The Dubai International Financial Center Courts (DIFC) intends to use blockchain in a bid to enhance its legal structures. It has constituted a team that will look into how it can use blockchain technology to improve the country’s court structure through the Smart Dubai initiative.

The DIFC is a specialized court network that focuses on settling disputes that arise from commercial conflicts. Smart Dubai initiative, on the other hand, brings together the government and private sector players to utilize technology to run the city. It uses technology to strengthen, provide and promote a smooth and secure city experience that impacts on its residents as well as visitors.

Examine the blockchain technology

According to DIFC’s announcement on Monday, the team will examine how blockchain technology can aid in verifying judgments made by the court meant for cross-border enforcement. The specialized court plans to develop a blockchain based future that will be beneficial to the judiciary. It wants to use the technology to eliminate duplications of documents and increase efficiency along the entire legal chain.

The judiciary can make use of the smart contracts to share data across different courts in a decentralized system. This will eliminate the process of carrying out tasks manually thereby enhancing the process.

DIFC’s Chief Executive, Amna Al Owais said, “This task force is in line with our guiding principle to deliver courts as a service, powered by technology and extended through cooperation agreements and alliances.” He was optimistic that Dubai would be a pioneer nation in legal technology as well as in judicial innovation by adopting the blockchain technology.

Putting data on the blockchain

Both parties revealed that the appointed team will initially, work on putting information on judgments by courts on a blockchain platform. This will ensure that various institutions validate and share data in real time for improved law enforcement.

Both regulations and terms of contracts will be encrypted into a smart contract. This will make it easy to investigate and settle disputes stemming from either private or public blockchains.

Director of the Smart Dubai office, Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr revealed Dubai’s strategy to have all applicable government transactions fully run on blockchain technology by the year 2020.