ThesisPDF Available

INTEGRATION OF THE BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY INTO THE LAND REGISTRATION SYSTEM. A CASE STUDY OF GEORGIA

May 2019

DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.35689.13920/1

Authors:

Nino Lazuashvili

Tallinn University of Technology

Types of the Blockchain Technology. Source: Voshmgir & Kalinov, 2017, p. 17

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Hashing Algorithm SHA-256 (Part 1). Source: Blockgeeks, 2017

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Hashing Algorithm SHA-256 (Part 2). Source: Blockgeeks, 2017.

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Merkel's Tree Structure Explained. Source: iab. TECH LAB, 2018.

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Legend for BPMN

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Figures - uploaded by Nino Lazuashvili

Content may be subject to copyright.

Content uploaded by Nino Lazuashvili

Content may be subject to copyright.

TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Faculty of Information Technology

INTEGRATION OF THE BLOCKCHAIN

TECHNOLOGY INTO THE LAND

REGISTRATION SYSTEM.

A CASE STUDY OF GEORGIA

Master’s Thesis

Supervisor: Alexander H. Norta

PhD Associate Professor

Tallinn 2019

TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Infotehnoloogia Teaduskond

BLOCKCHAIN TEHNOLOOGIA

INTEGREERIMINE MAA

REGISTREERIMISÜSTEEMI.

GRUUSIA JUHTUMIUURING

Magistritöö

Juhendaja: Alexander H. Norta

PhD Associate Professor

Tallinn 2019

Author’s declaration of originality

I hereby certify that I am the sole author of this thesis. All the used materials, references to the

literature and the work of others have been referred to. This thesis has not been presented for

examination anywhere else.

Author: Nino Lazuashvili

09.05.2019

Abstract

Contemporary technologies are constantly evolving and challenging the societies. Artificial

intelligence, blockchain, smart contracts, electronic ID’s and many other advancements are

actively being integrated in day to day relationships of governments and citizens. With the

evolution of the information and communication technologies state authorities have been

challenged to provide more efficient and effective services to the citizens, yet guaranteeing

high level of data security, transparency, auditability and privacy.

Georgian government has already proclaimed itself as one of the most innovative states in the

world that has been administering digital solutions within its public administration systems. In

the pursuit of enhancing the e-government country deployed the blockchain technology and

became the world pioneer by adopting the blockchain technology within the land registration

system.

Purpose of this paper is to ascertain how the blockchain technology can benefit into the public

service provision processes and what are the determinants for the successful adoption of this

digital platform. Under the spotlight of the research paper is the land titling project of the

National Agency of Public Registry of Georgia and the blockchain project integrated within

land registry services.

This thesis is written in English and is 67 pages long, including 5 chapters, 7 figures and 1

table.

Keywords: Blockchain Technology, Land Title, Land Registry, Property Registry, NAPR, The

Bitfury Group, Georgia.

List of Abbreviations and Terms

B2G

Business to Government

BPMN

Business Process Model and Notation

CAN

Computer Network Attack

DEA

Data Exchange Agency

DLD

Dubai Land Department

EDB

Ease of Doing Business

EDI

Electronic Identification

G2G

Government to Government

ICT

Information and Communication Technologies

Identification

Information Technologies

KPI

Key Performance Indicator

NAPR

National Agency of Public Registry

POS

Poof of Stake

POW

Proof of Work

United Nations


 
    Table of Contents 
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 11 
1 Problem Statement ..................................................................................................... 12 
2 Research Objectives ................................................................................................... 12 
3 Context ...................................................................................................................... 13 
Related Work ................................................................................................................... 15 
1 Earlier Studies ........................................................................................................... 15 
1.1 Blockchain Technology ....................................................................................... 17 
1.2 Types of Blockchain ............................................................................................ 18 
1.3 Proof of Work ..................................................................................................... 20 
1.4 Hashing Function ................................................................................................ 21 
1.5 Merkle’s Tree ...................................................................................................... 22 
1.6 Bitcoin ................................................................................................................ 23 
1.7 Ethereum ............................................................................................................. 24 
1.8 Smart Contracts ................................................................................................... 24 
2 Theoretical Framework .............................................................................................. 25 
2.1 Development of e-Government and e-Service Delivery in Georgia ...................... 25 
2.2 National Administration of Public Registry (NAPR)............................................ 29 
2.3 Land Registries ................................................................................................... 30 
2.4 Application of Blockchain to Land Registries in Other Countries ........................ 32 
2.5 Land Registration in Georgia ............................................................................... 38 
2.6 Land Titles in Georgia ......................................................................................... 39 
2.7 The Bitfury Group ............................................................................................... 41 
Case Study Design ........................................................................................................... 42 
1 Research Questions .................................................................................................... 43 
2 Research Strategy ...................................................................................................... 46 
3 Data Collection .......................................................................................................... 47 


 
3.1 Interviews............................................................................................................ 48 
3.2 Document Review ............................................................................................... 51 
4 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................ 52 
4.1. Data Coding ....................................................................................................... 52 
5 Validity Procedures.................................................................................................... 54 
Results ............................................................................................................................. 57 
1 Case and Subject Description ..................................................................................... 57 
2 Presentation of Findings............................................................................................. 59 
2.1 General Description of the Respondents .............................................................. 60 
2.2 Thematic Outline of the Interview Results ........................................................... 62 
2.3 Blockchain Technology in Georgian Land Registry System................................. 62 
2.4 Characteristics of the Successful Blockchain Reform .......................................... 64 
2.5 Future Application of the Blockchain Technology to State Services .................... 66 
Conclusions and Future Work .......................................................................................... 70 
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 70 
2 Summary of Findings ................................................................................................. 70 
2.1 Criteria Necessary for Further Adoption the Blockchain Technology................... 70 
2.2 Components Lacking in the Blockchain Project of Georgian Land Titles ............. 71 
2.3 AS IS Model of the Land Titling ......................................................................... 72 
3 Impact/Implication ..................................................................................................... 76 
4 Limitations ............................................................................................................... 77 
5 Future Work .............................................................................................................. 79 
References .......................................................................................................................... 80 
Appendix 1 - Example of the land title  #892017311858  (part 1) ........................................ 85 
Appendix 2 - Example of the land title  #892017311858  (part 2) ........................................ 86 
Appendix 3 - Interview Guide ............................................................................................. 87 
Appendix 4 - Thematic Map of All Categories and Codes ................................................... 92 

8 
 
Appendix 5 - Individual Codes per Code Categories............................................................ 92 
Appendix 6 - Land Title AS IS model ................................................................................. 96 
Appendix 7 - Interview Records .......................................................................................... 96 
Appendix 8 - Merkle’s Tree for Land Title #892017311858 ................................................ 96 
Appendix 9 - Bitcoin Transaction Tracker for #892017311858 ........................................... 97 
Appendix 10 - Additional Matetrials ................................................................................... 97

9 
 
List of Figures 
Figure 1 Types of the Blockchain Technology. Source:  Voshmgir & Kalinov, 2017, p. 17 . 20 
Figure 2 Hashing Algorithm SHA-256 (Part 1). Source:  Blockgeeks, 2017 ........................ 21 
Figure 3 Hashing Algorithm SHA-256 (Part 2). Source:  Blockgeeks, 2017......................... 22 
Figure 4 Merkel’s Tree Structure Explained. Source:  iab. TECH LAB, 2018...................... 23 
Figure 5 IT Architecture of Lantmäteriet’s Blockchain Solution Source: Kairos Future, 2017.
 ........................................................................................................................................... 33 
Figure 6 TO BE model of Dubai Land Department’s Blockchain Solution. Source: Dubai 
Land Department. [n.d.] ...................................................................................................... 36 
Figure 7 Legend for BPMN ................................................................................................. 73

List of Tables

Table 1 Code Categories for Analysis ................................................................................. 60

1 Introduction

The digital roadmap of the twenty first century is constantly progressing as information and

communication technologies (ICT) have become an inseparable part of every aspect of

contemporary communities. Easy, transparent, accountable, secure and effective interaction

among citizens and governments has been a trend of the latest decades. Thus, governments

keep striving to comply with the requirements of citizens through delivering the state services

in the most effective and efficient ways possible. Advancements of the ICT heavily influence

the performance of today’s governments and in many aspects determine the course of actions

of countries’ developments. In this regard, electronic government is one of the boldest

achievements of the decade. Electronic governments create platforms for provision fast,

transparent, cheap and convenient solutions to citizen related concerns.

