the safe exchange of information. The main goal of the dapp ecosystem is to support non expert users/entities to develop their custom applications using reusable software, libraries, etc. while also safeguarding the security and the privacy for the citizens’ data and the safe exchange of information between the applications and through their interaction with the distributed ledger. Customizable smart contracts will be designed and incorporated into the ecosystem to support the operational capacity of the dapps. The smart contracts will be reusable for end-users to adopt them in their personalized dapps.