Blockchain technology provides an innovative means of fostering collaboration, especially in cross-organizational workflows. Blockchain solutions allow the organizations involved in the workflow to maintain control over their respective activities but, at the same time, enable them to establish a "shared and persistent truth" on the state of the workflow at any given time. This truth can act as a point of reference if conflicts need to be resolved at a later point. By extension, this allows the organizations to use updates on the blockchain as reliable 1 Carsten Sørensen is the accepting senior editor for this article. 2 We developed this article as part of an applied research project with Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. The authors would like to thank everyone involved for their support. We would also like to express our gratitude to Carsten Sørensen, Mary Lacity, Rajiv Sabherwal, and three anonymous reviewers for their guidance and comments, which considerably improved this article.
Blockchain technology has the potential to resolve trust concerns in cross-organizational workflows and to reduce reliance on paper-based documents as trust anchors. Although these prospects are real, so is regulatory uncertainty. In particular, the reconciliation of blockchain with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is proving to be a significant challenge. We tackled this challenge with the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Here, we explain how we used Action Research to guide the Federal Office in creating a GDPR-compliant blockchain solution for the German asylum procedure. Moreover, we explain the architecture of the Federal Office's solution and present two design principles for developing GDPRcompliant blockchain solutions for crossorganizational workflow management.
Bedingt durch Deutschlands föderale Strukturen stehen IT-Architekten in deutschen Behörden oft vor großen Herausforderungen. Auf heterogenen IT-Infrastrukturen gilt es, eine Vielzahl an regional unterschiedlichen Prozessvarianten abzubilden. Zudem ist der zwischenbehördliche Informationsaustausch nicht durchgehend digitalisiert und auch nur teilweise standardisiert. Eine der Technologien, die in diesem Spannungsfeld gezielt Mehrwert stiften könnte, ist Blockchain. Gemeinsam mit dem Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge wurde in einem Proof-of-Concept-Projekt die Einsetzbarkeit der Technologie im Asylbereich untersucht. Die zentrale Erkenntnis aus dem Proof-of-Concept ist, dass eine behördenübergreifende Blockchain-Lösung im Asylprozess zentralen Lösungen im Hinblick auf Integrität, Performance, Sicherheit und Transparenz überlegen ist.
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