Here’s How Blockchain Technology Is Reshaping Government Administration as We Know It

Blockchain, the technology that undergirds the world’s premier cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC), is regularly touted as one of the most significant milestones of technological advancements in recent times. The emerging technology’s potential for creating a positive socio-economic impact is often compared to the Internet, which, today, has become an inseparable part of the majority of the people’s lives across the globe.

Government Bodies Leveraging Blockchain to Streamline Administrative Processes

Although the bulk of the use-cases of blockchain technology deal with the finance and banking industry, the technology has shown promising results across swathes of other industries including supply chain management, media and entertainment, law enforcement, and government administration, among others.

Among the aforementioned industries and spaces, government and administrative bodies across the world have developed a particular liking toward distributed ledger technology (DLT), courtesy of its anti-bureaucratic and transparent characteristics.

Improving the Argentinian Gas Verification Process

For instance, take the example of Argentinian Natural Gas Distributor, Gasnor. The gas distributor recently launched Gasnet, a permissioned blockchain network that seeks to increase efficiency, transparency, and information management in the industry.

For the uninitiated, RSK is a Bitcoin-based secure smart contract platform that utilizes Turing-complete smart-contract capabilities. RSK also trumps one of Bitcoin’s biggest bottlenecks today: scalability. Having received the approval from the Argentinian natural gas regulator Enargas, Gasnet uses RSK’s technology to transform the notoriously slow and cumbersome gas certification process into a rapid affair. The Gasnet blockchain network enables swift and transparent registration of all transactions involved in the certification process.

Further, by tapping RNS – a software architecture akin to Ethereum Name Services (ENS) which enables easy identification of blockchain assets – Gasnor can register, verify, and implement digital identities of over 10,000 service providers. Thanks to RIF Name Services (RNS), the entire process can now be completed within a few days compared to the multiple weeks it used to take earlier. There’s no doubt that a blockchain-powered implementation mechanism such as Gasnet will bring a multitude of benefits for the energy and natural gas industry and regulators in Argentina.

First, by implementing a DLT-based solution, Gasnor will get a higher degree of control over traceability and security of the end-to-end process of the energy and gas industry, originating from registration and certification to providing the service to the consumers. It will also help the regulators to quickly identify and troubleshoot any problems being faced by the consumers and, in general, make the entire process free of excessive paperwork and time-consumption.

Further, Gasnet will also significantly improve Enargas’ compliance oversight by letting the regulator embed various industry regulations into processes within the network. Such information pertaining to compliance can be safely stored on the Gasnet network in a safe, immutable, and transparent manner for all the actors across the distribution chain.

RNS is one key component of RIF Directory, a self-sovereign identities solution, which enables users to easily control their IDs to interact in decentralized economies.

Fostering a Sustainable Urban Future via Blockchain

A sizeable number of fintech startups are fidgeting with blockchain technology to test its potential in improving government efficiency and trust, especially in urban cities.

Os.City, a firm that aims to bridge the gap between the government and citizens via digital technologies, has deemed blockchain technology fit for the purpose. Having inked a partnership with RSK, Os.City is confident of creating such smart-contract applications that foster a more sustainable urban future via the digital transformation of government bodies.

Specifically, the company wants to eliminate the fragmentation and disconnected organizational structure of government bodies and NGOs across the world. According to the firm, such bottlenecks can vastly stunt a government’s capacity to contribute to the local populace’s environmental, social, and economic prosperity. Os.City believes that by encouraging city-level governments, university and school administration bodies, and other public institutions and NGOs, to adopt blockchain-enabled digital solutions, it can help alleviate government administration performance to a great extent.

Through this alliance, Os.City estimates that it can benefit governments by helping them recover close to 20% of revenue leakage. The partnership will also aid in increasing global government workers’ productivity to save as much as $3.5T a year. The involved parties estimate that by offering a unified and better technology-conducive administrative platform, they can increase constituent satisfaction and government revenue by up to 10% in developing economies.

By tapping RSK’s prowess in smart-contract application development, Os.City seeks to combine the benefits of a secure network with a streamlined organization structure brought about by the long-pending digitization of government entities.