A framework of blockchain-based secure and privacy-preserving E-government system

Abstract Electronic government (e-government) uses information and communication technologies to deliver public services to individuals and organisations effectively, efficiently and transparently. E-government is one of the most complex systems which needs to be distributed, secured and privacy-preserved, and the failure of these can be very costly both economically and socially. Most of the existing e-government systems such as websites and electronic identity management systems (eIDs) are centralized at duplicated servers and databases. A centralized management and validation system may suffer from a single point of failure and make the system a target to cyber attacks such as malware, denial of service attacks (DoS), and distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS). The blockchain technology enables the implementation of highly secure and privacy-preserving decentralized systems where transactions are not under the control of any third party organizations. Using the blockchain technology, exiting data and new data are stored in a sealed compartment of blocks (i.e., ledger) distributed across the network in a verifiable and immutable way. Information security and privacy are enhanced by the blockchain technology in which data are encrypted and distributed across the entire network. This paper proposes a framework of a decentralized e-government peer-to-peer (p2p) system using the blockchain technology, which can ensure both information security and privacy while simultaneously increasing the trust of the public sectors. In addition, a prototype of the proposed system is presented, with the support of a theoretical and qualitative analysis of the security and privacy implications of such system.