As a one of the biggest achievements of the modern information society blockchain technology

can be deemed a disruptive innovation with the potential to revolutionize the way society,

including governments and non-profit and for-profit organizations to handle themselves and

communicate with the stakeholders. Technology creates a platform for the distributed

governance and results in every aspect of stakeholders’ relationships through affecting whole

range of document processing, data storage, information exchange, power distribution,

transparency and other crucial aspects the existing business processes. In this regard,

blockchain technology creates an immense opportunity for governments to succeed in all the

aspects of government-citizen relationships and to offer the most advanced services within

electronic platforms.

Blockchain has already got the attention of various countries, where state authorities have been

trying to administer this neoteric e-soliton to various services and among those countries, which

bravely claim itself as the world pioneer early adopters, is Georgian government as well, having

successfully integrated the technology in the e-service provision systems.

This paper intends to shed the light on the success story of Georgia with regards to adoption

the blockchain technology into the land titling public service system. How this developing

country accepted a challenge of becoming a pioneer state by applying the distributed ledger

technology to its e-government, what are the results of the project and how the implications

have affected the public service provision systems, will be discussed in the forthcoming

chapters.

1.1 Problem Statement

Provision of fast and convenient state services for increasing the overall performance of the

government has been a challenge of contemporary state authorities. Rising demand of citizens

and businesses for provision the efficient, secure and convenient services can only be satisfied

by digitalisation of public services and eventually, by implementation of e-government

solutions in the public sector.

Whilst some countries still struggle with the red tape and redundant bureaucracy within public

sectors, some manage to demonstrate their unique ability of change and transformation within

the context of latest governance challenges. Among the latterly characterised countries,

Georgia can be considered as the country that has long proved itself as a government prone to

adoption of innovative solutions into the state service provision systems. In order to embrace

the good governance and meet the citizens’ growing expectations towards ensuring more

privacy, transparency, speed, safety and cost-efficiency of the services, country challenged

itself to in adoption of the revolutionizing technology with yet fully unleashed benefits for the

world economies.

Paper’s interest lies on studying the case of administering the blockchain technology in the

electronic public service provision systems of Georgia. More specifically, examining

blockchain-based land title project is the research’s focal point as long as no prior similar

research of such kind has been carried out and it is appealing to analyse the case from the

standpoint of further developments of the project both within and outside of the Georgian

context.

1.2 Research Objectives

Paper aims to study the land titling project of the Georgian government through using the

blockchain technology; Research paper aims to examine the grounds of the given state service

and evaluate the project that had been carried out with the aim to provide wider insight on the

reform that was never done before. Given academic research will create opportunities for the

recommendations of further development of blockchain into nourishing the state service

delivery systems and developing e-services. Main goals of the research are as follows:

▪ Evaluate the land tiling blockchain project from the point of effectiveness and

efficiency

▪ Point out the weakest points of the project as well as highlight the strong areas

▪ Propose a framework for the future development of the technology within the same

and/or any other state services

Paper intends to seize the opportunities for the Georgian government and National Agency of

Public Registry (NAPR) specifically for provision of the value via developing and sharing the

technology to support various state agencies within the country as well as to cooperate on an

international level under cross-country partnership frameworks.

1.3 Context

Modern history of the Georgian public administration systems dates to 1991 when after the

collapse of the Soviet Union country regained long-awaited independence. At that period with

the legacy of corruption and nepotism, having no experience of dealing problems on its own.

Thus, until the Rose Revolution in 2003, country lagged the advanced and developed countries

while having ineffective, chaotic, corrupted and inefficient government. Once a pro-western

political party of National Movement took over the state governance, country started looking

for the ways of eradicating corruption, fighting mass unemployment and other problems that

had been a burden on the society’s shoulders for the past decades. In order to rapidly achieve

results new government launched fundamental reforms in the public administration system by

focusing on provision of swift, convenient, accountable, transparent and auditable public

services to the citizens that eventually, turned out in gradual development of the e-government.

Since 2003, country did radically change its vector from the highly bureaucratised to an

uncorrupted, citizen-oriented government. In a very fast phase county managed to fall under

the radars of various international organizations such as the World Bank that already “in 2012

recognized Georgia as one of the world’s fastest reforming economies and as a leader in

fighting corruption. Georgia later ranked 16th in the 2016 World Bank’s Ease of Doing

Business index, 13th in the 2017 Economic Freedom Index, and 59th out of 128 global

economies in the Global Competitiveness Report” (Weiss & Corsi, 2018, p.8).

New government envisioned Georgia as an independent and a successful state, offering the

most convenient state services to attract investors from all over the world as well as to promote

entrepreneurship culture within a country itself. After 1991, citizens also became aware of the

concept of a personal property as there was no legal ownership over immovable property in the

Soviet Union. “The President was well aware that one necessary area for reform – and crucial

to the Government’s efforts to re-start Georgia’s drive toward a market economy – was

improving the land governance system” (Egiashvili, 2012, p. 2). Thus, NAPR was formed,

among other services, also managing the tasks concerning the land registration.

Over the time NAPR outlined itself as the first, fully digitalized public agency in Georgia and

as the most IT advanced public entity in the Caucasian region as well. In the pursuit of

development of state services, reducing corruption, cutting regulations, opening new markets,

simplifying tax payments, ensuring security and trust towards government became agency’s

main goals; NAPR challenged itself to also take over the administering of the technological

novelty – blockchain – by being the first country in the world where a national government

used blockchain technology to successfully safeguard and authenticate state operations.

Initially, the blockchain-based property registry project was launched in 2016.

As of now Georgian government is examining opportunities towards improving the technology

and seeking for ways of adjusting it to another platforms. Implementation of the blockchain

technology should help the government increase its efficiency, improve transparency, reduce

red tape and accelerate the results it has gained since the launch of the initial phase of the

project. In the long run, Georgia as a “best practice” country with respect to administering of

the cutting-edge technology-blockchain in the state services, should increase efficiency and

overall performance of the government.

2 Related Work

This chapter aims to introduce the theoretical background that has been accumulated around

the blockchain technology and to review the works that have been performed prior the current

master paper in regard to the study object. Some key components of the blockchain technology

are also analysed in the forthcoming sections, in order to provide the readers better grounds for

afterwards understanding the essence of the study object. Current chapter also analyses the

existing, similar experience of the countries adopting the blockchain technology and based on

their experience in the context of land registries, author tries to draw recommendations for

applying the technology to the state services.

2.1 Earlier Studies

Blockchain technology is deemed as one of the most disruptive and promising technological

applications of today’s state operations. Some authors see the blockchain technology as the

new layer of current e-governments that will provide better accountability, trusts and improved

performance. Thus, even though the technology itself is in its infant states, some scholars have

already studied the solution and determined possible benefits and drawbacks of the technology

towards application it to the state services, Ølnes & Jansen (2017) suggest that blockchain

technology can improve state operations even in those cases where there might not be a

developed e-government and the issues of adequate infrastructure may still be an issue. This is

exactly where ICT solutions might be a breaking point for improving the corrupted institutional

frameworks of the countries. Ølnes & Jansen (2017) believe that “ICT systems based on

blockchain technology, implying decentralized management and control, offer more robust and

flexible solutions that cannot be corrupted. However, lessons learned from earlier efforts to

introduce new technology underscore the importance of following a realistic, systematic

approach” (p.7). Carter & Ubacht (2018) also point out that applying this technology to the

developing countries is essential in terms of defeating corruption and malicious activities.

