Benefits of blockchain to government and citizens

The public sector faces great challenges, among others because it must provide public services, in quantity and quality, efficiently and transparently, and often with fewer available resources. For this reason, modern technology such as Blockchain hereafter BC is used in many countries, in order to improve the quality of their public services and processes, making them more efficient, transparent, dependable and traceable in order to improve. Through the present article, I comment on some benefits of applying BC in the public sector, as well as in which cases its application should be analyzed, and next I present some concrete cases of use in order to formulate some final thoughts. BC is a digital mechanism for creating a distributed digital ledger, in which two or more participants in a peer-to-peer network can exchange information and assets directly, without intermediaries. BC authenticates the participants, validates that they have the assets they want to trade, and records the trades in this digital ledger, of which all participants have an updated copy and whose entries or records, which are not modifiable, are chronologically organized and packaged in blocks, encrypted, and linked to each other.

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Content:

• Blockchain alone can't prevent crime, but these 5 use cases can help tackle government corruption
• Blockchain delivering benefits but isn't yet disruptive for government services
• Benefits of Blockchain for Government Agencies
• Blockchain in Public Sector
• Blockchain: Hype, Reality and the Public Good
• Blockchain: The Decentralized Government of Smart Cities
• Blockchain for government organizations: past, present and future
• Distributed ledger technology: beyond block chain
• Blockchain in the Public Sector

WATCH RELATED VIDEO: Blockchains: how can they be used? (Use cases for Blockchains)

Blockchain alone can't prevent crime, but these 5 use cases can help tackle government corruption

Distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4. Abstract The e-Government system leverages Information and Communication Technology ICT to transform the relationship between government bodies and citizens, businesses and other government ministries, departments, and agencies.

The primary aim is to make government services more seamless, efficient and timely for every citizen and organisation. Therefore, this paper assesses the degree of risk and vulnerability associated with websites used for e-Government function. The results show that the Yesser website does not have critical vulnerabilities; however, it has severe and medium-level vulnerabilities.

The paper proposes a new framework which can integrate blockchain based scheme into the Saudi e-Government system.

Introduction Technology has shaped the world and turned the universe into a global village. The developments in information technology cut across both public and private sectors. However, as promising and great as e-Government is, it faces the challenge of cyber threats.

According to Rehman et al. Users perceive that hackers or third parties may have access to confidential information like credit card details. Blockchain technology is a good option to secure e-Government. Blockchain technology, the concept behind cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. It can make government operations and services more secured and more efficient, and guarantee improved public service delivery.

Ultimately, there will be an increase in public trust. Blockchain is a distributed ledger shared among parties participating in a network. The majority of the participants must agree before a transaction can be approved. The study revealed that the blockchain technology is now an emerging technology for new innovations and development not only in the financial systems but also in the government agencies and organizations.

This study takes a closer look at identifying the vulnerabilities and risks associated with the present e-Government systems around the world. A case study is conducted on the e-Government system created and implemented by the government of Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, the government has embraced a new technological era in which technology is utilised as an instrument to make communication, government services, and connectivity more seamless. As a result, it is important that Yesser website has adequate security.

This paper aims to determine the level of security of Yesser website by utilizing three penetration test tools to scan the website. The tools include Zap, Rapid7 and Nessus. Based on the analysis, this paper proposes a new framework with the use of blockchain into Yesser. The specific objectives of this paper include the following:.

The structure of the paper is as follows: Section II presents a review of the existing literature. In Section III, the methods used in the study are discussed. Section IV presents the results and discussion. Finally, Section V concludes the study while setting the stage for further research works. Literature Review. Vulnerability of e-Government Services.

According to AlGarni , hacking, terrorism and software error constitute the major types of vulnerabilities of Saudi e-government systems. On the part of the government and employees dealing with e-government services, there are issues like lack of professionalism and accountability, poor IT infrastructure, lack of awareness of security perspectives at customer level, and inadequate laws and policies guiding e-Government services. Choejey et al. Alsmadi and Abu-Shanab used Rapid7 security and penetration testing tools to explore the vulnerabilities of major e-government websites in Jordan.

The outcomes of the tests carried out indicated that most of the websites are prone to attacks. The paper noted that vulnerabilities in e-government websites are caused by wrong configuration, weaknesses in programming, or lack of updates. The result of the assessment revealed that the websites are faced with low, medium and high impact vulnerabilities.

Based on the number of vulnerabilities found, a comparison was made between government and commercial websites. The result of this comparison showed that commercial websites are more secure than government websites. Using tools like Google Speed Insight, Pingdom, Acunetix, and w3c Checker, Elisa assessed the accessibility, usability, and web security vulnerabilities of seventy-nine 79 selected e-government websites in Tanzania. The outcomes on web security vulnerabilities showed that forty A systematic scanning of the websites for simple and well-known vulnerabilities showed that there are serious security issues calling for urgent attention.

