Applications of Blockchain in E-government

Abstract

Since its inception in 2008, blockchain technology continues to gain prominence and impact. Beyond initial applications in digital currency, token systems, and smart contracts, blockchains have gained use in many varied fields including health care records, education, and food suppy chains. Among the most promising of these applications is e-government. Distributed secure digital ledgers with peer-to-peer architecture implemented on blockchain promise to address scalability, trust, cybersecurity, interoperability, and performance issues that often plague electronic government initiatives. This work is aimed at exploring applications of blockchain in the e-government domain. We provide an overview of the advantages and obstacles of blockchain e-government implementation. Characteristic use cases, including e-voting, finance, and energy markets are explored. By analyzing existing literature, we determine that energy utilities, identity management, transparency, and finance/tax services are major research areas in blockchain-based e-government. General process workflows of primary applications of blockchain are described. This study lays the groundwork for pursuing a common framework capable of integrating these services.