Authors (Carter & Ubacht, 2018) also emphasize potential of the technology in terms of data

security enhancement and support the idea that “blockchain has the potential to make

government operations more efficient by improving the delivery of public services and

increasing trust in public sectors” (Konashevych, 2017 as cited in Carter & Ubacht, 2018, p.1).

Lyons, Courcelas & Timsit (2018) also examine the essence of the technology’s adoption into

the states services and believe that application of the technology might be economically

beneficial and address the issue of electronic identities, where blockchain can be a great

benefactor. Ølnes (2015) accentuates the economically beneficial side for the state in case of

administering the technology and points out that using blockchain for storing the government

records is a promising secure tool along with offering cost-effective solutions for saving the

sensitive data. On the other hand, Lyons et al., (2018) suggest that administering the technology

might be very costly and experimentation of the attractive operational solutions offered by

blockchain might be inefficient when doing it solely within the individual state agency context,

thus, scholars find it more reasonable for the government agencies to cooperate, which should

lead to sharing the expertise and thus, avoid over spending.

Ølnes, Ubacht & Janssen (2017) conclude that blockchain can be applied to every area of the

government operations where transaction process takes place. “The fundamental characteristics

of this technology enables implementation in a wide range of processes for asset registry,

inventory, and information exchange, both hard assets like physical property, and intangible

assets like votes, patents, ideas, reputation, intention, health data, information etc.” (Swan,

2015 as cited in Ølnes et al., 2017, p.357). Authors also point out the role of blockchain in the

land registries and see the technology particularly useful for reducing risks of corruption and

manipulation the land registry transactions as long as land ownership data is a very sensitive

one in terms of the of ownership rights. It can be a useful tool to protect the land transaction

parties, provide trust among the owner of the land and a seller and this way lead to increased

validity of the land title records. Zheng, Xie, Dai, Chen, & Wang (2018) also see the

blockchain technology applied to various state services such as energetics, education, e-

businesses. Authors also examine application of the technology to the land registries and see it

as a useful tool for doing land related transactions including “transfer of land or the

establishment of a mortgage” (Zheng et. al., 2018, p.13). Sekhari, Chatterjee, Negi, Dwivedi

& Shukla (2019) examine the capacity of blockchain based solutions into the land registries

and outline the fact that technology can be a great key for providing the integrity of the land

records and data traceability for any audit purposes.

At the same time, Carter & Ubacht (2018) accentuate the empirical essence of blockchain

technology adoption to the government solutions and argue that even though from the ICT

prospective, technological compatibility of blockchain to the existing information technology

systems might have been have been identified and some beneficial aspects also have already

been defined, less is known on the empirical challenges of the technology. Challenges in this

regard can be defined as the regulatory frameworks of countries, managerial approaches,

organizational studies, etc. Based on the research done by Carter & Ubacht (2018) within their

conference paper on “Blockchain Applications in Government”, authors have analysed the

empirical data on the state of art blockchain application to the governmental technologies and

have identified the most popular governmental sectors striving towards administering the

technology; Health sector has been identified with the highest possibility of application

technology to the management of patients’ health records which is followed with the ideas of

integration the technology in the education sector. Authors have also identified such sectors as

financial one, public private relationships and supply chain to also be a potential areas for

application the solution, nevertheless, Carter & Ubacht (2018) agree that empirical or practical

evidence on the blockchain application to the state services is lacking whilst majority of the

approaches are theoretical and lack practical support along with the gaps in the respective

literature.

Below the section discusses blockchain technology as one of the key components of the study

topic and outlines some of the major characteristics of the technology. Also, in this section

author will try to discuss prior experience in the field in terms of adoption of the technology

by examining the cases of early adopter countries.

2.1.1 Blockchain Technology

In 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto, an anonymous identity, issued a nine-page whitepaper about

“Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, which can be considered as the birth and

very first appearance of the blockchain Bitcoin in the society. As he described, the technology

was going to be “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments

to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

(Nakamoto, 2008, p.1). By using the peer-to-peer network he was addressing such challenges

as trust issues towards the third parties, prevention of double-spending in the purchase

processes and improving transparency of operations and data. At great extent, Nakamoto’s

visions are achieved by some unique features of the technology that was preventing the data

from tampering or any other malicious activities - “Blockchain provides the answer to digital

trust because it records important information in a public space and doesn’t allow anyone to

remove it. It’s transparent, time-stamped and decentralized” (Marr, 2018). Therefore, no

amendment to the original transactions can be made, without informing all the parties about

the change. The technology has largely evolved since Nakamoto’s initial appearance and has

become the revolutionary tool with the capacity of impacting different aspects of people's lives.

Blockchain represents a database that is spread and controlled by a variety of stakeholders

rather than by a central entity. “It’s a collection of records that a crowd oversees and maintains,

rather than relying on a single entity, like a bank or government, which most likely hosts data

on a particular server” (Martindale, 2019). Blockchain as the network software protocol

enables increasing the security of internet by making digital environment safe for carrying out

various transactions whether it’s transferring money, sending data, drafting contracts or any

other sensitive operation that usually requires high security and trust from the parties.

“Transactions are validated, executed, and recorded chronologically in an append only tamper-

resistant database, where they remain available on the Internet for on-demand lookup and

verification” (Swan, 2017, p.6) – unique logic and architecture behind the technology, makes

blockchain the safest online platform ever created to execute the most risky transactions that

require the best standards of data security. As Atzori (2017) characterizes the correlation

between this unique architecture of blockchain and trust “the rationale for this protocol is the

decentralized trust or trust-by-computation”(Atzori, 2017, p.45), therefore, it can be said that

technology doesn’t provide abstract trust but the solution that is based on the computational

logic.

Even though, blockchain was initially designed to support Bitcoin, the first ever digital

currency, over time it started unleashing the potential towards various aspects of life from for-

profit to non-for-profit entities and vice versa. Currently blockchain supports not only one

cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin but dozes; moreover, technology’s capacity has evolved in

terms of supporting variety of operations that are very far from just mining the digital money.

Once after successful adoption of the technology by the private sector various governments

also revealed their interests towards the opportunities that technology offers.

2.1.2 Types of Blockchain

Along with emerging the technology, needs for adjusting it to specific requirements also arouse

and therefore, nowadays various types of blockchain can be found and one can distinguish

among public, private and consortium blockchains.

Public blockchain

Main idea behind the public blockchain runs in the full openness and distribution among the

members of the network participants, where the actors are welcome to join the system and

participate in the transactions as per their will, while the rest of the network is kept informed

about the changes made to the transactions (Viriyasitavat & Hoonsoponb, 2019). Such trust is

highly determined by the logic behind the protocol which in case of the public blockchains is

based on Proof of Work (PoW) which ensures the consensus among the network participants

and helps to reach agreement about each other’s activities. “State of the art of the public

blockchain protocols based on Proof of Work consensus algorithms are open source and not

permissioned” (Voshmgir & Kalinov, 2017, p.14). Therefore, no special permission is needed

for running the codes on the public node and in case of forming any record, doing any

transaction, PoW will also be redone (Nakamoto, 2008).

