You can't miss the hype about blockchain technology particularly in regard to cryptocurrency and the preferred method of payment for hackers.
Some states have started to discuss adoption of blockchain technology in support of some state government services or investigating blockchains in state government with informal discussions.
What's the true value of blockchain to a State or an Organization? Blockchains have the huge potential to affect the delivery of more efficient services at small upfront investments. Because there's no centralized point of authority, the network is an open ledger in the cloud to put it simply. Think about a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in the cloud in which everyone has a view of each other’s transactions therefore no 3rd party is required. These blockchains can be either public or private.
Clearly the financial economic value has been highlighted with cryptocurrency transactions (BITCOIN) where you can send any dollar amount from your virtual wallet to anyone in the world within minutes with a fraction of the cost of traditional methods along with unbreakable security. However, unlimited to financial transactions, it's endless of other legacy records management processes that this could be applied to.
For example: Think of the authentication, audit and accountability process involvement in maintaining your property files for your home, car and land titles. Blockchain would remove the risk of centralized systems managing the backend management processes since it would all be decentralized. Similar benefits with supply chain management processes as well:
Below is a more detailed list of benefits using blockchain in government taken from NASCIO and early stage recommendations to prepare your organization.
• Managing Property Deeds
• Authenticating Academic Credentials
• Submitting Healthcare and Insurance Claimcs
• Evaluating and Managing Professional Licenses
• Tax Calculations and Payment
• Administering Tickets, Fines, Citations including Payments and Processing
• Managing, Updating and Transmitting Criminal Records
• Managing Birth and Death Certificates
• Managing, Updating and Transmitting Healthcare Records
• Managing micro-grid transactions in the energy sector
• Recording and reporting financial transactions, financial statements
• Managing lineage of patents, trademarks, reservations, domain names
Early Stage Recommendations:
1. Begin research of blockchain technology and economics now so states can begin to grow their knowledge.
2. Given this basic knowledge, begin to explore some potential use cases to better understand how blockchains may disrupt or enable your organization.
3. Consider developing a preliminary strategy on how you could adopt blockchain technology for future use.
4. Create a state stakeholder group (from both business and technology)
to inform the preliminary strategy.
5. Identify relevant use cases to harvest the benefits of blockchain technology for your organization.