Murah and Ali evaluated 16 Libyan e-government websites using a penetration testing framework. A content analysis was also carried out to determine how far the privacy and security policies have been implemented on the websites. The results of the test revealed that nine out of the sixty websites have high to medium vulnerabilities. Most of these vulnerabilities were due to miss-configuration of the systems and outdated software. Only two of the websites have their privacy and security policies published.

Pandya and Patel explored the relationship between technology in relation to the vulnerability severity and vulnerability type in 26 e-government applications and websites of Gujarat, India.

Most of the websites made use of Microsoft technology while some used Apache technology. It was observed that there are more medium to low vulnerabilities in websites using Apache technology compared to those using Microsoft technology. Meanwhile, informational vulnerabilities and validation-type vulnerabilities are higher in Microsoft technology than Apache technology. As noted by Choejey et al. Due to their reliance on human controls, the likelihood of errors is high.

Inside rogue users can compromise the data for selfish purposes. Since blockchain is completely descentralised, it becomes a strong option. Yang et al. The paper noted that intrusion detection and blockchain technology can complement each other.

Blockchain will ensure security, trust and privacy while intrusion detection will help in detecting anomalies during blockchain transactions.

In their own research, Diallo et al. A high-level architectural description of the model was made, after which a detailed design was carried out. The design involves user registration, preparation of contract, monitoring contract execution, and auditing.

Through this, the researchers were able to demonstrate that a blockchain-based government DAO can allow monitoring and analysing e-Gov services as well as provide accountability, transparency, better national resource management and immutability.

In another research, Elisa et al. A blockchain-based peer to peer exchange and transactions of an e-government system was proposed by the authors.

The scheme typically presents how citizens and businesses interact with government services in a blockchain-based e-government system. According to Swan , blockchain technology can be used for information exchange and any transaction that occurs in the government. The study noted that blockchain can be implemented in asset registry, information exchange, inventory, intangible assets like votes, patents, health data, reputation, information, etc.

With blockchain, government agencies can keep track of a ledger and the immutable history of transactions. Swan noted that blockchain applications in the government include keeping record of judicial decisions, marital status, digital identity, e-voting, criminal records, tracing money, tax records, passports, business licenses, etc.

Carter and Ubacht noted that the challenges facing the adoption of blockchain in e-Government include scalability, flexibility and security.

From an organisational perspective, the challenges are related to acceptability and the necessity of a new governance model. Meanwhile, from an environmental perspective, lack of regulations is the main challenge. Carter and Ubacht also referred to the lack of an overall application platform where the scalability, flexibility, security, reliability, and interoperability of blockchain technology for e-Government system are dealt with calls for the need to make a proper design solution.

In addition, the adoption of blockchain technology will lead to organisational transformation leading to significant changes in process, structure, culture and strategy. Hou noted that the application of blockchain in the Chinese e-government system offers some benefits like greater accessibility and transparency of government information; improvements in the quality and quantity of government services; and development of information-sharing across different organizations.

However, the system still faces the problems of reliability and information security Hou, Therefore, it is important to create a general application platform of blockchain technology, while also developing management standards to ensure an effective integration of blockchain into e-government.

Analysis Methods. To determine the degree of vulnerability of e-Government services to breach of privacy, trust, confidentiality and security, this research leverages the outcomes of existing related literature by carrying out a Systematic Literature Review. The three tools used include the following:. These penetration testing tools are used because they make it easy to bypass local network restrictions in order to scan from external IP addresses. They also make it possible to create reliable proof-of-concepts to prove the risk of vulnerabilities.

After scanning the Yesser website using each of the three tools, the results have been collected and analysed. Watching for such attacks and taking appropriate remedial steps is necessary. Based on this, this paper proposes a new framework which integrates blockchain technology into e-Government for security and privacy protection of the system and users.

The framework is shown in Figure 1 below. IPS is a standard intrusion prevention system. The in-between zone is DMZ de militarized zone , which is acting as a connection termination point for both the untrusted and semi-trusted zones. DMZ is secured with three firewalls acting as a perimeter security system and two individual IPS for any malicious traffic.

Adding blockchain between the two secure zones will create a high level of confidentiality, trust, data integrity, privacy, and access control. Blockchain technology protects security and privacy through separate personal keys and public keys for access, distributed blocks of the database, consensus rules for authentication, peer-to-peer endorsements, and decentralisation.

