Demonstration of OARS

A demonstration of the OARS prototype is viewable here. The video covers a hypothetical use case with a fictitious government created to demonstrate the functionality of OARS and potential future features.

The OARS demonstration reflects the following scenario:

• The U.S. government is returning $5 million to the fictitious government of Catan.
• Catan is a country that is committed to strengthening open-government and transparency measures.
• The $5 million sum will be paid in full through a one time payment from the U.S. Treasury to the government of Catan.
• Both the U.S. and Catan governments are leveraging OARS to gain visibility into all disbursals of these funds.
• The agreement between the two governments provides that the returned funds will be used to improve the education system in Catan.
• No funds move through the OARS system. The system tracks the oversight and authorization of the movement of the funds off-ledger.

For this use case, all participants in OARS are designated as either an actor, an observer, or an administrator.

• Actors can take action and have visibility in the system (otherwise known as both read and write access). The actors in this scenario are the U.S. Treasury, Catan Treasury, U.S. Department of Justice, Catan Ministry of Justice, and Catan Ministry of Education.
• Observers have visibility (or read-only access) into the system. The observers in this scenario—the U.S. Department of State, Catan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and civil society organizations in both countries—have visibility into disbursals tracked by the system.
• A system administrator is needed for certain operational purposes, such as onboarding new entities and providing technical support. In this demonstration, New America, an independent civil society organization, fills the system administrator role. In practice, any entity agreed upon by participating parties, such as an international civil society or multilateral organization, could serve as the system administrator.