A New Business Model for Digital Governance of Public Records using Blockchain

ABSTRACT

Digital India is a flagship program of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Under this broad vision, transforming the functioning of the government to provide governance and services on demand using digital technologies is a key focus area for the government. This transformation requires not only the restructuring and refocusing of existing programs to align them with the principles of Digital India but also the launching of new programs, all to be implemented in a synchronized manner. Digital transformation focuses on the use of digital technologies to improve access to government information previously held in physical formats. The scope of work includes enabling new partnerships and business models to deliver public value using emerging technology alternatives and new development approaches to redefine what digital government can achieve and how new technologies can be deployed.

This paper takes up the application of blockchain, one of the emerging technologies, for digital governance. The paper demonstrates through a sample use case on governance of Land Records as to how the government can navigate complexity and, while setting apart buzz from value, use this new technology strategically to develop a new business model that maximizes public value.

(Full paper is available at https://www.acm.org/ )