Private blockchain

Whilst private companies realized that they needed distributed ledger technology in their

organizations, but not necessarily making data for the third parties available, like banks,

financial institutions that preserve sensitive data which should be restricted for the use only

among specific workers of the company, necessity of permissioned blockchain popped up in

the agenda. Therefore, in such types of blockchain permissions on viewing and modifying the

transactions are predetermined with the respective roles assigned. “Private blockchains are a

way of taking advantage of blockchain technology by setting up groups and participants who

can verify transactions internally” (Voshmgir & Kalinov, 2017, p.14) – in those types of

scenarios where public audibility isn’t necessarily a case (e.g. there are no specific regulatory

requirements in a country, or private companies prefer to keep data secret, etc.) private

blockchain solution can also be administered.

Consortium blockchain

Alike private blockchains consortium ones are not also publicly readable and operate under the

leadership of specific companies and don’t allow public access on verifying the transactions.

Consortium blockchain is the latest trend of the blockchain technology and it operates under

the authority of pre-selected users; In order to validate the transactions, approval of specific

number of nodes is needed amount of which is also predetermined. As per the decision of

consortium members, rights of viewing transactions to the third parties can also be granted

upon their agreement.

Comparison of the above-listed three types of blockchain is illustrated on the Figure 1 where

we can see that main question concerning the consortium and private permissioned blockchains

is that the main idea of blockchain - provision of the decentralised control mechanisms and

publicity – technically disappears as the access on viewing and modifying the transactions is

still limited, nevertheless, they still have some predominance over the public blockchain such

as less higher speed, low energy consumption, etc.

Figure 1 Types of the Blockchain Technology. Source: Voshmgir & Kalinov, 2017, p. 17

Once the type of blockchain is identified, then it always comes down to the question – how this

technology ensures security over shared agreement of the actors and why it is considered to the

most secure e-platform so far. Therefore, understanding what is happening in the network and

how data security and validity is ensured Proof of Work, unique hashing algorithms and some

other crucial aspects have to also be characterised.

2.1.3 Proof of Work

Pow as also mentioned in the previous sections, is a consensus protocol of blockchain initially

presented to the world by Bitcoin and used by many other cryptocurrencies. “PoW introduces

the concept of mining which involves validation of a set of transactions (block) in the network

by means of showing the computational proof of the work done” (Wahab & Mahmood, 2018,

p.3). Once transactions on the network is initiated, miners, people writing complicated

mathematical algorithms for solving the transactions, compete against each other to create the

block of transactions via solving the cryptographic puzzle which should be afterwards verified

and accepted by the rest members of the network (Wahab & Mahmood, 2018). PoW is designed

for public permissionless blockchain and consumes computational resources (hash rate) of the

system for mining and as further also described by the Wahab & Mahmood (2018) “PoW is

the first consensus protocol for crypto-currency that allows the participant to reach consensus

in the Bitcoin. The protocol is primarily based on costly computer computation involving

Hashing (SHA-256), Merkle Tree and peer-to-peer networking for creating, broadcasting and

verifying blocks on the network” (p.3).

2.1.4 Hashing Function

The word “Blockchain” already gives a hint to readers what the technology might look like

structure wise – architecture of the represents a logical organisation of blocks and chains, where

each block is made up of transactions and eventually, transactions make a chain that is extended

among the users. Blocks relate to each other via hash function. Hashing helps to convert

transactions into a code to make an algorithm that blockchain runs on. Considering that each

transaction is an input to blockchain then hashing function (complicated mathematical

algorithm) will help to run any length of input and convert into an output of a specific length

(Blockgeeks, 2017). Having a fixed length of a hash, is efficient in order to convert huge

amount of input into a predefined length of hash that will keep the information an input

contains. Please refer to the picture below, that clearly describes how an input is always

converted into a specific length of a hash. For example, using the hashing algorithm SHA-256

always gives an output of a fixed length no matter of the length of input values (“Hi” and

“Welcome”).

Figure 2 Hashing Algorithm SHA-256 (Part 1). Source: Blockgeeks, 2017

It is a hash function of a blockchain that gives a technology capacity to track the changes made

to the input as far as even the smallest change to the input triggers an existing hash and creates

a new hash for an updated input. Please refer to the Figure 3, which clearly describes that even

the tiniest changes in the input data such as updating small letters to the capital ones (from

“This” to “this”) will result in changing the entire hash.

Figure 3 Hashing Algorithm SHA-256 (Part 2). Source: Blockgeeks, 2017.

2.1.5 Merkle’s Tree

Whilst exploring the blockchain technology term “Merkle’s Tree” comes up in almost every

literature as it’s one of the fundamental parts of the technology that supports blockchain and

benefits into different aspects. Given paper should focus on this “add-on” of the blockchain

technology as its one of the tools the case study country of the paper, Georgia, applies to its

blockchain on a daily basis.

Blockchain consists of blocks that contain a Merkle’s Tree of transaction objects. “A Merkle

tree is a data structure that is used when it is necessary to efficiently verify the integrity of

stored data. They contribute to the blockchain by structuring the transactions in a

tree” (Cribäck, 2018, p.6). Merkle’s tree helps to allocate each hash of the transaction under

one umbrella by generating root hash and thus, can be time and cost-effective solution; Instead

of sending several transactions to the blockchain, they can all be unified in a root hash that

Merkle’s Tree provides. Please below refer to the Figure 4 that depicts the structure of the

Merkle’s Tree; Given depicts how each separate transaction (A;B;C;D) is individually given

a hash which afterwards is consolidated under one common hash (A-B) (C-D) and as a result

we get the Root Hash, sometimes also referred as Merkle’s Hash too. Merkle’s Hash contains

the hashes of the child nodes. As long as the root hash is known the hash tree itself “can be

received from any non-trusted source and one branch of the tree can be downloaded at a time

with immediate verification of data integrity, even if the whole tree is not yet available”

(Curran, 2018). Fundamental idea behind such type of hashing is that in case of amendment

any of the transactions in the tree, or adding-deleting a transaction, Merkle’s Hash will also be

updated.

Figure 4 Merkel’s Tree Structure Explained. Source: iab. TECH LAB, 2018.

Overall Merkle’s Tree can be characterised as a single hash form of particular number of

hashes where a root hash can be used as an identificatory of the entire block, therefore,

interested parties can always double check if any transaction is included in the block or not

hence, additional tool for tracing the data is created. Moreover, Merkle’s tree unique function

can be a solution regarding the increased costs of big amount of transactions as long as

technically, one transaction of a Merkle’s Tree can accumulate hundreds and thousands of

singular transactions.

2.1.6 Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the first peer to peer cryptocurrency ever created that allows stakeholders make

transactions among each other without the need for involvement the third parties aka

mediators. Nakamoto’s main idea also laid behind removing the mediators the financial

institutions from the transaction processes and making the exchange process impounded only

by peer to peer concept. “Bitcoin provides payments exchange with trivial fees and identity

anonymity. As a decentralized cryptocurrency, it is not influenced by the policies of the

financial institution and avoids counterparty risk” (Wahab & Mahmood, 2018, p.3). As the

digital money system Bitcoin is the first application of the technology and most widely used

so far with the highest credibility among the other cryptocurrencies as well. But it is not only

the money transfer that Bitcoin blockchain can support but technology offers immense

opportunities for property registries, identity confirmations, as well as for replacing traditional

ways of contractual agreements with the digital ones and many other applications (Swan,

2017).

2.1.7 Ethereum

Ether, just like its counterpart, Bitcoin, is a cryptocurrency that operates on the Ethereum

blockchain. “Unlike Bitcoin, which only offers peer to peer payment transfer, Ethereum offers

a blockchain development stack on which developers can build and deploy distributed apps.

This opens up the opportunity for developing unlimited ideas on this promising technology”

(Wahab & Mahmood, 2018, p.5). From the previous chapters it is known that Bitcoin

blockchain operates with PoW consensus protocol, whilst Ethereum public blockchain that is

currently supported by the Proof of Stake (PoS). Operating with PoS gives Ethereum a priority

over PoW-based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin in terms of energy efficiency and increased

decentralisation opportunities. One of the most significant features Ethereum possesses is

creation a scripting platform for the Smart Contracts to be operated under the blockchain

technology (Wahab & Mahmood, 2018).

