A Case Study of Blockchain-Induced Digital Transformation in the Public Sector

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.