Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) has awarded funding to enterprise blockchain company Nuco, under its Small Business Innovation Challenge (SBIC) program.

Funded by the Government of Ontario, OCE drives the development of Ontario’s economy by helping create new jobs, products, services, technologies and businesses.

The SBIC program was launched in March this year and is an integral part of Ontario’s Business Growth Initiative and new economic strategy. It seeks high-potential, technology-driven start-ups and SMEs with up to 500 employees to tackle public sector business challenges and drive economic benefits to Ontario.

As a part of the SBIC Digital Identity Program, Nuco will work on a solution to improve digital identity verification with the help of technology-driven local businesses.

“SBIC is part of the expanding field of innovation-based procurement, in which the public sector is a first customer of innovation,” says Dr. Tom Corr, President and CEO of OCE. “Innovation-based procurement drives better experiences and value-for-money for all of us as consumers of government services while also driving the creation of high-quality jobs and economic activity in Ontario.”

According to the official release, Nuco has proposed an application that provides autonomy when it comes to digital identity, allowing users complete control over what they reveal and streamlining updates to their information across all agency databases. Backed by blockchain technology, the proposed application will allow different government agencies to connect and access the same distributed database. This will allow updates in user data to be synchronized among all agencies in real time through one digital identification application. Smart contracts within the network will ensure access to information is secure, and only permissioned access is granted.

“We’re honored to be recognized by the Government of Ontario in our efforts to build solutions with blockchain technology,” said Matthew Spoke, CEO of Nuco. “We look forward to working with Ontario’s government and business leaders to apply innovations to build a better future.”

Nuco’s proposed application takes into account other provinces and nations’ use of blockchain technology to advance digital identity processes. The company recently introduced Aion, the first interoperable blockchain network powering communication between public and private blockchains.