Civic Ledger is an emerging Australian technology startup that develops large-scale registration and trading platforms using blockchain and smart contracts technologies for public sector markets.
Founded by Katrina Donaghy, Lucas Cullen, Grantly Mailes and Victor Jiang in 2016, this civic-focused company is focused on building "the modern tools for people to engage with government in a digitalised society".
“We help governments to digitalise the citizen experience through the building of marketplaces and digital infrastructure,” says Katrina.
“Our specialisms include digital issuance of civic entitlements (rights, permits, licenses), securing of registries (verifying who has what) and creating of market places for the use of these civic entitlements (cost efficiencies),” she says.
“Our value proposition is to build Government 2.0 or ‘Government as a Platform’ to improve the customer experience through greater transparency and efficiency and increased security and privacy in their transactions with government.”
Civic Ledger's product and service offering was validated before the company was even created.
In August 2016, two of the co-founders approached the Queensland Government to showcase a small minimal viable product (MVP) using blockchain to transform a paper-based permit - a fishing permit - into a digitalised asset representing the value of the permit and issuing it from a browser to a mobile device into a digital wallet and showing the transaction on the blockchain.
As a result, they were contracted by the Queensland Government to deliver a Proof of Concept (PoC) demonstrating the digital issuance of a community liquor license to a customer's digital wallet of choice, and showing the transaction on the blockchain verifying that the issuance had been transferred by the Queensland Government to the authenticated customer.
This PoC was delivered successfully - the first ever use case in Australia - which lead to Civic Ledger being founded in late September 2016.
In January 2017 Civic Ledger was one of four companies successful in the the Australian Government’s first round of the Business Research and Innovation Initiative funding program - funding which was the catalyst to the development of Water Ledger, a blockchain based distributed peer-to-peer water trading platform.
Since then, its has won wide recognition and a number of awards and now remains focused on solidifying its product offering, undertaking further customer acquisition and delivering on growth strategies.
Top achievements
Civic Ledger has achieved much since its inception. In June 2018, Civic Ledger was named as a finalist in the Australian Fintech Industry Awards in three categories - Female Founder of the Year (Katrina Donaghy, Co-Founder and Co-CEO), Blockchain Company of the Year and Emerging Fintech Company of the Year - and won the “Emerging Fintech Company of the Year 2018” category.
In November 2018, they were chosen as one of Australia’s top 23 most innovative start-ups for the Tech23 showcase 2018.
Civic Ledger was also announced with the South Australia Museum as a Finalist for the South Australia Government’s Blockchain Innovation Challenge and pitched for a share in $100,000 at the ADC Global Blockchain Summit in Adelaide.
