CEO Says Blockchain Is A Panacea For Government Corruption July 5, 2021

Transparency, fairness and efficiency of systems of government are some of the key areas that lead to blockchain disruption in public administration.

Matthew Van Niekerk, Co-Founder and CEO of Blockchain-as-a-Service company SettleMint, in his letter for the WEF Global Agenda, highlighted how the adoption of blockchain can improve government procurement and land registration.

According to Van Niekerk, public procurement is one of the main avenues for corruption and waste in government. As part of the report, the SettleMint CEO argued that the closed nature of the process encourages illegal interactions between civil servants and private companies.

Van Niekerk hypothesized that the introduction of blockchain could facilitate a more open public procurement system. According to the article, this wider audience will include a “broader coalition of stakeholders” beyond government agencies and private companies, including standards bodies, consumer watchdogs and the media.

For Van Niekerk, the blockchain introduction will use the decentralized ledger technology to “offer an easily accessible, tamper-proof and real-time window in real time for ongoing procurement processes”.

As early as October 2018, a report by the World Bank group advertised blockchain as a possible tool for the global defragmentation of public procurement protocols.

Connected: Australian Senate Committee Calls for National Blockchain Land Register

With regard to land registers, Van Niekerk points to blockchain as a possible solution to the problems related to inefficiencies in the registry system.

According to the Van Niekerk article, a blockchain-based registration system would help remove bottlenecks in land transactions, thus eliminating the need for bribes and other less legal activities necessary to speed up the process.

The land register is actually one of the most common use cases for blockchain technology worldwide. From Sweden to Australia and even countries in Africa, state governments are pursuing the adoption of distributed ledger technology for land registers.