Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is planning to explore using blockchain technology for delivering welfare payments, ZDNet reported.

The announcement comes on the heels of the government’s budget 2018-19 in which it has allocated AU $700,000 to the DTA to look into blockchain applications in government services.

Speaking at a conference in Sydney, DTA’s acting CEO Randall Brugeaud suggested that a blockchain prototype for Centrelink welfare payment delivery could be rolled out by mid-2019.

“Our plan is to look for use cases across the Commonwealth with an initial focus on the welfare payment delivery system, then working with our digital service standard, we'll conduct user research with a view to having a prototype by the end of next financial year," he said.

Brugeaud further said that the agency is looking into other cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, along with ongoing blockchain efforts across both public and private sectors.

"The potential of blockchain to securely record transactions will be investigated, drawing on the experience of other public and private sector organisations," he said. "We'll also build on work done across government already, such as the CSIRO's work on distributed ledgers."

The DTA is also working on a digital identity solution, called ‘Govpass’, which “will provide a simple, safe and secure choice for people to verify who they are and access government services online, reducing the need to visit a shopfront.” With this solution, users will be required to establish their identity only once and then use it several times across government services.