Information Polity

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190009

Rodríguez Bolívar, Manuel Pedro; Scholl, Hans Jochen

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190184

While the financial sector was the first to investigate the potential of Blockchain, and in more general terms, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), with an initial focus on digital currencies including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether, the study of potential uses of this technology is gradually expanding to also include other areas of application including public-sector applications. Academic and non-academic publications on the subject have so far burgeoned mainly in and around the so-called fintech (financial technology) area, a fact that is underlined by a surprisingly high number of literature reviews already performed in this relatively novel area of research. For the public sector and the study domain of Digital Government, Blockchain and DLT have remained under-researched topics, and the number of respective publications is still relatively low. The aim of this meta-level literature study is to map the existing Blockchain and DLT-related body of knowledge and link its prevalent concepts to known needs and requirements studied in the context of the public sector and in Digital Government. Among the concepts, which intersect the existing literature on Blockchain strongly with the public sector-related research and practice, the study found cost reduction, innovation, regulation, taxation, security, privacy, transparency, among others, all of which deserve increased attention from scholars active in the domain of Digital Government research.

Reddick, Christopher G.; Cid, Gabriel Purón; Ganapati, Sukumar

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190150

What are the factors that influence blockchain adoption in the public sector? This paper uses the diffusion of innovation theory to examine leading adopters of blockchain at the national government level. Six factors for blockchain adoption were tested using logistic regression: cybersecurity, control of corruption, e-government development, government effectiveness, political stability, and democratic participation. The analysis shows that cybersecurity, government effectiveness, and political stability are significant predictors. High levels of cybersecurity and government effectiveness increases the likelihood of countries to adopt blockchain. Paradoxically, higher degree of political stability decreases the likelihood of early blockchain adoption.

Rikken, Olivier; Janssen, Marijn; Kwee, Zenlin

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190154

The rise of blockchain has resulted in discussions on (new) governance models with multiple actors collaborating. Incidents and problems occurred due to flaws in blockchain protocols, smart contracts and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Often it is unclear how decisions are made concerning evolvement of blockchain applications. In this paper, we identify and analyze potential challenges regarding governance of blockchain initiatives in various types of decentralized networks using literature and case study research. The governance challenges are classified based on a framework consisting of different layers (infrastructure, application, company and institution/country) and stages (design, operate, evolve/crisis). The results show that in various stages and layers, different challenges occur. Furthermore, blockchain applications governance and blockchain infrastructure governance were found to be entangled adding to the challenge. Our research shows a specific need for further research into governance models for DAO applications on permissionless blockchains, linked to the products and services offered whereas in permissioned blockchains and other type of applications, existing governance models might often be feasible. For developing new governance models, we recommend learning from the lessons from the open source community.

Fan, Lingjun; Gil-Garcia, J. Ramon; Song, Yi; Cronemberger, Felippe; Hua, Gang; Werthmuller, Derek; Burke, G. Brian; Costello, Jim; Meyers, Benjamin R.; Hong, Xuehai

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190156

Governments have vast data resources related to a wide-variety of policies and programs. Integrating and sharing data across agencies and departments can add value to these data resources and bring about significant changes in public services as well as better government decisions. However, in addition to the lack of standards and an adequate information architecture, the main obstacles to a centralized government data-sharing strategy are security and privacy concerns. Blockchain - a decentralized peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology - provides a new way to develop sharing mechanisms. In addition, blockchain-based systems are difficult to tamper with and are highly traceable. Based on the current problems of a big data center in the city of Ningbo, China, this paper identifies limitations of this approach and explores the potential of some data sharing mechanism based on blockchain technology. Our analysis describes some potential advantages and the feasibility of using distributed data sharing and automated management mechanisms based on blockchain smart contracts. We also explore implementation challenges and provide some practical recommendations.

