Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 07

February/March 2019// Canadian Government Executive / 41 Governing Digitally offerings, having already enabled bitcoin trading on its platform. So what is blockchain? According to a re- cent report on blockchain in government by Deloitte, it’s “a distributed consensus ledger that is shared, thus creating a digi- tal ledger of trusted transactions main- tained among and across participants. In place of multiple independent and iso- lated ledgers, there is a single shared re- cord distributed across every party to the transaction.” The two critical words here are “trust- ed” and “shared” – the implication be- ing a transparent and accessible record of transactions outside of the control of any single authority (i.e. essentially user- driven). Yet while the “shared” aspect of blockchain is not in doubt, the “trusted” is more contested, as is always the case with novel and more distributed forms of gov- ernance. In many ways, blockchain mirrors the democratizing spirit of social media and the wisdom of the crowd (a scenario that played out when social media helped orga- nize a crowd that took down one military dictatorship in Egypt only to see another rise in its place) and open source comput- ing (that continues to be challenged by proprietary offerings, with various hy- brids now commonplace). The allure lies in circumventing traditional authoritative structures; the risk stems from what sort of creations arise in their place. As headlines frequently highlight, block- chain is ideally suited to the underworld of online life, namely organized (and not so organized) crime and all sorts of shady actors keenly seeking new ways to oper- ate transnationally and virtually. Accord- ing to a 2015 report by Europol, “the move to digital finance eliminates face-to-face interactions (and reduces identity risks for organized criminals), allowing anony- mous exchange of financial resources.” This same report highlights the impor- tance of private-public partnerships in combatting such threats and devising new solutions for cyber-stability. And indeed, that is one essential lesson from early blockchain experimentation: that govern- According to a recent report on blockchain in government by Deloitte, it’s “a distrib- uted consensus ledger that is shared, thus creating a digital ledger of trusted transactions main- tained among and across participants. In place of multiple independent and isolated ledgers, there is a single shared record distributed across every party to the transaction.” ments must be outward and agile in work- ing with a range of existing and emerging stakeholders in order to devise a workable path forward. The BC Government, notably, has been experimenting with blockchain in order to improve business registration services. A proponent of wider adoption, IBM has also urged that province to deploy block- chain in the newly legalized realm of cannabis. According to IBM, the technol- ogy could help the government limit or eliminate black market sales by tracking cannabis through the entire supply chain — including “where and how cannabis is sourced, sold and priced, from seed to sale.” Democratic enthusiasts also see great potential to improve online voting. Along with Estonia’s perennial leadership in this realm, the Swiss canton of Zug, a self-proclaimed blockchain capital, has reportedly deployed the technology to successfully and securely underpin elec- tronic voting in a local plebiscite. By con- trast, the patchwork of proprietary sys- tems and the absence of province-wide standards brought its own share of prob- lems to several Ontario municipalities in October’s local elections. For governments, then, avoiding block- chain is simply no option at all, both in terms of regulatory responses and any eventual usage by public sector organiza- tions. If Canada is to compete as a block- chain innovator in the public sector, a Parliamentary inquiry would help spur political awareness and wider societal learning, both future enablers of promise rather than peril. J effrey R oy is professor in the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University (roy@dal.ca) .