The largest city in Northern Spain, Bilbao, has decided to launch a $150,000 EUR tender for the development of a blockchain technology that could be used in public services in the country. The announcement was made this week in an effort to decentralize the country. The deadline for the tender is November 23, next Friday.

The company that is able to show the best idea will be awarded the contract for the development of the technology in the timeframe of six months. The winning company will be tasked with creating something like the EJIE, a digital platform that is being used by the Basque government.

EJIE operates on top of JPMorgan’s Quorum, another distributed ledger platform that uses smart contracts to work properly. The platform was created using the Ethereum technology. This way, it can be said that there is a very solid foundation for the creation of this new project.

The authorities from Bilbao are mainly interested in facilitating the data exchange between different public institutions that operate on the same sphere. For this, they aim to use smart contracts and to support a product that is interoperable will EJIE.

According to the officials of Bilbao, this kind of blockchain could be used to help the citizens of the city to protect their data better and to prevent hack or alteration attempt to it.

Spain is known for its optimism when the blockchain technology is the subject. The country has a very proactive and friendly approach to technology. Regions like the autonomous community of Aragon announced that it would use the technology and the port of Valencia will also use it in the creation of a “smart port” that could help to spend less money and, therefore, cust costs and be more efficient.

JPMorgan’s platform, Quorum, is not only used in Spain. The company partners with some important companies like Goldman Sachs, Pfizer Inc and the National Bank of Canada, as well as 75 other multinational banks, which includes important names like Santander and Societe Generale, to use the technology.

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