Jolien Ubacht

Blockchain in government: Benefits and implications of distributed ledger technology for information sharing

Blockchain refers to a range of general purpose technologies to exchange information and transact digital assets in distributed networks. The core question addressed in this paper is whether blockchain technology will lead to innovation and transformation of governmental processes. To address this question we present a critical assessment of the often exaggerated benefits of blockchain technology found in the literature and discuss their implications for governmental organizations and processes. We plea for a shift from a technology-driven to need-driven approach in which blockchain applications are customized to ensure a fit with requirements of administrative processes and in which the administrative processes are changed to benefit from the technology. Having sound governance models are found to be a condition for realizing benefits. Based on a critical assessment we offer directions for further research into the potential benefits of BC applications in e-government and the role of governance of BC architectures and applications to comply with societal needs and public values.

Inverse infrastructures: Coordination in self-organizing systems

The paper argues that a new category of infrastructures is emerging, user-driven, self-organizing and with de-centralized control: inverse infrastructures (IIs). IIs are not well-understood. Moreover, they represent a paradigm shift in infrastructure development. Their bottom-up development shows tension with the current socio-institutional framework for infrastructures. Internationally infrastructure laws and policies are based on a top-down and centralized view of infrastructures. Regulation is based on a control paradigm that does not fit the characteristics of inverse infrastructures and has no ways to deal with them. Policy (re)design is needed in the face of inverse infrastructure emergence.

Blockchain applications in government

In the past few years, researchers and practitioners have highlighted the potential of Blockchain (BC) and distributed ledger technology to revolutionize government processes. Blockchain technology enables distributed power and embedded security. As such, Blockchain is regarded as an innovative, general purpose technology, offering new ways of organization in many domains, including e-government for transactions and information exchange. However, due to its very characteristics of peer to peer information exchange, its distributed nature, the still developing technology, the involvement of new actors, roles, etc., the implementation of blockchain applications raise issues that need governance attention. BC initiatives have implications for citizen trust, privacy, inclusion and participation. Governmental organizations need a thorough understanding of the BC design principles, the possible applications in the domain of e-government and the exploration of governance mechanisms to deal with the limitations and challenges of the BC technology when used in a myriad of sectors, ranging from the financial and business sector to the social domains of healthcare and education. In this panel we explore the impact of block chain technology on all levels of government and create an awareness of effects or applications in society that raise governance issues.

Business Intelligence from User Generated Content: Online Opinion Formation in Purchasing Decisions in High-Tech Markets

User Generated Content (UGC) requires new business intelligence methods to understand the influence of online opinion formation on customer purchasing decisions. We developed a conceptual model for deriving business intelligence from tweets, based on the Classical Model of Consensus Formation and the Theory of Planned Behaviour. We applied the model to the dynamic high-tech smartphone market by means of three case studies on the launch of new smartphones. By using Poisson regression, data- and sentiment-analysis on tweets we show how opinion leadership and real-life events effect the volume of online chatter and sentiments about the launch of new smartphones. Application of the model reveals businesses parameters that can be influenced to enhance competitiveness in dynamic high tech markets. Our conceptual model is suitable to be turned into a predictive model that takes the richness of tweets in online opinion formation into account.

Studying the Effects of Peer-to-Peer Sharing Economy Platforms on Society

Peer-to-peer sharing economy platforms potentially have big effects on values in society. Policymakers need to develop governance arrangements to benefit from the positive effects, while simultaneously mitigate the negative effects. This requires having a structured overview of the effects of these platforms on the diversity of values that are involved. Currently no theoretical overview of these effects on values is available. The objective of this article is to structure the research into the effects of sharing economy platforms. We use a theoretical mapping that was developed by using a Grounded Theory approach. By positioning the literature onto the map, we derived an overview of the extend in which each effected value has been studied so far. Based on this mapping, we propose five research themes into specific effects of peer-to-peer sharing economy platforms: social values, consumer and societal risks, working conditions and labor market dynamics, environmental sustainability and innovation.

Lessons Learned from Introducing a Skills Line into a Systems Engineering Curriculum

Academic skills refer to a broad set of capabilities that students need to acquire as part of their engineering program to be able to work effectively within a professional or scientific environment. Despite the importance, skills are underemphasized in many educational and engineering programs. In this paper the development of a new skills line within the System Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management (SEPAM) bachelor and master program is presented. The skills line in the bachelor program consists of nine different skills, in the categories: project skills, personal skills and academic skills. In contrast, the skills line of the master program focuses on a set of skills categorized into design, professional and academic skills. The introduction of the skills line has helped students not only to acquire the necessary skills, but external parties also better understand the program when the typical skills are presented. Evaluation results from an Alumni survey show that the skills are important to their current jobs and the skills are treated well in the program. It is important that the relationship between education and practice is explicitly addressed.

Challenges of blockchain technology adoption for e-government: a systematic literature review

The ability of blockchain technology to record transactions on distributed ledgers offers new opportunities for governments to improve transparency, prevent fraud, and establish trust in the public sector. However, blockchain adoption and use in the context of e-Government is rather unexplored in academic literature. In this paper, we systematically review relevant research to understand the current research topics, challenges and future directions regarding blockchain adoption for e-Government. The results show that the adoption of blockchain-based applications in e-Government is still very limited and there is a lack of empirical evidence. The main challenges faced in blockchain adoption are predominantly presented as technological aspects such as security, scalability and flexibility. From an organizational point of view, the issues of acceptability and the need of new governance models are presented as the main barriers to adoption. Moreover, the lack of legal and regulatory support is identified as the main environmental barrier of adoption. Based on the challenges presented in the literature, we propose future research questions that need to be addressed to inform how the public sector should approach the blockchain technology adoption.

The governance of blockchain systems from an institutional perspective, a matter of trust or control?

Blockchain Technology is considered as a general-purpose technology with far reaching effects. As can be seen from the discussions on blockchain applications, both practitioners and researchers struggle to get to the core of blockchain technology consequences. Especially practitioners in the governmental sector explore adequate responses to this new technology. Therefore, our aim is to provide a conceptualization of the consequences of blockchain systems from an institutional perspective, and to use this conceptualization to provide insights into the governance of blockchain systems. We use a Grounded Theory approach to conceptualize the institutional consequences of blockchain technology. This approach leads to our core category: power transfer in environments with highly institutionalized values. This core category supports the synthetization of the governance issues related to blockchain systems. We conclude that the controlling powers that were formerly vested in highly institutionalized organizations (such as governments and regulators) and institutions (such as legal frameworks and agreements), are no longer automatically part of the governing ecosystem in blockchain systems but are engrained into the technical system itself. Thus, Blockchain technology enables the technological institutionalization of values in environments that are highly dependent on these values. We believe that this is at the core of why existing institutions are being pressured by blockchain technology, and as such increase the difficulty for governments to effectively govern blockchain systems. Using this notion, public and private parties within the block-chain ecosystems can develop regulatory arrangements and strategies that strike a balance between fostering the innovative power and possibilities that blockchain applications offer and to mitigate possible negative effects of blockchain technology.