Results and Discussion. This section discusses the research findings, addressing directly the three research objectives mentioned in the previous section of this paper. The first research objective relates to analysing various works on e-government adopted by different countries.

This gives scopes to move to the next research objective in which, the authors of this paper demonstrate how different penetration tools are being used to assess the risks and vulnerabilities in one specific e-government website, Yesser. Based on the findings, a new e-government framework is proposed to address the third research objective. After the search terms were entered into the search sources, papers were identified.

Blockchain delivering benefits but isn't yet disruptive for government services

This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Skip navigation. File Size Format Show full item record Recommend this item View Statistics. Benefits and Obstacles of Blockchain Applications in e-Government.

Benefits of Blockchain for Government Agencies

Blockchain and, more widely, the Distributed Ledger Technologies DLT have been successfully applied as promising techniques to achieve decentralized consensus, mainly in the business sphere. Their implementation bring promises of the improvement of security, efficiency, and speed in transactions and processes, which helps explain why so many government leaders are actively exploring its uses in government. Indeed, currently there is a lively debate for implementing blockchain and DLT into the public sector entities to conduct their operations Government Office for Science, and research is focusing on topics like smart contracts, protection of intellectual property, identity management, electronic government as a service, land registry and so on The Law Society, Blockchain and DLT could reshape the way public sector entities and citizens interact with each other, providing not only effective and safe transactions, but also enhancing information transparency and accountability. These technologies are called to play an important role for secure decentralization in such emerging fields as Internet of Things, edge computing, social networking, crowdsourcing and next generation wireless communications, among other fields. Also, its advance should be further evolved in terms of scalability, privacy, efficiency, flexibility, tokenization and high dependability. All this could have an impact on organizational changes and on the transformation of processes into the public administrations.

Blockchain in Public Sector

Blockchain technology is not only the basis of the cryptocurrencyBitcoin. This system for carrying out verifications and secure transactions on the Internet promises to revolutionise the management of smart cities with Blockchain4Cities, an initiative to coordinate, integrate and control different city services with transparency, efficiency and privacy. The cities of the present increasingly resemble those of the future. Cities like Gothenburg, Chicago and Singapore are clear examples of innovative cities : highly digitalised and with a more advanced and sustainable urban management model for mobility, energy efficiency, waste treatment and citizen participation. These smart cities have inspired initiatives like Blockchain4Cities, a the United Nations UN working group to determine how blockchain can be applied to running smart cities.

Blockchain: Hype, Reality and the Public Good

Smart government is an important means of optimizing government management, improving the government decision-making capacity, and pushing forward the public service. When the smart government process applies, the dire straits of collaborative governance among the different participants could not be ignored usually caused by maximizing their profits. Based on the current research, this paper introduces the blockchain technology into the smart government system and establishes a smart government platform architecture. Meanwhile, to analyse the evolutionary and stable strategies of the three parties under the blockchain technology, the evolutionary game model including functional departments, local governments, and end users as the main players is established on account of the bounded rationality. The results show that local government supervision plays a leading role in the process of collaborative governance of smart government based on blockchain technology; meanwhile, effective cost control is a key factor affecting the evolutionary stability strategy ESS. Among them, precision service and flat management improve the possibility of collaborative governance, but the impact of the trust mechanism is not obvious.

Blockchain: The Decentralized Government of Smart Cities

Select your location Close country language switcher. B lockchain-based solutions have the potential to make government operations more efficient and improve the delivery of public services, while simultaneously increasing trust in the public sector. For both markets, education and determining the right applications for the technology will be key to success. To better understand issues related to government adoption of blockchain technology, we spoke to Brian Forde, the Senior Lecturer for Bitcoin and Blockchain at MIT and former White House senior advisor for mobile and data innovation during the Obama administration. Delaware announced its Delaware Blockchain Initiative in Illinois recently announced a similar initiative. Illinois is attempting to provide an environment that is very welcoming to bitcoin — and blockchain-based start-ups.

Blockchain for government organizations: past, present and future

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Distributed ledger technology: beyond block chain

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Security, efficiency and traceability are attractive benefits for public sector organizations. Questions remain, however, on regulation, trustworthiness and energy consumption. Once associated largely with cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, blockchain is now increasingly proposed as a solution for governments seeking to transform the delivery of a wide range of public services. However, opinion is divided with regards to the extent to which blockchain can really transform government-provided services.

Blockchain in the Public Sector

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These are the state and local IT leaders, podcasts and personalities you should be following to stay on top of the latest technology trends. North Carolina is working to use blockchain technology to update its identity management solutions so residents can more easily get access to government services with a single ID. So why should you have three different IDs to transact?