2.1.8 Smart Contracts

Since after the launch, the Bitcoin blockchain has revealed its potential to be operated for any

kind of peer to peer types of online transactions. Thus, need for replication of legal contracts

for blockchain transactions also arouse and smart contracts were launched. “Smart contracts

are a piece of code running on top of a blockchain network, where digital assets are controlled

by that piece of code implementing arbitrary rules” (Voshmgir & Kalinov, 2017, p. 7) and it

was the Ethereum project that reintroduced (Nick Szabo in 1994 first discussed the concept of

smart contracts as described by Lauslahti, Mattila, & Seppälä (2017)) “the idea of separating

contract layer from the blockchain layer where “the ledger itself is used by smart contracts that

trigger transactions automatically when certain predefined conditions are met”( Voshmgir &

Kalinov, 2017, p. 7). So smart contracts execute themselves as long as the predetermined

criteria are met by all the stakeholders involved in the blockchain transactions. Such contracts

reduce the costs of creation and application of regulatory agreement to the transactions as

opposed to regular contract laws that require more time and other resources for enforcement.

As also described by Voshmgir & Kalinov (2017) smart contracts have potential to cover areas

of economic transactions, as well as registering the ownership and rights the immovable

properties, like land and many other areas where transaction is the essence of the operation.

2.2 Theoretical Framework

Current section provides the introduction into the e-service provision system of Georgia and

tries to examine background that lead country towards adoption of the blockchain technology

in the state agency. Additionally, in this chapter author reviews the documents, secondary data.

designed for description of the blockchain land tilting project and includes literature from both,

external and internal sources - documentations obtained by the author from the respondents

who were directly working on the implementation of the blockchain technology in the Georgian

government. Author will try to emphasize key components of the existing literature and shed

light to relevant topics.

2.2.1 Development of e-Government and e-Service Delivery in Georgia

Past two decades have been a great leap in the history of integration of ICT to every aspect of

life amongst which are citizen to citizen, business to business, business to citizen, government

to business, government to government, [most importantly] government to citizen, etc.

Information society keeps transforming and manifestations of these transformations are

creation of various electronic platforms for multiple purposes such as education, commerce,

communication, government, etc. All these concepts are most commonly known as electronic,

“E” ones: e-government, e-learning, e-mail… Paper aims to draw readers’ attention to e-

government of Georgia and particularly discuss it in the framework of electronic property

registration system using the latest trend of the ICT - the blockchain technology.

Application of electronic solutions to state operations is the part of the electronic governance,

e-governance, Baniamin (2015) provides the analyse over the meaning behind the term “e-

Governance” and defines it as “the application of information technology tools in interactions

between government, citizens and private business, or in internal government dealings.”(p.1).

Governments choosing the way of provision services online strive towards increased efficiency

of the state agencies, towards increasing trusts among the citizens, towards increased

transparency, e-governance is also proved to be a great tool against corruption as it reduces

risks of illegal and unethical activities as long as respective control tools for identification the

malicious activities are already mastered by the government.

Electronic government aka e-government is an application of ICT to the government routines

and daily operations in order to more effectively and efficiently deliver state services to

citizens. “E-government refers to the use by government agencies of information technologies

(such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet and mobile computing) that have the ability to

transform relations with citizens, businesses and other arms of government” (Basu, 2004, p.

112). Scope of the electronic government is broad and inbounds all platforms of service

provision with the stakeholders - internally within public authorities and externally with the

citizens, non and for-profit organizations, and with other countries too. Advanced ICT helps

governments realize their goals towards simplifying the communication channels and

increasing their productiveness they help in “better delivery of government services to citizens,

improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to

information, or more efficient government management. The resulting benefit can be less

corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost

reductions” (Basu, 2004, p. 112.) A support tool for the government to transform into the

electronic one is ICT as it helps to reach out to the citizens in a more effective manner, cover

bigger scale of services provided, increase the quality of governmental activities, improve

decision-making process. Different authors also suggest definition of the e-government such

as the opportunity for various actors “to interact and conduct business with government by

using different electronic media such as telephone touch pad, fax, smart cards, self-service

kiosks, e-mail / Internet, and electronic data interchange. It is about how government organizes

itself: its administration, rules, regulations and frameworks” (Almarabeh & Abuali, 2010,

p.30). Overall, e-government focuses on rising confidence and trust of citizens in their

governments along with the general and individual satisfaction of every member of the society

(Elkadi, 2013).

Latter concepts concerning trust, transparency, satisfaction, are especially sensitive points for

those developing countries that were long occupied by the Soviet Union and therefore, had no

legacy of any of the aforementioned, nor had proper ICT to easily acquire by then new trends

of governance and transform into electronic states. After the independence from the Soviet

Union in 1991, Georgia had no specified public administration system, nor clearly defined state

policy, therefore, words “digital” and “electronic” regarding the government, were buzzwords

for the society. Till the 2003 of Rose Revolution and change of the government, Georgian

society was still unaware of the e-Government concept, whilst, for example, its peer country

Estonia, that also got independence after the Soviet Era, had already drafted an e-government

strategy in the mid of 1990s and clearly envisioned itself as a paperless, modern, e-pioneer

country on the world map. So, the Caucasian Post Soviet country had a long way to go till

erupting rampant corruption and reorganizing the state apparatus.

Birth of the e-government in Georgia can be deemed 2007 when the government commission

supporting e-governance development was established and already in 2010, the Data Exchange

Agency (DEA) was introduced to the society under the authority of the Ministry of Justice of

Georgia. “The Agency is tasked with establishing an infrastructure for data exchange for both

public and private sectors and to implement its information security policy” (United Nations,

2018, p.17). One of the core functions of the DEA was to assist in the development of e-

governance through innovative projects. Since then, the state has implemented a significant

number of projects towards electronic service provision more explicitly explained in the

upcoming chapters (DEA, 2014). At the same year ministry came up with the roadmap

(Ministry of Justice of Georgia, 2014) for development of e-governance within the country as

well.

In order to deliver high-quality public services to individuals and offer sophisticated regulatory

and licensing processes to businesses, government created the Public Service Hall to offer

citizens attaining of all state services at one place, therefore, concept of the project lied on the

principle of “one-shop-stop”. Georgian government was long concerned with developing the

platforms for direct citizen government relationships. This new concept was designed so that

citizens could be able of attain state services in an effective manner with reduced costs and less

time. “The one-stop shop model has proven extremely popular with citizens thanks to its

efficacy and ease of use” (Maupin, 2017, p.6). As also explained by Maupin (2017) this new

concept of service delivery ensured that Georgia could “dramatically improve the efficiency of

its government services while simultaneously reducing the incidence of petty government

corruption to extremely low levels” (p.6).

Moreover, the Public Service Hall, specifically, its member state agencies, started provision of

the public services online as well. Services such as issuing ID cards, passports, property

ownership documents, registration of business, notary services and many other ones are

currently offered at the agency. Overall the hall provides services to various state agencies

including NAPR, Public Service Development Agency, Notary Chamber of Georgia, and

others. Currently fully digitalized, online services that are available for the citizens are online

visit to the notary, issuing residence permit, issuing of certificate for the qualified seal, renewal

of the immovable property title, requesting an immovable property title, searching for a

registered business companies within the country, renewal of the business titles, changing the

name/surname, certificate on the proof of households in terms of functions, law grants the

agency the right to enter into agreement with administrative and legal entities and based on

agreements provide public and private services to its customers. Overall, the functions of the

agency “encompass innovation and creativity to improve and sophisticate public service

delivery” (Vashakidze, 2014, p.33).

