Blockchain in e-Governance: Driving the next Frontier in G2C Services (English Edition)

Blockchain in

e-Governance

Driving the next Frontier in

G2C Services

Rajesh Dhuddu

Srinivas Mahankali

www.bpbonline.com

FIRST EDITION 2021

Copyright © BPB Publications, India

ISBN: 978-93-90684-46-5

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Dedicated to

We wish to dedicate this book to all Governments across

the world who are actively promoting application of emerging technologies to ensure transparency and accountability in

services provided to citizens.

About the Authors

Rajesh Dhuddu

Rajesh is an alumnus of Columbia Business School & Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning with a Gold Medal in MBA Finance. Driven by his life motto Help Ever, Hurt Never, Rajesh has mentored several Entrepreneurs, Corporate Executives and MBA Students.

Rajesh Dhuddu leads Blockchain & Cybersecurity practice for USD 5.2 billion IT giant, Tech Mahindra. He guides a team of 500+ highly accomplished Cybersecurity professionals empowering Global customers in EMEA, APJ & India to strengthen their enterprise-wide Cybersecurity posture and build a highly resilient security organization. He works closely with Global CISOs, advising them to leverage best practices both in technology and operations covering Cloud Security, Network Security, Advance Threat Management, Zero Trust, Offensive Security, Cyber-risk Quantification & SASE.

Rajesh has been recognized as one of the Global Blockchain leaders by several leading analysts, industry bodies like World Economic Forum & Governments like State Government of Telangana. He spearheaded implementation of solutions to block spam calls and text in partnership with 3 leading Telcos and also Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeshdhuddu/

Srinivas Mahankali

An alumnus from IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore, Srinivas has over 30 years industry experience of which 12 years is in leading IT Solutions in Indian Private & BSE listed organisations. He has taken an active role in promoting Blockchain across Government of India as the one of the first employees to lead Blockchain at NISG an organisation promoted by NASSCOM and Government of India.

As the Program Director of the first University certified Post Graduate course in Blockchain in India Srinivas mentored over 500 students across globe. He has authored over 10 books on Blockchain and emerging technologies including the World’s first book to be translated into a Chinese language from English, by Artificial Intelligence bots, Blockchain-The Untold Story. He has also authored books, Blockchain for Non-IT Professionals, Blockchain & Smart cities.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srinivasindia/

Acknowledgements

We are extremely thankful to the community of emerging technology professionals with whom we interact on a day-to-day basis; a ritual we have been following over last 3 years.

We are indebted to our teachers, senior colleagues and other authors who have encouraged us to write a series of books on emerging technologies like Blockchain – The Untold Story, AI & ML – Agents of Automation, Secure Chains, Blockchain for Non-IT Professionals, Blockchain and Smart Cities-Lessons from Singapore, Blockchain Consortiums and many more.

We would like to sincerely thank all those who inspired and supported us in pursuing wonderful journey & career in the Blockchain world.

We wish to thank numerous Start-ups who toil very hard to innovate and come up with new and innovative solutions to solve problems of humans and propel us forward in evolution.

Special thanks are also due to Sanat Bhat, Varun Singhi, Murthy Chitlur, Saravanan Malaichami, Rajan Kotadi, Ish Goel, Subbu Jois and many more terrific start-ups who have guided us from time to time. Ms Susan Dart and Ms Debajani Mohanty have given us valuable suggestions for updating the contents. Thank you all.

A big thanks to all our friends, well-wishers, community friends in the Blockchain domain who have egged us to go for this daunting project.

A number of Government agencies like MeiTY, NITI Aayog in India, MAS, Singapore, Governments in Dubai (UAE), Estonia and organisations like Infosys, PwC, IBM, Microsoft, Linux Foundation, Consensys, Tech Mahindra, Oracle, WEF and many more have contributed immensely to the body of knowledge available in this domain, which we have used as reference in cases applicable. We wish to acknowledge their contribution to our work and to the Blockchain community.

