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The transformative impact of distributed technologies in public services

Easing the adoption of Decentralized Ledger Technologies (DLTs)�as drivers for far more open, transparent, trusted and efficient�public services

Token has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement no 825268.

Token Website

DLT4Gov Community

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The future of public administrations

Challenges

Opportunities

Disruptive technologies can contribute to accelerate this transformation
In particular decentralization and Distributed Ledger Technologies are the key enablers for other digital technologies that will disrupt public services: blockchain, Internet of Things , Big Data Analytics

Transformation: need for an open government model based on the principles of collaboration, transparency and participation in the new digital realm
Success: change in government and institutional culture
Cost-effectiveness: budgetary pressures - accountability
Impact Assessment: Technical, political, legal, organisational and cultural (in terms of work culture) challenges

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ICT Driven Public Sector Innovation needs

DRIVERS

Open government and open governance

Government as a broad platform for public value creation

Open services and new service approaches

Open participation and engagement

Experimentation and bottom-up innovation

The European Commission online public consultation on research and innovation in ICT-driven public sector innovation describes some initial thoughts on research and innovation challenges in Europe

1. What should be the drivers needed to cover the important changes and challenges in the area of ICT-driven public sector innovation?

2. Which enablers, whether technology or non-technology are relevant to this ICT-driven public sector innovation area? Are there any important ones missing or irrelevant ones included?

3. Which focus areas of ICT-driven public sector innovation should be addressed?

Drivers

1 Open government and open governance

New governance models based on a public value management approach.
Success factors for the emergence and facilitation of self-organizing networks.
Implications for the current organizational structure, culture and processes of public organizations.
Handle constant change. Agile and flexible approach

2 Government as a broad platform for public value creation

Self-organizing networks of public service delivery
Personalized and contextualized integrated information facilitating decision-taking in real-time
Governance and business models for public value creation
Cooperation between actors

3 Open services and new service approaches

Service personalization
Winning trust
Mobile, adaptive (content and context aware), personalized, unobtrusive and automated public services
Interoperable digital single market for public services
Impact on the trust of citizens
Linked Open Data
Resources to privacy, identity and data management for public services

4 Open participation and engagement

Citizen’s feedback
Democratisation of big data analysis and visualisation tools
Harness IT citizenry to solve their own needs

5 Experimentation and bottom-up innovation

Bring together problem knowledge with technical knowledge: empower front-line public servants
Effective and usable methods and tools supporting Public Sector innovation
ICT- development, experiments, services better aligned with business / population needs and improved in terms of quality and costs
Build on integration across the whole ICT system

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ICT Driven Public Sector Innovation needs

ENABLERS

Infrastructures and processes

Value for data

Policy modelling and making

Measuring and monitoring

Civil servants and working practices

Enablers - Focus Areas to Address

1 Infrastructure and processes

IT management and governance of federated organizations and services
Pan-European interoperability of public services
Easy implementation
Avoid vendor lock-in
Eliminate centralized data-stores of critical information about citizenry
Energy-efficient computing
Enhance the safety aspects of identification and authentication
Privacy Enhancing Technologies, self-controlled data and identity management

2 Value for data

Implementation and use of linked open data
ICT supported collaborative decision making and big data
'data scientists' who are able to control data quality

3 Policy modelling and monitoring

The effective use of policy modeling, simulation and gaming for the design, testing, monitoring and ex-ante evaluation of public services, situational awareness and policy related to public services
New modeling approaches mixing techno-economic with behavioral models for analysis and prediction of social phenomena
Model-based decision support systems
Societal simulation systems and services

4 Measuring and Monitoring

The effective use of policy modeling, simulation and gaming for the design, testing, monitoring and ex-ante evaluation of public services, situational awareness and policy related to public services
New modeling approaches mixing techno-economic with behavioral models for analysis and prediction of social phenomena
Model-based decision support systems
Societal simulation systems and services

5 Civil servants and working practises

New tools are needed for public officials training
New working practices for knowledge workers
Organizational change management
Qualification programs for employees
Personalised learning
Public servants to acquire relevant skills

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The paradigm shift

How to succeed in the adoption�of Distributed Ledger Technologies

Support and guidance to better understand the gains and constraints�that such technologies may bring
Access to critical skills and sandbox environments that may help�them to assess the value proposition�and the potential impact of the technology uptake
A low-cost approach�in the experimentation phase

Change in both government�and institutional culture
Adjustment of internal processes
Empower civil servants
Facilitate approaches to co-creation
Involve all actors into the change process and guarantee value for efforts

New infrastructures�and processes

where public value is created thanks�to the ability of the different actors�to share, interact and collaborate with each other.