Looking at the international rankings, progress in terms of e-governance development is also

visible. According to the United Nation’s (UN) e-government development index (“E-

Government Survey” is prepared every two years by the UN. The results of 193 countries are

then organized into two indices - first, the E-Government Development Index; and second, the

E-Participation Index. The survey aims to assess the global tendencies in the development of

electronic governance and identify challenges.) in 2018 Georgia ranks the 60th place among

the 193 countries with the respective score of 0.6893 being considered as a high level of e-

governance development and respectively taking 87th place in the e-participation index

considered among lower middle-income countries in the western Asia (United Nations, 2018).

At the same time, in 2016 Georgia received a score of 0.61 in e-government, ranking 61st

among 193 countries (United Nations, 2016). In the previous survey conducted two years prior,

in 2014 Georgia had a score of 0.60 and held the 56th position” (United Nations, 2014). Even

though country’s scores keep varying between 55 and 61 places among all the studied

countries, such score for such an young democracy as Georgia could be characterised as

impressive, but there always is a room for improvement, therefore, central government still

keeps investing in this area and puts all efforts to develop the e-platforms of the government

more.

Nevertheless, switching to the electronic governance is a long and complex process that

requires big financial resources, skilled human resources, willingness and readiness of every

public entity throughout the country to switch to e-activities, improving i-literacy skills both

among the public officials as well as among the citizens, requires proper internet coverage, etc.

Even though the above-discussed scores of Georgia in the UN’s e-Government development

index report might not be very impressive, local public authorities don’t seem to be scared

accepting challenges that are yet raw for the rest of the world, such as a Blockchain, and

implementing these fresh technologies into their state apparatus.

2.2.2 National Administration of Public Registry (NAPR)

As mentioned in the previous chapter, one of the first entities established by the central

government for the purpose of e-government development and provision e-services to the

citizens, was National Registry of Public Administration taking over the digitalization path of

the national services since 2004. Maupin (2017) characterizes the core activities of the

organization and lists the key national registrations services provided to the society under the

framework of the formerly described “one-shop-stop” model; Agency cooperates into various

fields of service provision such as “registration of immovable property rights, lien, tax lien,

mortgage, addresses and maintenance of cadastral data; pledge on movable property;

registration of political parties; business entities and non-profit foundations; as well as

responsible for geodesy, mapping and other spatial data” (Maupin , 2017, p.6). In between the

2004 till the date, agency has formed one of the strongest IT teams in the region, fully taking

over its projects and successfully executing them. “The team’s focus on growing internal

capacity rather than outsourcing has so far enabled it to avoid any licensing fee arrangements

or other types of financial or technical dependence upon outside service providers” (Maupin ,

2017, p.6). Agency’s human capital as well as the technological advancement plays a fair role

into the efficiently operating of the entity. Exactly high IT capacity of the agency later

encouraged the public officials accept the blockchain challenge too and contributed into putting

its best effort towards transforming the public sector of the country.

For the sake of the paper, it is relevant to also describe NAPR’s background in terms of the

blockchain integration. As of one the main goals of the electronic government, NAPR also

strives for the maximum transparency, zero bureaucracy, strong cyber security, data integrity,

data security and possessing forefront technologies for the advancement of the e-services. In

this regard, mastering such cutting edge technology as the blockchain promises a lot to the

county in terms of increased data security which is major focus point for the government

considering its geopolitical situation in regards to the neighbouring countries and especially

Russia, with whom country has tense relationships and no diplomatic relationship after the

August 2008 Russo-Georgian war which along with the military operations from Russia was

also accompanied with the cyber-attacks as also evaluated by various authors later “the first

instance of a large-scale computer network attack conducted in tandem with major ground

combat operations” (Shakarian, 2011, p.63). Even though Slavic neighbour was never officially

proven to organize cyber-attack, the accidents catalysed the process of digitalization the

government of Georgia, so that it would become less vulnerable to any kind of physical or even

digital attacks. One of the respondents from the NAPR, during the interview process also

outlined the importance of digitizing government assets, the data it possesses, so that country

is prepared to a maximum extent to whatever cyber or physical attacks it may face from its

biggest neighbour or any other country. Thus, adopting a technology that would give

paramount opportunities for the security as well as would improve overall efficiency of the

public service provision and decentralize the data protection methods, was crucial for the

agency; And kudos to its peer-to peer nature, blockchain technology became the way for

decentralizing the government owned data. In the next chapter agency provides more insight

into the blockchain project by first characterizing the major partner and stakeholder of the

project - The Bitfury Group as well as by describing the technology itself.

2.2.3 Land Registries

Land registration, in general, describes the systems for defining the ownership rights over the

immovable property whilst the information concerning the property and land-related rights is

usually protected and regulated by the government. “When a purchaser seeks to buy property

today, he or she must find and secure the title and have the lawful owner sign it over” (Reese,

2017). Based on the jurisdiction of a country specific regulations regarding the land registry

also vary. Land related documents that are recorded by the governments serve the evidence of

titles, prevention of fraud and malicious activities on someone’s property. “Due to the

sensitivity of land issues, land administration and title registration system should be strong to

avoid any document forgery, available all the time, and take a short time to complete tasks”

(Kombe & Manyilizu, 2017, p.8). As described by Vos (2016), common basic patterns for land

registration systems usually combine three major layers such as the Object - property, land,

spatial unit, Right -for definition the personal ownership rights and the Subject – the owner of

those rights. Usually the problems arise with the definition of the ownership rights, especially

in those cases when multiple actors participate in the ownership over the titles. Having properly

designed land titling systems have bilateral benefits both for governments and for the citizens

as by having a designed land titling systems lead governments to establishing proper territorial

authority as well as benefits into tax collection systems and overall provides transparency of

the citizen and government relationships

On the other hand, for citizens, the status of land rights can affect their access to various

economic opportunities. As Castellanos & Benbunan-Fich (2018) discuss the World Bank’s

findings, “70% of the world’s population lacks access to land titles” (p.1), whilst in order to

promote the economic growth, address economic inequalities, support local governance

processes and even to alleviate conflict management fairly working land titling systems are

essential - Castellanos & Benbunan-Fich (2018) assume based on the work of Roth &

McCarthy (2014) in “Land tenure, property rights, and economic growth in rural areas”.

Outdated systems of the land titles can be paper-based that increases vulnerability of citizens’

data to different threats. Moreover, not having electronic services developed in the country,

paper-based processes such as in land registration might lead to bureaucracy, corruption and

any other undesirable outcomes. As Castellanos & Benbunan-Fich (2018) describe, outdated

land registry systems lead the state provision apparatus to various challenges such as delays in

ownership verification, increased risks of land misappropriation or slowing down process of

legitimate transactions. On the other hand, based on Twaroch & Muggenhuber (1997) Vos

(2016) concludes that the land registry systems can only be successful when registration parties

all stakeholders ensure trust among each other and the system itself.

Vos (2016) points out four main principles essential for the land registration that the blockchain

solution successfully has to meet, such as: Speciality principle (land registry process

participants should be identified along with the specification respective rights over the

property); Booking principle (every change on the land registry is legally in force once this

amendment is registered and not earlier); Consent principle (person being entitled for the land

countries land titles are open for the various third party accesses, land titles should be safe from

those party involvements).

To sum up, goal of any government that is willing to modernize the land titling system should

be choosing a proper system that will improve the current land registry process by settling

property ownership determining processes and thus, rising accountability towards citizens and

making public administration process as transparent as possible. Electronic management of

land records leads to those desirable outcomes listed above. Some governments have taken

over the digitalization their land titling systems and even have taken their chances on the

blockchain technology as the fresh solution and a backbone for administering the land

registration service provision systems.

