Abstract
Public administration has long faced the challenge of addressing a steadily growing workload with limited resources. Blockchain and related technologies promise manifold applications which might alleviate this tension, but adoption may be hampered by the dearth of academic literature documenting existing use cases and the lessons learned from them. This case study examines a public administration use case which was initiated by the state government of South Tyrol in Northern Italy in cooperation with the firm SAP. Many important lessons have been learned in pursuit of the main project goal of streamlining the complex administrative processes surrounding the business of building and modifying cell towers. Exploiting the full potential of blockchain necessitates a complete rethinking of public management, yet holds the potential for a leaner and more service-oriented administration that reestablishes citizen trust in public institutions. However, several disadvantages also emerged, which highlight specific limitations of blockchain technologies. In this paper we apply a single case study approach and derive several best practices based on the analysis of qualitative interviews and rich project documentation.
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Acknowledgements
The authors want to thank all project partners for the open dialogue and the sharing of project-relevant information. Special thanks go to the official project coordinator Stefan Gasslitter, Digital Transformation Leader (Bolzano Area, Italy) and Chief Digital Officer, as well as his team, in particular Matteo Negrello and Michela Cicchetti. From SAP we especially want to thank Heinrich Pfriemer, Chief Innovation Officer Public Services and Holger Tallowitz, Director of Industry Business Unit Public Services.
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Appendix
Appendix
We conducted eight interviews using open-ended questions between July 2018 and December 2018. Three of the interviews were conducted on the premises of SIAG and three via telephone. In two cases it was necessary to follow up via e-mail to clarify pending issues. All the questions below were only used as guidelines.
∙ What was your role in the Blockchain project? |
|---|
∙ What were the goals of the project? |
∙ To what extent did you reach your goals? |
∙ What Blockchain solution did you implement? Why? |
∙ Positive effects of the Blockchain solution |
∙ Negative effects of the Blockchain solution |
∙ Lessons learned from the project |
∙ Based on your experience, what potential does the Blockchain have? What are its limitations? |
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Treiblmaier, H., Sillaber, C. (2020). A Case Study of Blockchain-Induced Digital Transformation in the Public Sector. In: Treiblmaier, H., Clohessy, T. (eds) Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology Use Cases. Progress in IS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44337-5_11
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