Preface

In many ways the invention of ‘Bitcoin’ and the associated Blockchain technology can be likened to the ‘Big Bang’ that caused the universe to start and expand from a single point, 13.5 billion years ago.

The Times 3/Jan/2009 Chancellor on the verge of second bailout for banks — Satoshi Nakamoto - Genesis Block.

11 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto launched the Bitcoin network at approximately 18:15:05 UTC and the world has not been the same since. The Bitcoin blockchain came to life on January 3, 2009, and so far, more than 600,000 blocks have been mined into existence. Nakamoto’s genesis block is special and the hardcoded block has a few unique characteristics compared to the rest of the chain of blocks that followed. (source bitcoin.com)

Who do you think is the real Satoshi Nakamoto? A question plaguing millions of people across the world. It is indeed a Brilliant work of A Genius digital currency specialist, A Genius Cryptographer, A Genius Mathematician, A Genius Computer Programmer, A Super Grand Master of Chess, A Genius Marketer, A Passionate Activist against Centralization & Excessive Regulation and Above all, someone who has no need for a Million Bitcoins available in his account, no need for the associated fame in return for the Anonymity that is needed to stand by the values of Cryptocurrency he invented or someone who has the capacity to command respect from, employ/ work with all such persons combined for a cause?!

Let us examine the key suspects:

Satoshi Nakamoto, the name used by the unknown person or people who designed bitcoin and created its original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, they also devised the first blockchain database. In the process they were the first to solve the double-spending problem for digital currency. Incidentally, Hal Finney is the neighbour of a person by name ‘SATOSHI NAKAMOTO’ who did not have any clue about the technology aspects of Bitcoin, when interrogated.

Harold Finney was a cypherpunk and said: It seemed so obvious to me: ‘Here we are faced with the problems of loss of privacy, creeping computerization, massive databases, more centralization - and David Chum offers a completely different direction to go in, one which puts power into the hands of individuals rather than governments and corporations. The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them’. He was an early Bitcoin user and received the first bitcoin transaction from Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Finney lived in the same town for 10 years that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto lived (Temple City, California), adding to speculation that he may have been Bitcoin’s creator. Finney denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.

Wei Dai is a computer engineer and cypherpunk best known as creator of b-money and the developer of the Crypto++ library. Dai is listed as inventor on U.S. patents 5724279 and 6081598 which were assigned to Microsoft.

Mr. Dai worked in the Cryptography Research Group at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington. While at Microsoft, he was involved in the study, design and implementation of cryptosystems for specialized applications. Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Dai was a programmer with TerraSciences of Acton, Massachusetts. Mr. Dai holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Washington in computer science, with a minor in mathematics. "Dai has made numerous contributions to the field of cryptography and has identified critical Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) vulnerabilities affecting SSH2 and the browser exploit against SSL/TLS known as BEAST (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS).

Nick Szabo is a computer scientist, legal scholar[and cryptographer known for his research in digital contracts and digital currency. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1989 with a degree in computer science. In 1998, Szabo designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called bit gold. Bit gold was never implemented but has been called a direct precursor to the Bitcoin architecture. Research by financial author Dominic Frisby provided circumstantial evidence but, as he admits, no proof that Satoshi is Szabo. Speaking on RT’s Keiser Report, he said I’ve concluded there is only one person in the whole world that has the sheer breadth but also the specificity of knowledge and it is this chap…. In a July 2014 email to Frisby, Szabo said Thanks for letting me know. I’m afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I’m used to it.

It seems that Satoshi Nakamoto is the name given to the Project Bitcoin by one of the greatest living legends of all times to come, we have in our midst (no guess needed!) who was instrumental in bringing together genius professionals who combined all the above skills narrated at the beginning, possible only by the collusion of all the four persons in the collage depicted at the start (one of them being an unsuspecting lender of the name to the project)!

