New GovChain Report Ranks Government Adoption of Blockchain Globally

Commenting on the report, GovChain co-founder, Helen Disney said: “This study came about as a result of not being able to find information that we were seeking ourselves. There was previously no single resource to find out the status of public sector implementation of blockchain by different nations. We spoke directly with the policymakers who had attempted to implement blockchain and find out what the key elements were that allowed them to make a change”.

A core part of the research is its ability to compare jurisdictions, Lavan Thasarathakumar, GovChain co-founder, said: “ranking jurisdictions across the world was always going to be challenging but implementing a traffic light system allowed us to achieve this in a simple yet effective way. We judged each country on three key metrics: the propensity to change, legal certainty, and infrastructure. We then attributed a traffic light colour, based on their progress. This gives users an ‘at a glance’ reference point for how countries are progressing”.

The report may provide some welcome encouragement for policymakers with twelve nations ranked as Green having adopted policies that are ‘blockchain-friendly’ and have working examples of the technology in action; a further seven ranked as Amber (‘Investigators’); and only two ranked as sceptical Reds.

For countries wishing to achieve adopter status in future, the report identified five policy recommendations as a result of the trends seen in the research:

• Carry out a cost/benefit analysis of upgrading public sector IT systems using blockchain/DLT


• Promote international and cross-border cooperation


• Establish sandboxes and innovation hubs


• Avoid premature termination of use cases


• Define public procurement criteria

Tom Rodden, Chief Scientific Advisor at the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport comments in his foreword: “This is a hugely informative and useful document for those who seek to make use of blockchains in the public sector”.

-ENDS-

The full research can be found at: ​https://govchain.world

For further information, interviews or comments, please contact ​[email protected]​.

GovChain is a non-profit research group supported by a group of companies including ​Unblocked Events​, Qadre​ and ​Blockpass​.