How Can Blockchain Benefit The Government and Public Sector?

Blockchain technology is one of the most innovative methods to protect and streamline processes across various sectors. With the help of this technology, individuals, governments, and businesses will be able to share information over a distributed ledger in the safest way possible. The distributed ledger can support government and public sector applications such as digital payments, supply chain traceability, taxation, voting, and legal entity management. For example, a blockchain could be an official ledger for all government-licensed properties such as cars, houses, or others.

A blockchain-based government can ensure better storage of governmental, citizen, and business data using cryptography. Since most data-related tasks are labor-intensive, it can also reduce massive effort and time, thereby increasing productivity. Additionally, it can cut excessive costs associated with accountability.

Use Cases of Blockchain in the Government and Public Sector

Building Smart Cities

Blockchain technology can help build smart cities by integrating with other emerging technologies such as IoT, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and others to deliver innovative services to the local community and municipalities. For example, some innovative cities use blockchain technology for easy data exchange in Gothenburg, Chicago, Dubai, and Singapore.

Aids Central Banks

Real-time settlements are one of the other areas where blockchain can help central banks increase the transaction volume and empower the network resilience to process the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) faster and more securely. The Bank of England is one example of using blockchain for RTGS.

Tracking Medical Data

Using blockchain technology, medical data can be easily accessible across hospitals to provide better treatment on time without waiting for physical records. For example, post-COVID-19, vaccination data has become vital in airports, theaters, and shopping malls. With the help of blockchain, people can validate vaccination quickly.

Estonia is the first country to use blockchain in healthcare. Nearly 99% of the medical service information in the country is digitized. Since 2008, 'hash-linked time-stamping' has been used by Estonia in both the public and private sectors.

Manage Loans and Grants

Blockchain and smart contracts can help manage and track loans and grants better in real time. This method can increase transparency, security, and compliance.

Taxation

Smart contracts can streamline taxation by comparing tax data with income transactions. Through a system like this run on blockchain, the payroll taxation can automatically be deducted to the respective recipient safely and securely.

Voting

One of the government's most significant challenges is transparently counting the votes. Blockchain can support voting by improving transparency and immutability in the collation period.

The Republic of Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa, conducted a blockchain-based voting system in March 2019 and became the first to use blockchain for voting.

Registries

Manually managing all sorts of registries for the government is a complex task that can lead to corruption, fraud, and a slow process. Blockchain can ensure the needed transparency to eliminate fraud and corruption by offering the potential for real-time updates.

For example, the Republic of Georgia has implemented blockchain-based land registries where the registers can be transferred in a matter of minutes. This kind of functionality can lower the time and cost to a great extent.

Conclusion

With interest across technology proliferating, blockchain can transform the public sector drastically. It is capable of streamlining processes across various industries. It can help reduce fraud and human error by boosting efficiency and productivity. Even though these are still early, the public and private sectors will benefit from this technology soon.

Author Bio

Mr. Edul Patel is co-founder and CEO of Mudrex, a global crypto-investing platform
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edulpatel
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