2.2.4 Application of Blockchain to Land Registries in Other Countries

Georgia, as previously also outlined in the paper, became the first country in the world that

back in 2016 successfully implemented the blockchain technology in its state services,

particularly in the land titling system, but there have been some other countries as well that

also have attempted application of the distributed ledger technology to land registry systems

and particularly, to land titling processes. With its unique characteristics of recording and

transmitting the digital records over the digital platforms whilst guaranteeing that data cannot

be copied, amended or multiplied, as well as diminishing the power of the central authority of

superior control over the data, and decentralizing the power of control over data assets to

various actors, blockchain seems to be attractive for many other governments too. As descried

by Swan (2017) “Land titling systems are a “low hanging fruit” application to demonstrate

blockchains in practical use” (p.7). And in this given part of the paper author will try to

characterize some examples of the technology adopter countries and check whether it is really

a “low hanging fruit” to administer the technology or not.

Sweden - Swedish Land registry called Lantmäteriet is the governmental agency that is

currently in charge of the land registration services. In was one of the first organizations in the

world, that at the second half of the 20th century, in 1970 digitized the land registry procedures.

Even though the land registry database itself is digitized the land transfer process still is paper

based and highly bureaucratic, meaning that current transfer process of land lacks transparency,

accuracy, speed and security. As it’s also stated in McMurren, Young, & Verhulst (2018) “The

existing process is slow and involves significant investments of time and effort for document

preparation, authentication, and verification: processing a real estate sale from the signing of a

contract to purchase to land transfer takes an average of four months” (p.3).

As the main constraints in the delay of the land transfer processes following aspects can be

identified: numerous paper documents that require physical signature, even though in some

aspects such as apartment leases, Swedish law accepts the digital signatures; endless email

correspondence between the transfer stakeholders; manual work in regards to document

verification. Due to the fact that land registry process is highly manual and maintains the

physical archives, which increases vulnerability towards such risks as having mistakes in the

official papers, or missing some documents, losing them, maliciously amending the documents,

etc. “The volume of documentation required and the amount of duplication of data entry

increase the risk of error, and between 4-7 percent of applications need to be re-submitted

because of error” (McMurren et al., 2018, p.3). Moreover, as it turned out, some actors are

predominant than others, such as banks or state authorities that have access on registry’s

database whereas other two, probably the most important stakeholders of the land transaction

processes – seller and buyer, cannot.

In order to eliminate the drawbacks of the existing land registration system Lantmäteriet

decided to test switching to the blockchain technology by moving real estate transactions to

blockchain. Entire process from the agreement of selling the property to transferring land titles

in going to be fully administered on the blockchain.

Lantmäteriet’s project involves participants both from private and public sector. Private

companies such a s Landshypotek Bank (Sweden’s ten largest bank mainly focusing on

financing the investments of the farmers and foresters), SBAB Bank AB (state-owned company

offering mortgage services to customers), Telia Company (Swedish mobile network operator

and telecommunications company), Kairos Future (Swedish bases international research and

consulting company), ChromaWay (a pioneer blockchain technology company) and EVRY

(business process management IT company)and from public sector - Lantmäteriet.

Figure 5 IT Architecture of Lantmäteriet’s Blockchain Solution Source: Kairos Future, 2017.

As described in the picture the land registration process will be working under the following

scheme:

The user interfaces are designed for different users. There are three main categories of user

interfaces: 1. End-users - the buyer and seller of real estate, 2. Professional users – banks,

agents, Lantmäteriet, 3. Contract administrators – Lantmäteriet and the architects of the

solution.

End users – via specially designed mobile application end user will be using their mobile

devices and to initiate transfers, check the state pf their properties and to monitor the process

of registration with the help of device (Kairos Future, 2017).

Professional users – once end users initiate the transfer it will also become visible to the

employees of the land department, to the professional users to perform any necessary activity

for the land registration purposes mainly related to the technical maintenance and support

(Kairos Future, 2017).

Contract Administrators – those part of the chain, take care of the legal support of the

registration procedures and administer the contracts initiated by the end users. Their activity is

also monitored by the rest of the actors (Kairos Future, 2017).

The File Storage – this layer allows actors to save contracts either on clouds or any other

platform chosen by banks, or agents, and to make data saved on the blockchain small, the

platform only contains hashes of verification records that is essential for the actors (Kairos

Future, 2017).

The blockchain – Lantmäteriet plans to use the permissioned blockchain meaning that only

trusted partners will be allowed to validate the transactions and blocks, which is developed and

supported by the private companies listed in the beginning of the paragraph while blockchain

platform itself will be supported by Chromaway (Kairos Future, 2017).

Land registry, mortgage deed registry – Lantmäteriet currently possesses a database that

contains the information about country’s real estate, a metadata that in future will also be

verified by blockchain but saved somewhere else (e.g. cloud) as blockchain will be saving only

the relevant data described above (Kairos Future, 2017).

Application/contract engine – given layer represents the central part of the new model.

Ethereum blockchain, authorised nodes, will be verifying the applications, but again, contracts

itself are used on the blockchain (Kairos Future, 2017).

The ID and Authorization – as an important challenge for the modern digital solutions,

including the blockchain, securing person’s identity is a very important issue in every

transaction, especially when it comes to the property purchases. As long as the key element for

any type of blockchain solution is the private key, which allows actors have access on the data,

and do various modifications, this tool if very liquid, sensitive for data breach if the key is lost

or forgotten, therefore, adding additional security layers as of the digital ID’s , is a crucial

aspect of the discussed model (Kairos Future, 2017).

The real-world representation – this layer simply means to properly represent he real world

land registry systems on the blockchain so that everything is clear for the authors and none of

them is misled just to assumptions that do not support reality, a layer where the properties are

easily tracked within the blockchain (Kairos Future, 2017).

As mentioned above, Lantmäteriet started implementation of the blockchain technology into

the land registration process in 2016 with the test project that was afterwards followed by

second and third testing phases all finished on June 15th 2018 and on June 18th the first pilot

modelling property purchase via blockchain and smart contract technology was also

successfully executed.

Dubai – Dubai Land Department (DLD) is a governmental authority being in charge of land

registration in Dubai, as well as providing services concerning the real estate. Additionally,

DLD provides the regulatory frameworks for the real estate operations and promotes the reals

estate to attract investors.

Currently the land and, in general, a property purchase takes up to 20 days and as described in

DLA Piper (2018) consists of the following procedures:

▪ DLD gets the request where each party physically attends the purchase process.

▪ Purchase document gets physically signed by seller and buyer and at the same time they

provide bills, cheques for the registration and any other transfer fees

▪ If necessary, upon DLD’s request, parties provide any additional documentation needed

and such documentations relate to the “no objection certificates” DLA Piper (2018) of

the parties.

▪ After these procedures, application for the transfer is processed and title certificate

issued to the purchaser.

▪ Information regarding the ownership of land is private, therefore, isn’t available for

public examination.

▪ Once the property is purchased, new owner needs to additionally request transfer of

ownership from DLD by submitting respective application physically by presenting the

following documentation: “letter from the transferor, the original title deed for the

property, copies of the buyer’s identification documents and proof that he has applied

for a residence visa” (Dubai Lawyers, 2019).

In October 2017, city of UAE, under the “Smart City” initiative of Dubai, launched the Dubai

blockchain Strategy based on which Dubai aims to become the first city in the world fully

electronic transactions including the land deeds, real estate agreements, rental or lease

transactions, etc. Overall the registration procedure should take up to 30 minutes and improve

the property transaction process in money and time wise.

“To Be” state once blockchain integration is fully complete the procedure should smoothly

interact with DLD API as depicted on the picture below which depicts how the upcoming

model of land registry will work on the blockchain by buyer making the sale request as the

start of the process and sending the details of the property title deed to the buyer being the end

of the process. Interesting point to note here is that technology will be administered with the

Smart Contracts.