Bitcoin like the other inventions like Internet, Operating system, Search engine, Mobile computing, Internet of Things etc., has proved to enormously disruptive being responsible for an expected US$3.1 Trillion worth of business potential by 2030 as per a report by PCCW research based on Gartner research.

Bitcoin, an outcome of a project with a mission to put the decision-making power back into the hands of individuals and secure their identities, against the powers of centralised organisations like Government, regulators and Business organisations, is nothing short of a work of a multifaceted genius that combines super skills in Programming, Cryptography, Mathematics, Economics, Marketing, People management, Execution excellence, strategic thinking, long term vision and enormous clout!

Onset of the Pandemic due to nCovi19 virus has heralded an unprecedented change in the mindsets of people to dramatically adopt to Technology inspired lifestyle.

Earlier, it was felt as a necessity to meet, greet and deal with people personally and engage in official and personal engagements. Now there is nothing we can think that we cannot do remotely using digital technologies.

Governments are discovering that they can dramatically improve the reach of and access to their services to citizens and businesses by embracing new technologies.

Blockchain technology along with other empowering technologies like IOT and AI & ML powered applications is facilitating a rapid disruption across every aspect of our life due to its ability to securely connect vast majority of users simultaneously. This is offering Provenance, Authenticity and Trust to transactions and reducing the cost of undertaking the business.

Governments in several countries have demonstrated the utility of Blockchain across a variety of e-governance applications. As Blockchain paradigm emerged out of the shadow of the negative impact of permissionless cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, that have been illegally exploited to channelize and transfer unaccounted money across borders, it is time to look at the various possibilities that exist for this amazing enabler of secured automation at scale. In this book we would like to look at the various applications of Blockchain and explore the approaches to implementation in a Government context.

Prologue

We are increasingly faced with several new technologies like IOT, AI & Analytics, Machine learning, 3D printing, AR/VR, Robotics, Drones making inroads into several areas of our corporate & personal lives.

All these technologies are offering an unprecedented level of automation that is augmenting our performance & lifestyles as well.

As these technologies are leveraging the centralised approach of aggregation & economies of scale to facilitate efficiencies that provide a high level of training data, these are also increasingly becoming vulnerable to sophisticated cyber-attacks from actors searching for lucrative targets, to hold them at ransom.

Given this, How are we supposed to safeguard burgeoning investments into cutting-edge intelligent analytics driven investments of Industry 4.0?

Enters Blockchain with its potential of decentralisation and cryptographically protected and distributed ledgers that provide a mechanism to nullify the action Cybercriminals and their attacks. By eliminating Single points of failure that are resident in Centralised era, Blockchain seems to be the preferred technology that the world is looking for!

What then is this Blockchain? Let us demystify it!

First introduced to the world as Bitcoin, A Cryptocurrency by a fictitious entity with name – Satoshi Nakamoto, in the year 2008 through a whiter paper Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System. Blockchain the underlying technology that pioneered Bitcoin and resultant innovations in Global Payments industry has made its impact much beyond the core finance domain it transformed initially. Blockchain is now considered, a special type of distributed ledger that records peer to peer transactions executed through a new generation of applications called Smart contracts, in a safe and secure manner, by using advanced Cryptography protocols that offer security, transparency & tamper resistance properties to the transactions.

In the generation of artificial intelligence led analytics that are empowering centralised organisations by offering new tools to manipulate demand, there has been off late a huge inclination to counter these forces & patronise decentralised systems that put the power back into the hands of individual customers.

The era of open-source technologies & ‘Pay as you go’ models are fuelling proliferation of such decentralised platforms, aka blockchain based systems that are empowering the citizens and organisations across the world with their ‘Cooperative style’ approach.

The disintermediation of Social media platforms and Ecommerce marketplaces posing a serious threat to the existence of global giants like Amazon, Uber, Facebook etc., seems to be round the corner, thanks to Blockchain!

The fake products menace in global Pharmaceuticals, Auto