Blockchain is heralded as being ''the next big thing'' that promises to radically transform society and the economy in near-future applications. While scholarly literature on blockchain has largely focused on bitcoin and cryptofinance, in recent years, a body of scholarship has started to emerge on blockchain in the public sector. The characteristics of blockchain have made it a promising technology to transform many activities related to public policy and public service provision, such as administrative processes, welfare provision and regulation practices. This article provides, to the best of our knowledge, the first systematic literature review of the use of blockchain across all the main public services. This systematic review identifies the public services most likely to be impacted by the introduction of blockchain. It also highlights the main potential benefits, costs and risks of blockchain for government, civil servants and citizens. Governments are found to benefit mainly from improvements in efficiency and traceability, while regulatory uncertainty and questions around scalability represent major costs and risks for them. Civil servants, the least studied actor in the literature, could benefit from blockchain through the reduction of red tape and improvements in coordination between agencies. Their lack of blockchain knowledge and skills represent a major cost as regards adoption. Regarding citizens, security and transparency are identified as being the most important benefits, while risks are mainly associated with data security concerns. The article concludes by noting several limitations in the literature and providing suggestions towards fruitful lines of research.

Blockchain is emerging as one of the major disruptive technologies of our times. In the context of public administration, blockchain heralds major transformations of public service provision and has the potential to increase the transparency of, and citizens’ trust in, public administration and its services. However, the introduction of blockchain to public administrations means potentially changing aspects of the job performed by public officials, including their day-to-day activities and responsibilities, and even their very control over administrative processes. While some public officials may view blockchain positively as a means of improving current administrative practices, others may view it more negatively and resist it. The acceptance or otherwise of blockchain is, therefore, a fundamental issue for analysis. We conduct a vignette experiment to probe public officials’ opinions on the introduction of blockchain in the provision of public services in a local council. We follow an influential classification of blockchain configurations to analyze whether different configurations of blockchain affect public officials’ opinions toward its implementation. Results show that a more public configuration of certain aspects of the blockchain increases the likelihood that public officials will accept blockchain, while it is also associated with an increase in trust in public administration and its services.

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