🎯How Blockchain Protects Public Safety

Let's start with the National Society of Professional Engineers.

The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) was established in 1934 to protect engineers and the public from unqualified engineering practitioners.

This process includes strict university accreditation requirements, years of full-time engineering training experience, and two or more examinations.

While not as rigorous as a surgeon's training, it is a long process that requires a minimum of eight years and often longer.

What's the Problem?

So now we have highly educated and experienced super nerds ready to show the world what they can do. So, what's the problem?

Let's talk about NSPE a bit more. From their website, the vision is

...a world where the public can be confident that engineering decisions affecting their lives are made by qualified and ethically accountable professionals.

We love this vision, and we agree. Being an engineer is more than showing off a pocket protector at parties! Every decision made impacts public safety quite often for 20 or more years! And so we agree: qualified and ethically accountable professionals are essential.

NSPE's Core Values

NSPE has a clear and targeted mission reinforced by its published values. Those values are

• Ethics and Accountability

• Qualifications

• Professional Advancement

• Unity

Supply / Demand Is Listening

So while NSPE works to help secure the network, it increases the barrier of entry. The problem working against everyone else is: that sometimes it isn't all that hard to get money for a development loan (to the tune of $20T a year).

The unavoidable challenge: rigorous standards and regulations will invariably reduce supply in a regularly high-demand market.

This problem is compounded by the fact we are the least efficient industry are have proven a reluctance toward adopting technologies.

How can we resolve the supply and scalability problem? It is precisely that problem that increases the risk to public welfare even further. How can that enormous demand pushing keep building often, cheap, and fast, be cooled down in a way that meets the professionals where they need to be: concerned with the public welfare?

How can we design a system that will, given those conditions, exhibit transparency to those willing to turn an ethically questionable blind eye?

How can we prove if the seal hasn't been taken and used by someone else fraudulently? How do we ensure the practitioner's competence in making a judgment in a given field?

How it's Handled Now

Long story short: it's not.

Still, governing bodies treat violations as criminal acts. Let's take a look at a few examples:

Texas (1001.552)

§ 1001.552. CRIMINAL PENALTY. (a) A person commits an offense if the person: (1) engages in the practice of engineering without being licensed or exempted from the licensing requirement under this chapter; (2) violates this chapter with respect to the regulation of engineering; (3) presents or attempts to use as the person's own the engineering license or seal of another; or (4) gives false evidence of any kind to the board or a board member in obtaining an engineering license. (b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor

Indiana (IC 25-31-1-27)

IC 25-31-1-27 Practicing without license and other specific violations

Sec. 27. A person who:

(1) practices or offers to practice engineering without being registered or exempted under the laws of this state;

(2) presents as the person's own the certificate of registration or the seal of another;

(3) gives any false or forged evidence of any kind to the board or to any member of the board in obtaining a certificate of registration;

(4) impersonates any other registrant;

(5) uses an expired, suspended, or revoked certificate of registration; or

(6) otherwise violates this chapter;

commits a Class B misdemeanor.

Blockchain technology can prove the authorship of digital documents offering a form of digital DNA. This mechanism is helpful and essential in due process for the industry. Continuing to enforce these regulations without blockchain is nearly equivalent to a court dismissing the scientific relevance of DNA in criminal proceedings.