Transforming government and the public sector

• Author: Bellia, M.; Kounelis, I.; Anderberg, A.; Calès, L.; Andonova, E.; Pólvora, A.; Petracco Giudici, M.; Nascimento, S.; Inamorato dos Santos, A.; Rossetti, F.; Papanagiotou, E.; Nai Fovino, I.; Spirito, L.; Sobolewski, M.
• Pages: 87-100

87 6. Transforming government and the public sector

TRANSFORMING

GOVERNMENT AND

THE PUBLIC SECTOR

6.1. Land and property transactions

Blockchain is a new general-purpose information

technology for record-keeping a nd the settlement

of complex transactions (Davidson et al., 2016).

These features have specif‌ic implications

in the context of public administrations

and governments, for insta nce.

In public administrations, numerous registries

containing citizen, ta x or land title records are

costly in terms of maintenance, pron e to human

errors, and exposed t o one point of failure.

Public administrations can use t his technology

for the distributed registrat ion of documents

and assets rather t han solely registering in

a centralised way. The benef‌its of blockc hain

technology for public ser vices are argued

to include the ability t o provide tailored

services for specif‌ic citizens, gr eater trust

in governments and improved automation,

transparency a nd auditability (At zori, 2015, 2017;

Norta, 2015; Swan, 2015; Van Zuidam, 2017).

Distributed registration and exchange of citizen

records, such as birth cert if‌icates, land titles

or criminal records, could be particularly useful

for citizens in countries where the cent ralised

information infrastruct ure is either less developed,

unreliable or corrupted.

As one of eight ongoing project s on blockchain

for digital government in Europe recent ly analysed

by the JRC (Allessie et al., 2019), the Nationa l

Agency of Public Registry (NAPR) of the

Republic of Georgia, in par tnership with The

Bitfury Group, is using blockchain technology to

provide its citizens with a digita l certif‌icate of their

land titles. This blockc hain pilot currently enables

registration of the purcha ses and sales of land

titles and registration of new land titles (over 100

000 since April 2016). The aim is to increase pu blic

conf‌idence in property-related record-keeping

and ultimately to help Georgia f‌ight corruption

and disputes over propert y claims (Eurasianet,

2017; The Bitfury Group, 2017). In the future,

the system is also exp ected to provide registration

of the demolition of propert y, mortgages and

rentals, and not ary services (Forbes, 2017a).

Blockchain has

of‌fered a set

of incremental

rather than radical

innovations, although

some of them can

make a huge

economic dif‌ference.