The paradigm shift implies a change in both government and institutional culture. Public administrations need to adjust their internal processes, empower their civil servants and facilitate approaches to co-creation. In order to make the effort worthwhile, they need to ensure that all actors are embracing the changing process.

Distributed Ledger Technologies can transform the value chain and the relationship between actors, delivering new solutions to the complex problems that governments are facing.

In order to succeed in the adoption of disruptive technologies, public administrations need support and guidance to better understand the gains and constraints that such technologies may bring. They also need access to critical skills and sandbox environments that may help them to assess the value proposition and the potential impact of the technology uptake. Moreover, the budgetary pressure also requires a low-cost approach in the experimentation phase.

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The Token approach

Disruptive technologies like Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) can lead to a transformation of the value chain and the relationship between actors, delivering new solutions to the complex problems that governments are facing.
DLTs are the cornerstone of future innovation, enabling secure processes that will transform public services, and in turn, solve issues related to trust, transparency and privacy.
DLTs have the potential to allow public services to: improve effectiveness; reduce friction between agencies; reduce bureaucratic barriers; boost public engagement; enhance digital democracy and transparency; improve knowledge sharing; and foster automation through smart contracts.
The Token ecosystem will ease the adoption of such technologies by providing public administrations with “Public Service Ready” components and prove its added value via replicable Pioneer Use Cases.

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Challenges for the public sector

Technological Challenges

#infrastructure gap

Data Sovereignty
Fragmentation vs
Vendor Lock-in

Cultural Challenges

#knowledge gap #organizational gap #workforce gap

DLTs potential still untapped
Lack of Skills
Top Down /pyramidal structures

Socio Economic Challenges

#investment gap #environment gap

Cost-effectiveness / large-scale invest
Added value, testing
Environmental concerns

Legal Challenges

#regulatory gap

Data Protection
Political / bureaucratic hurdles
Citizen acceptance

Technological challenges If governments want to successfully deploy blockchain technology for themselves, they will, of course, need the appropriate infrastructure. This will be challenging with a technology as new as blockchain, one that is evolving rapidly and for which there are still few standards or clear examples of best practices. There are different ways to solve these problems. A government could decide to take a top-down approach, developing one blockchain platform for all agencies and mandating its use. This can serve the cause of standardisation but runs the risk of not being adequate to meet the real needs of the agencies, or locking the government into a single vendor or technology and hence potentially missing out on new developments. Governments could also let their agencies experiment and build blockchain platforms themselves, but that runs the risk of fragmentation of platforms and knowledge, creating a whole that is less than the sum of its parts. #Infrastructure gap

Token will provide with Open Blockchain Platform as a Service to enable public service operators to relatively quickly piloting emerging technologies avoiding the #infrastructure gap and preserving citizens’ data sovereignty. TOKEN delivers an Open Source and interoperable solution with the practical meaning of providing operational pathways for the introduction of disruptive technologies while avoiding #lock-in. This means that TOKEN will follow 6 architectural principles that enable us to develop technology that puts people in control of their personal data, giving them the ability to decide how it is shared: free and open source; modularity and interoperability; “reuse don't re-invent”; decentralisation and federation; privacy by design; user friendliness

Cultural Challenges: DLT in its public, open and permissionless forms is widely considered as a ground-breaking digital technology supporting decentralised methods for consensus reaching as well as sharing, storing and securing transactions and other data with fewer to no central intermediaries. However, the potential of DLTs to generate positive social change by decentralising and disintermediating processes related to local or global sustainability challenges is still largely untapped. #Knowledge gap

The issues related to distributed structures, whatever they may be, remain difficult to grasp and trust. The reason is that we are accustomed to pyramidal structures with clear chains of command. Thus, a multi-disciplinary approach that deals specifically with new models of governance is essential. #Organizational gap

Workforce and its skills are the most challenging area for digital evolution. Many government agencies lack the skills to take full advantage of digital transformation. Employee resistance to new technologies pose difficulties to technology uptake. #Workforce gap

TOKEN follows multi-stakeholder, Distributed Governance and Bottom-Up approach that will help to solve gaps when analyzing the the potential of DLTs to generate positive social change by decentralizing and disintermediating processes related to local or global sustainability challenges

Socio-economic challenges: Not enough is known about the costs and benefits of Distributed Ledger Technologies. Demonstration/verification of cost effectiveness in terms of added value, but also of cost-benefit will be required before large-scale financial commitments can be made. However, it is unclear how novel and inventive products can be tested and proved without some upfront commitment since the potential of DLTs to generate positive impacts in Public Services is still largely untapped. #Investment gap

Creative destruction approach for developing new ways of providing public services, new practices to optimize work processes while overcoming the #investment gap and the so called Baumol effect, and even new economic models based on public value.

