Dubai is moving closer towards its goal of becoming the world’s most innovative country by 2021 after a meeting of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) at a session on blockchain technology organized by CIOMajlis, an initiative:

“Focused on bringing Chief Information Officers from public and private sector companies in the UAE on a common platform to share international best practices and explore business solutions in line with the UAE’s Innovation Strategy.”

Seemingly beating IBM, ethereum’s ConsenSys has been selected as the official Blockchain Advisor for the City of Dubai, working closely with officials and IBM, which is to act as the project’s Lead Strategic Partner.

“Private sector enterprises, which stand to gain due to potential synergies with the government, are also gearing up and early adopters and first to market with this technology will have definite first mover advantages,” Dan Frankel from ConsenSys, ethereum’s powerhouse, told the CIOs.

Dubai has set an ambitious goal of becoming the world’s first blockchain powered government by 2020, looking to use the latest technology towards Smart Cities with the aim of becoming the most innovative area in the world.

“There is a current global shortage of object oriented programmers and developers. We need to ensure sufficient availability of trained manpower and as these opportunities are accruing across all sectors, we will see a lot of blockchain implementation in near future across government as well as private sectors,” Ahmad Almulla, Chairman of CIOMajlis, said.

The initiative appears to have backing at the highest levels with the Crown Prince of Dubai launching the Dubai Blockchain Strategy to tap into billion dollar savings and efficiency increases.

“Blockchain technologies could reduce banks transaction costs by $15-20 billion a year by 2022, and as it removes costs of intermediaries, manual processing, re-work and processing errors, it could generate a potential savings of as high as 75 per cent,” Frankel said.

While in Dubai, $1.5 billion can be saved annually by streamlining document processing alone, with financial services, real estate, media and telecom among the first industries to be transformed by blockchain technology.

“Early adopters and first to market with this technology will have an strategic advantage,” Frankel said, potentially opening an interesting geo-political race. Alongside races within races in public blockchains, private blockchains, household brands, start-ups, and the rest.