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In November 2017, the British think tank Reform released the completed Accenture (Accenture) research report "The Future of Public Service Identity: Blockchain", which discussed the role of blockchain technology in the delivery of public services in the future, showing How blockchain technology is used for identity management.
The report believes that the government's current identity management model is both inefficient and inconvenient. Government departments hold different, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory versions of citizenship, and there is no proper system to ensure the authenticity of a certain version (that is, a unified version of citizenship). When trying to access public services, citizens often repeat the information they share with government agencies, such as their addresses and national insurance numbers, even though this information may have been learned.
Blockchain technology has the potential to help provide a better system to overcome these problems and can transform the identity management model. Blockchain is a distributed peer-to-peer database. It can be seen as a computer network that communicates with each other (hence peer-to-peer). All members of the blockchain network can access data through shared account books to ensure the authenticity of a certain version. Since data is visible to members of the blockchain (such as government departments), citizens do not need to repeatedly enter the same information to obtain public services just to verify their identity. The distributed nature of the blockchain will also increase the security of data, because the centralized data storage system currently in use is more vulnerable to hacker attacks.
The identity management model driven by blockchain technology will also transfer the ownership of personal data from the government to the individual. This means shifting from the mode of holding different versions of personal data by government agencies to the mode of identity stored by users. Unlike today’s model, individuals can access their personal information and can authorize who can see it and in what form.
Although the technical details of the blockchain are quite complex, the report shows how simple the proposed identity management model is for citizens. When paying taxes, applying for benefits, or passing through the border, individuals can access and verify their identities through apps on their smartphones, which will be protected by biometric technology.
Blockchain technology has the potential to change the identity management model in the future. By adopting this technology, the British government will ensure that it is a future-oriented digital country.
Other key points of the report include:
(1) Blockchain technology has not yet fulfilled its potential in the field of public services, especially in terms of identity management.
(2) The report proposes a new identity management model driven by blockchain. Blockchain can create a secure public service identity and greatly improve the experience of verifying identity to obtain public services. Compared to today, when a person has multiple IDs, this new model will enable a person to put all of their identities in one place-their smartphone.
(3) Citizens can prove their identities through an identity application, and only need to swipe their fingers to agree to the government to share their data, for example in the area of health services.
(4) The government will incorporate the rules of the blockchain network into smart contracts. Smart contracts can not only ensure that government departments comply with data protection, but also allow government databases to be updated accurately and in a timely manner.
(5) This new identity management model will change the relationship between citizens and the government, that is, citizens will become the controller of their identities and the government will be the verifier.