Environmental responsiveness approach for avoiding the negative spillovers related with the intense amount of computational power required by some practices related with blockchain. (#computational power gap)

Legal challenges: There are also many legal and regulatory questions still to be decided before blockchain-based platforms can be adopted on a mass scale. For a technology whose main purpose is collaborative data gathering and sharing, issues of data protection are among the most important here. Implementing blockchain for government services will also likely mean clearing political and bureaucratic hurdles. #Regulation gap

NGI Values approach for guaranteeing a 'human-centric' leverage from the Next Generation Internet values of: trustworthiness, resilience and sustainability while keeping the compliance of the privacy-by-design regulation principles as core driver, thus avoiding to be affected by #regulatory diversity.

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The Token’s mission

Token aims to provide enablers for the introduction of disruptive technologies that contribute to accelerate the transformation�of public services towards an open government model based on the principles of collaboration, transparency and participation.

Blockchain as a service solution

Open Source

Cloud Service Infrastructure

Human-Centric

Cost-Effective

TOKEN aims to provide a Blockchain Platform as a Service Solution enabling public agencies to pilot the adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies as a driver for transformation of Public Services towards more open, transparent, trusted and efficient services

TOKEN provides a new type of infrastructure enabling the transformation of public services, where public value is created thanks to the ability of the different actors to share, interact and collaborate with each other.

In this respect, TOKEN provides a sandbox for testing novel processes and approaches that are required for a decentralised, cross-government and multi-actor architecture, combining the best of Distributed Ledger Technologies with Internet of Things, Big Data and Cloud technologies with the power of social tools, while addressing security, privacy and data protection requirements.

For now, at a time where governments are deeply focused on cost-effectiveness and accountability, considering these aspects as key features of sound policy-making, Distributed Ledger Technologies need to be understood in order to foresee the potential solutions to a range of challenges or areas of work in this sector.

DLTs have the potential to allow public service to: improve effectiveness; reduce friction between agencies; reduce bureaucratic barriers; boost public engagement; enhance digital democracy and transparency; improve knowledge sharing; and foster automation through smart contracts.

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The Token’s mission

Decentralized architecture

Blockchain / DLT agnostic

European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI) as main reference

Experimental�ecosystem

Highly replicable use cases

Sharing, interactive and collaborative environments

Sandbox�infrastructure

Combining the best of Distributed Ledger Technologies with IoT, big data and cloud technologies

Addressing security, privacy and data protection requirements

Toolkit for�policymakers

Ready-to-use guidelines and recommendations addressing technical, cultural, socio economic and legal challenges when using and adopting DLTs

Bottom-up�approach

Impact assessment:

gathering users’ needs, use cases and pathways for sustainability

Inclusive distributed�governance model:

a new democratic method of managing digital infrastructures

Pioneer use cases:

New ways of providing public services through DLTs

Encourage interaction, experimentation and cross-learning

Increase citizens’ awareness�and public engagement

The ultimate goal of TOKEN is to develop an experimental ecosystem to enable the adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies and to prove its value, via highly replicable Use Cases, as driver for the transformation of public services towards an open and collaborative government model approach

TOKEN provides a new type of infrastructure enabling the transformation of public services, where public value is created thanks to the ability of the different actors to share, interact and collaborate with each other.

In this respect, TOKEN provides a sandbox for testing novel processes and approaches that are required for a decentralised, cross-government and multi-actor architecture, combining the best of Distributed Ledger Technologies with Internet of Things, Big Data and Cloud technologies with the power of social tools, while addressing security, privacy and data protection requirements.

For now, at a time where governments are deeply focused on cost-effectiveness and accountability, considering these aspects as key features of sound policy-making, Distributed Ledger Technologies need to be understood in order to foresee the potential solutions to a range of challenges or areas of work in this sector.

DLTs have the potential to allow public service to: improve effectiveness; reduce friction between agencies; reduce bureaucratic barriers; boost public engagement; enhance digital democracy and transparency; improve knowledge sharing; and foster automation through smart contracts.

