Unraveling Transparency and Accountability in Blockchain

Abstract

Blockchain technology is heralded for improving trust and can provide a new approach for creating transparency and promoting accountability of government activities. However, it is still not clear how and in what ways blockchain technologies can improve this. This study examines the mechanisms and capability of blockchain technology to contribute to improved transparency and accountability in government. We use a set of system transparency and accountability concepts and mechanisms to critically assess the capabilities of blockchain. By means of a land registration case in Indonesia, we investigate the effects of blockchain on the transparency and accountability of the system. Creating transparency and accountability might be more difficult than expected, as non-technical issues need to be addressed. Based on our assessment we discuss key issues, including digital ID, privacy, interoperability, connectivity and technology aware population, computational efficiency and storage size, acceptability, check and control mechanism, data validity, digital signature, algorithm transparency, law and regulation support, and dispute resolution, that must be considered in developing a transparent and accountable blockchain-based e-Government system.

Exploring Critical Success Factors for Blockchain-based Intelligent Transportation Systems

“…User Engagement [48,[63][64][65][66] Leadership and champion [48,63,64,67,68] Transparent governance [13,28,63,[69][70][71][72] Innovative Applications [73,74] Service & application integration [17,48,63,64] Accountability [63,64,75,76] Partnership trust [65,[77][78][79][80] Community Involvement [19,48,81,82] Cosmopolitanism [48,83,84] Policy & Regulations [5,39,85]…”

“…Accountability can be defined as "the right of some actors to hold other actors to a set of standards, to judge whether they have fulfilled their responsibilities in light of these standards, and to impose sanctions if they determine that these responsibilities have not been met" [75]. Blockchain technology, with its distributed architecture, decentralized authority, cryptography protocols, and consensus algorithms, facilitate transparency and accountability, which provides trust among participants [76]. Thus, increased accountability on the governance process is an essential CSF for blockchain-based ITS.…”

Initial coin offerings and value creation of token-based blockchain projects

“…The transparent and decentralized nature of blockchain enables the achievement of accountability, with multiple computer nodes making verifications at the same time. This enables all users of the network to work together in a decentralized manner, not only supervising others' activities, but also taking responsibility for their own actions (Beck et al, 2018;Rizal Batubara et al, 2019).…”

“…Blockchain enables identifiability using digital signatures, which is based on the asymmetric cryptographic mechanism. Specifically, a digital signature constitutes of a pair of public and private keys to validate the authenticity of the transaction (Rizal Batubara et al, 2019). The private key, used to sign the transaction, is confidential to users.…”

“…The cryptographic hash header of each block is generated through a hash function using both the content, timestamps on the specific block and the connection information of the prior block. Any tiny changes on any block will change the hash dramatically (Rizal Batubara et al, 2019), enabling the detection of any data change on the blockchain, thus ensuring data immutability.…”