The National Archives of the UK is exploring how blockchain technology could help ensure the legitimacy of archived records.

In an online post, Alex Green, Digital Preservation Services Manager at The National Archives, announced that the National Archives is working on a research project ‘ARCHANGEL,’ which is investigating how to identify if a digital record has been modified and whether the changes made were legitimate. The objective is to ensure the authenticity of the archived record.

“Specifically, the project is investigating how blockchain might be used to achieve this,” Green wrote.

The project is being funded by The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and also sees participation from the University of Surrey and the UK Open Data Institute.

“The ARCHANGEL project is creating a prototype using this [blockchain] technology which aims to enable archives to generate and register hashes of documents (similar to unique digital signatures) into a permissioned blockchain (in other words, one which can only be added to by authorised organisations),” Green added.

In cases where legitimate changes have been made to a record, then the hashes of the content and the hashes of the code used to make the changes can also be registered on the blockchain. This would essentially create an “audit trail,” enabling easy identification of how a document has been edited.

“ARCHANGEL is a 18 month socio-technical feasibility study co-creating and evaluating a novel prototype DLT service with end-users to determine how archival practices, sustainable models and public attitudes could evolve in the presence of a trusted decentralised technology to prove content integrity and ensure open access to digital public archives,” the website reads.