Schwabe, Gerhard

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190147

Blockchain technologies enable new forms of data sharing in platforms. This raises questions around how they are jointly developed and managed in blockchain consortia and what role public agencies play in those efforts. Based on an analysis of prior work on data sharing in public-private partnerships and other blockchain projects, we analyze the case of the Cardossier. The Cardossier project and (later) association develops a platform to link the public and private actors in the Swiss car ecosystem. The participating car registration authority has the roles of an actor in interorganizational processes, supplier of data, source of trust, guarantor of data quality, user of data, and incentive for making goods public. We conclude that the public agencies have a very important role in blockchain consortia and propose that they should use this role actively as part of their efforts to create public value.

Dahlberg, Tomi

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190145

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (BC/DLT) are one of the hottest hype information technologies. Within BC/DLT regulatory development, virtual currency regulations have dominated both research and regulative work. At the same time, the impacts on virtual currency regulation on their developers and users have been investigated limitedly, especially empirically. This article fills this research gap. The present article reviews research on regulatory frameworks, approaches and regulations primarily within the European Union (EU) as the empirical data is collected within one EU member state. The virtual currency regulation use case of the country is also described. Survey data was collected from 40 virtual currency service developers and users with the help of three BC/DLT and fintech associations. The detected 27 regulatory expectations were rank-ordered with 164 pairwise comparisons by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based Wiki Survey method. The respondents indicated that increased clarity of taxation is their most important regulatory expectation followed by regulators’ understanding about the nature of distributed ledgers. This article contributes to research by consolidating findings on regulations, by empirically investigating developers’ and users’ regulatory expectations and by extending the use of the Wiki Survey to fintech and BC/DLT studies.

Jones, Kristopher

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190157

Blockchain has become much more than simply a fintech technology, and is enabling and inspiring new conversations around politics, governance, organization, institutions and power structures. I published an attempt to start a rigorous academic treatment of ideology in the blockchain space through my master’s thesis titled Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain at Queen’s University. Since then, there have been continued rich discussions around politics and experimentation in line with the ideals of the blockchain movement. Examples include discussion of blockchain governance as a social contract, discussion of social scalability and how this enables us to organize, forums such as etherean.org, and movements such as RadicalxChange.org and the concept of Liberal Radicalism. Some of these movements have been started by similar actors in the blockchain space: Vitalik Buterin of the Ethereum project co-authored the paper on Liberal Radicalism which is deeply intertwined with RadicalxChange and the ethos of decentralization, and Lane Rettig is an Ethereum core developer and launched Etherean.org to be a non-maximalist community-based discussion of social aspects and implications around the emerging technology. While the cryptocurrency markets trended downward throughout 2018, there have been strong social indicators of a more mature system though increased interdisciplinary participation and development around the technology as well as increased interest by the public sector for use cases such as records keeping and identity solutions. I expand upon some of the concepts discussed in my thesis, and provide further evidence for the particular observations based on additional events I attended and took part in through late 2018 and early 2019. Primarily, additional evidence is taken from my attendance at both the ETHDenver and RadicalxChange conferences. I further develop some of the ideas and connections between the community that has emerged around blockchain technology, and the more recent adaptations in the political sphere, as well as implications of new forms of social organization allowed through the use of such technology.

Allessie, D.; Janssen, M.; Ubacht, J.; Cunningham, S.; van der Harst, G.

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190151

Blockchain technology has the potential to provide public services directly to the public. This challenges the need for public organizations, who traditionally provided these services. Much of the current work is focused on the technology, whereas the influence on public administration structure has gained less attention. The goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of blockchain technology on the governance of public service provision. For this, we performed a case study of an EU-wide system that monitors the movement of excise goods under duty suspension. We developed two scenarios for blockchain technology’s use based on a permissionless blockchain architecture on the one hand and a permissioned one on the other. The scenarios were evaluated based on their impact on transaction validation, data quality and governance. The findings show that blockchain technology alone cannot be an alternative for the current data quality controls, equal access assurances and adaptations to legislation conducted by public administrations. As such, governments will remain playing a key role in registration of documents and assets, however, the governance will likely change depending on the type of blockchain architecture.

2019 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-190010