Having started its journey as the basis for cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology has made significant progress over the past decade: even Gucci and Walmart can be found among its followers.
The blockchain technology itself is a database that works in a decentralized manner and stores block chains with information about users and transactions. The blocks are interconnected and stored on the devices of each member of the network. The peculiarity of this network is that the user has a complete copy of this database. Thus, decentralized systems ensure not only anonymous transmission and transactions, but also the security of the entire network and each individual user from attacks, fraudulent actions and loss of their data.
Overcoming such traditional management problems as corruption, lack of transparency, and long response times have recently been associated with blockchain technology, which has found successful application in business projects. Blockchain can help to achieve transparency of management decision-making, increase the reliability of storage of data accumulated by the state.
Traditionally, it is considered that the blockchain is used for cryptocurrency transfers. The progress of the blockchain has also interested other areas of activity, so it is used in the banking industry, in the field of charity, identity cards, gaming and so on. About other variants of usage can be read in our previous articles. But here we'd like to highlight the Governance sphere.
In the realities of the modern world and in the science of public administration, the concept of e-government appears.
Blockchain technology is definitely one of the most innovative digital technologies that should be considered within the framework of a new paradigm of public policy development and service provision.
The main competitive advantage of blockchain technology, which is so much talked about, is transparency and clarity in data recording.
This is both an important and highly desirable characteristic of e-government, leading to security and trust.
This can become a motivator for the introduction of blockchain.
1. The first obvious and most important advantage of blockchain for e-Government in comparison with standard databases is the ultimate protection of information from falsification.
This means that it is almost impossible to change data about citizens, real estate, companies, certificates, diplomas, property rights, etc. after being entered into state blockchain registries. The most important consequence of such extreme reliability is the ability to use registry data as full-fledged legally significant documents: an entry in the blockchain registry becomes more reliable than any paper with a signature and seal and is also available always and everywhere.
2. The second most important advantage of blockchain platforms for building e-Government is the ability to use the mechanism of smart contracts to automate data operations.
If blockchain registries contain legally valid records, for example, about property, then the mechanism for transferring this property, and in fact, the procedure for making an entry about the new owner in the register, can be entrusted to a special program — a smart contract. And if the contract is stored in the blockchain, thus eliminating the possibility of its unauthorized modification, and at the same time ensuring the unambiguity of the execution of the contract algorithm (at any time, on any node of the blockchain network), then it, like the entries in the registers, can be assigned legal significance.
It turns out that the use of blockchain can take the very idea of e-government to a new level. It should no longer be just about providing a convenient service to citizens and businesses, but about fundamentally reformatting the very activity of the state, completely immersing it in the digital ecosystem of the blockchain.
Blockchain in the electoral process
Why should this technology be used in the electoral process?
- It makes it possible to create a form of voting in which all the advantages of the latest technologies will be used as efficiently as possible without the disadvantages previously inherent in them.
- The introduction of blockchain technology into the electoral system will demonstrate the achievement of a new standard for the democratization of elections.
- The successful use of this innovation will contribute to its integration into various areas of the state system and the development of the system as a whole.
So far, no elections have been fully held using blockchain technology, however, various countries are beginning to test this technology for further implementation in the electoral process. A trial voting on the blockchain has already been held, which was recognized as successful in Switzerland in the city of Zug. A blockchain voting system was also tested in the Japanese city of Tsukuba. Residents were able to vote for various community projects.
So, what does the decision to create a single digital legal field on one blockchain mean for the state?
First of all, the consolidation in the legislation of the provision that all citizens and government agencies are obliged to trust this particular blockchain platform, to trust records and operations in it in the same way as they used to trust, say, pieces of paper with seals, and later digital documents signed with electronic signatures. There is nothing special in this step, especially unnatural — just a natural transition to a new (completely paperless) level of technology, to a new form of fixing legal relations.
Does the transition guarantee protection from errors and failures, from malicious human interference?
Of course not. But our ancestors did not abandon paper documents, although they understood that they could be forged. Therefore, each epoch has its own innovations.