Public Blockchain for the Public Control

Governments and the public sector are looking for new ways to effectively, honestly and transparently allocate resources. Centralized systems are less and less comfortable with a society that prefers to participate on its own in decision-making without mediation and representation. Distributed blockchain systems are one of the most promising areas for the development of civil society and the transition to direct democracy.

Modern state apparatuses of most countries of the world are complex systems and involve a large number of people. Compliance with transparency, traceability and population-based decision-making results in complex and lengthy work that requires too many resources. Digitization of these processes will make them easier and cheaper.

Why We Must Digitize Governance

The opacity of modern businesses does not allow the state and the public to monitor and control their activities sufficiently. Businesses should use transparent public blockchain so that not only regulators, but also any citizen can check the work of business. Thus, the state shares control and monitoring functions for business with society, significantly increasing trust between society, business and the state.

Information about doing business should be open not only to regulators, but also to journalists and ordinary citizens. The highest level of transparency will bring the highest level of responsibility and sustainability at all levels. Cartel collusion of large businesses, monopolization, lobbying of the interests of certain companies in the government and bribing officials, as well as building barriers to the growth of small businesses become impossible due to the openness of business and public scrutiny.

This is a good reason to provide government systems with technologies to improve security, transparency and traceability in the governance and the public sector and enable the idea of direct democracy. Providing government structures with blockchain monitoring and public management systems is the most potentially productive technology. A blockchain-based government enables the following advantages:

• Reducing costs to ensure accountability
• Reducing the potential for corruption, monopolization and collusion
• Safe storage and management of government, civil and business data
• Giving civil society a direct role in business control and decision-making
• Increased confidence in government and online civil systems

Technology - Transparency - Public Control - Democracy

Representative democracy has flaws that are now becoming more and more apparent. A complex multi-stage system of elections and decision-making by elected representatives is not transparent and fair enough. True direct democracy requires the active involvement of society in the governance and regulation. Regulators should share their monitoring and decision-making functions with the public to improve their performance and give tools to influence controlled businesses.

Referendums, polls, elections and accountability are not safe and cost-effective enough without technical reinforcement. Distributed Ledger Technology is a strong base for organizing honest, transparent and fair public surveys and monitoring the performance of businesses and state bodies. Such systems, due to their architecture, do not leave any ability to speculate, abuse or corrupt and generally reduce the impact of the human factor on governance. Transparency and indisputability of results is an obvious advantage to make an inexpensive and highly transparent mechanism of society after state.

How Blockchain Improves Existing Governance Models

Information in the distributed structure of the blockchain remains unchanged and unaffected by manipulation. This allows you to use blockchain not only for secure data storage and monitoring, but also for identification. The hashing system provides the ability to edit data, leaving the benefits of blockchain and adding flexibility and the ability to make personal data confidential and delete it.

Public servants, business owners and other citizens can simply and safely register their identity in the blockchain, manage their finances, send and request data from agencies. Identification provides access to both finance and legal documents through transactions and smart contracts. All processes are immediate and transparent, and automation is tracked and coordinated. Direct interaction between citizens and government agencies will make governance less costly and safer and more accountable.

Understanding Challenges

The Implementation of blockchain solutions into the work of the government requires the development of state standards that guarantee privacy and security, as well as take into account the rapid growth in the field of blockchain. The degree of obligation to use blockchain in different sectors can be different, and governments need to make their own research and plan digitization in stages.

We need to start moving from the Competition stage to Coopetition and finally come to cooperation. Otherwise, a rapidly growing global population and a huge gap in wealth and education will not be surmountable, and economic regulation without public control is not able to meet and cope with the challenges.

Government systems are going to change, and we need to monitor these changes and participate in decision-making.