Towards a better understanding of blockchain based government and public services

Abstract

As a distributed ledger technology, Blockchain technology has started to show its potential and opportunities in various service domains over the world. Blockchain is considered not only in cryptocurrency and finance, but also in a wide spectrum of applications ranging from energy, healthcare, supply chain, real estate to public and government services. Government agencies around the world are exploring the benefits and constraints of incorporating Blockchain into the public services. The use of Blockchain in government and public sector services has the potential to provide great advantages such as data integrity, transparency, accountability, trust, corruption and fraud avoidance, high security and privacy, and efficiency of services with optimized cost. Governments from all over the world have started to realize valuable pilots of Blockchain based services in a wide array of government and public sector applications such as identity management, supply chain traceability, judicial decisions storage, land registration, healthcare data management, business licenses management, corporate registration, tax registration, and even e-voting. This study aims to provide an overview of the Blockchain in government and public services agencies and sheds light on the benefits of Blockchain technology with a classification of recent worldwide implementations depending on their purpose. Blockchain technology ensures valuable services and benefits particularly in domains of digital identity management, secure data storage, and asset tracking and auditing. This study will provide significant insights for researchers and practitioners that are investigating the effectiveness and efficiency of Blockchain in government.