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The Token’s benefits

EFFICIENT

Free/Open Source modules

DLT & Blockchain agnostic

Added value - Pioneer Use Cases

EBSI principles

FLEXIBLE

Modular, interoperable�and transversal

Decentralized and federated

Bottom-up approach

TRANSPARENCY

Open and collaborative government model

Decentralized�& P2P accessibility

Token Data Broker

PRIVACY

Privacy by design

GDPR, KYC and AML compliant

Self-sovereign principles

TRUSTWORTHINESS

Human-centric

Next Generation Internet (NGI) values

Privacy by design

SUSTAINABLE�& COST SAVVY

Open commons approach

Avoiding vendor lock-in scenarios

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Roadmap

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Pioneer Use Cases

Bottom-up Approach

Design and implementation of 4 use cases of public service transformation�via adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies

Stimulate interaction, experimentation, cross-learning
Streamline bureaucratic and procurement processes
Increase transparency
Interoperable public services
Adaptable technologies
Self-sovereignty
Interoperability / modularity of services

APPROACH

Thus, the TOKEN bottom up approach includes design and implementation of at least four specific cases of public service transformation via adoption DLT (Pioneer Use Cases) to stimulate interaction, experimentation and cross-learning to engage research and innovation in meeting a variety of issues while also enabling bottom-up solutions. These Pioneer Use Cases will make life easier for citizens while civil servants should be seen as early adopters in order to streamline bureaucratic and procurement processes while increasing transparency.

Furthermore, TOKEN use cases aim at the creation of interoperable public services in which citizens regain control of their data. Value will be ingrained in adaptable technologies, accounting for self-sovereignty, interoperability and modularity for services such as public funding distribution, transparent management of public accounts, last mile logistics in Smart Cities and market valorisation of data generated in the public domain

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Pioneer Use Cases

Potential for scalability and replicability in public agencies across Europe.

Better understanding of how public services are delivered and the implications of DLT adoption when the public value is provided through PPP (public-private partnership), local and regional governments.

Addressing the legal and regulatory aspects related to data sharing and privacy.

Connection to a wide range of public services’ user groups and stakeholders�such as: civil servants, researchers or entrepreneurs…

Technology standardization and orchestration by building upon IoT,�and big data standards for Smart Cities such as FIWARE.

IMPACTS

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Pioneer Use Cases

Bringing experience in cascade funding projects.

Incorporating blockchain into active Smart Cities projects in Central Macedonia: Municipality of Katerini.

Assessing the specific value of DLTs for urban mobility.

Improving citizens’ lives whilst also increasing urban services efficiency and exploring new economic models, based on data valorization.

Reduced�Administrative�burden, increased transparency.

Saving costs and time, increased trust, real time expenditures, audit trials, blockchain-based E-voting system for citizens.

DLTs and IoT for more efficient logistics service and pricing. Greater customer satisfaction and less congestion for the city.

A transparent solution to the evaluation�and valorisation of the use of data by third-parties, regardless of who owns the data.

Grant distribution via competitive open calls.

Public procurement.

Mail post / mobility.

Smart City services.

OBJECTIVE

BENEFITS

PUBLIC

SERVICE

Public Funding Distribution

Public Accounts�Management

Urban�Logistics

Data valorisation�services

USE CASES

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The Token Community - DLT4Gov

The Token Community, also called DLT4Gov (decentralized technologies for governments),�is at the heart of the Token activities: Its purpose is to share knowledge and best practices among the Community members, guiding and connecting researchers, policymakers, technologists, developers, civil servants, and hi-tech entrepreneurs, who are experts in the field of “Tokenization of Public Services”.

Our Community members actively engage�with one another and share activities and news,�aimed at creating awareness about the vision�and scope of the Token project.

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The Token Community - DLT4Gov

Who

Why

Find new ways of improving and innovating services
Discover innovative approaches to overcome current barriers and obstacles for better services to citizens
Explore wider ways of applications of your research
Share your experiences and perspectives
Get both a social and citizens’ point of view taken into account
Expand your digital network/knowledge
Get first hand experiences for your product development
Stay updated about the latest in this topic�and expand their network

Developers and CTOs working in public agencies
IT providers/operators of public services
European policymakers and regulators
Researchers
Public services workforce (civil servants, external contractors/agencies…)
Social representatives (e.g.: NGOs, citizens associations, political parties, etc.)
Influencers (e.g. representatives of associations working towards digitalizing the public sector,�think tanks, accelerators, incubators, etc.)
IT startups, developers and innovative SMEs
Anyone else who is keen to share information, network, research,and learn about the DLT4Gov

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Partners

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Token has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement no 825268.