Figure 6 TO BE model of Dubai Land Department’s Blockchain Solution. Source: Dubai Land Department.

[n.d.]

The Netherlands – Government agency that is in charge of land registration in Netherlands is

called Kadaster - The Netherlands’ Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency. Agency

operates under the supervision of the supervisory board of directors that controls agency’s day

to day activities. Kadaster cooperates with various real estate organisations and constantly tries

to improve the quality and diversity of the public services offered. Current land registry itself

comprises of the following steps: “Keeping the public records, land registration and cadastral

map; The registration of ships and aircraft; Maintaining a network of coordinate points

(Rijksdriehoekmeting); Recording and presenting the cartographic geographic data; Providing

information on the basis of these records” (Vermeulen, 2015).

Land titles in Netherlands include all data about the property such as the address, date of

transaction, price of the property, size and any other specifications, as well as the information

about ownership of the land and additionally, if there’s any obstacles on the land, it should also

be recorded on the land title.

As long as the land registration data increases on a daily basis, in order to improve the

management process in 2018 the Dutch government decided implementation of the blockchain

into the land registry process. Project is believed to be complete within three years after which

Dutch government should be able to administer the services and it is conducted with the

cooperation of UN Office for Project Services. Initial phase of the project includes examination

of the grounds for administering the blockchain technology in the state operations through

researching legal, economical or technological capacity of the respective Dutch agencies and

the project itself comprises of thirteen various phases. Before the real time application of the

technology research phase should be over and results analysed, respectively (Spirkovski,

2018).

Having overviewed several international cases regarding adoption the blockchain technology

into land and, in general, immovable property registry systems, some general recommendations

for adopting the technology can be determined:

▪ In order to eliminate current manual processes new operational schemes, have to be

defined

▪ Governments have to focus on the goals and final outcomes and therefore, initially

decide the extent of implementation the blockchain technology as well as have to

determine, based on the needs of the government, what type of blockchain solution will

be most suitable for the country.

▪ Public Private Partnership should be provided by the responsible governmental agency

though involving various stakeholders into the project, agencies that are specifically

working either on the development of the blockchain technology, or on the

development of the digital ID systems, as well as agencies working on the business

process automation processes, etc.

▪ Legislative frameworks need to be overviewed and necessary amendments made to

make blockchain compatible with the local of international regulations(Special

attention should be drawn to the general legislative requirements for the territorial units

such as EU or UAE, for example, to make the technology interoperable with any other

member country’s IT systems if necessary).

▪ Awareness’ of the citizens in regard to the technology need to be raised before actually

launching the technology as long as customers will trust the modern technology.

▪ Governments should keep investigating the technology and accentuate research and

development sides of the project.

2.2.5 Land Registration in Georgia

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 mass privatization of the property took place in

Georgia, making it mostly important for the government to create systematic approach towards

registration and privatization of the immovable assets including land and houses. At that time

there wasn’t a specific entity in the government that would be responsible for the provision and

coordination of such services. In 1997 State Department of Land administration was created

and thus, new wave of changes in the existing land registration system also started. By then

Georgia was still a highly corrupted country with no clear definition of the government

structure and with no clear division of roles or clear allocation of the responsibilities among

the state agencies either. As also described by Castellanos & Benbunan-Fich (2018) “In

Georgia, buying or selling land was a long process. To notarize the transaction, buyers or sellers

had to go to a public registry and pay a flat or expedited fee to notarize the transaction. The

process was slow and prone to bribery” (p.6). Over time, especially after the Rose Revolution

in 2003, number of citizens that were privatizing properties gradually increased and therefore,

need for establishing centralized entity responsible for the property registration became actual

- this is when the NAPR was introduced to the society as well. NAPR, was initially launched

in 2004 and soon became fully responsible for the land registration services.

Legacy that was inherited to the agency was rough - there was no infrastructure for the proper

operation of the agency, nor there was enough skilled human capital, the legislative framework

had to also be adjusted and the mindset of the workers as well as the service consumers,

customers, who usually were prone to bribery and corruption had to be changed. Thus, it was

crucial for the agency (NAPR) to reorganize existing challenges with regards to the land

registry as well as to change the common practice of redundant bureaucracy and corruption

towards transparent, safe and citizen-oriented approach. As stated on the official website of the

agency (www.napr.gov.ge), NAPR’s reforms in the property registration started within the

reforms in the legislative, institutional, administrative and technological contexts.

Legislative reform started with the adoption of the unified legislative act on the “Registration

of Rights on Immovable Property” that simplified citizen-government relationships in terms of

the immovable property registration. Within these changes agency’s records became publicly

available via the agency’s official webpage and the land tiles for to unify all the data about the

immovable property. This was when the electronic land title was granted a legal status as well.

Overall within these and many other activities, NAPR became first governmental entity in

Georgia adopting e-governance principles.

Under the framework of the institutional reform, every other registry of the government also

joined NAPR, in 2012 the agency was entrusted real estate numeration functions as well and

gradually, agency fully took over the entire land registry procedure too.

As to the technological reform, from the very beginning agency started investing into the

skilled human capital, IT personnel that could effectively deal with the challenges NAPR faced

in the early stages of the foundation and indeed, over time NAPR’s IT team became one of the

most experienced group of professionals in the Caucasian region making it possible to fully

digitalize the agency’s services and make NAPR the first public authority in the country

providing all services online.

When it comes to the administrative reform of the bullet points should be the reconstruction of

the form agency provided services in, by division front and back offices and making strictly

defined hierarchy in the office so that none of the personnel dealing with the land

administration had contact with the citizens, thus, chances of corruption also were eliminated.

2.2.6 Land Titles in Georgia

Paragraph 149 of the Civic Codex of Georgia describes the immovable property as the land

along with the subsoil, plants and buildings that stand still on the given area of the land (Civic

codex of Georgia, 1997); The same codex afterwards, in the Paragraph 155, describes the

property ownership as possessing the factual ownership over the object (Civic codex of

Georgia, 1997). As discussed in the previous sections, NAPR provides the property registration

services to its citizens, thus, coming into relevance with the existing legislation. Having a

proper, legal ownership over the property is a crucial part of the fundamental rights of a person

and yet a lot of countries struggle with assigning the ownership over the properties that their

citizens possess. “While in the United States and Western Europe, it’s common to have legal

title to property such as homes, cars, etc., in many parts of the world, people do not have legal

title to their assets” (Shin, 2016) - says Hernando De Soto, president of Lima-based think tank,

the Institute for Liberty and Democracy for his interview at Forbes magazine as he also states

“Of the 7.3 billion people in the world, only two billion have a title that is legal and effective

and public regarding their control over an asset” (Shin, 2016).

“When something is not legally on record as being owned, it can therefore not be used” (Shin,

2016) - Land titles issued by the NAPR represent a legal confirmation of a person’s immovable

property/land and contain such information as ownership, incumbrance, mortgage and record

on declining the ownership (Georgian law on the rights on registration of the immovable

property, 2007), as further also described by the given law Section 4, Paragraph 2, land title

can be issued on everyone and followed by Paragraph 3 every activity performed on the

immovable property, except of the inheritance, is enforced only by the title (Georgian law on

the rights on registration of the immovable property, 2007). Registration of the land, issuing

the land title, currently takes from one to four days and is executed by the NAPR. Land titles

are public, and every interested party can access the records via NAPR’s webpage.

Current version of the land title document looks as the following (Appendix 1 & Appendix 2):

Example of the land title #892017311858 (NAPR, 2018) was randomly retrieved via NAPR’s

database and depicts all relevant data on the property ownership such as: the initiation and

issuing dates of the declaration, land characteristics (size, land type, address, information about

the buildings, type of the ownership, cadastral code), it also presents information about the

owners (registration no of the declaration, size of the owned land, additional information about

the ownership documents of the land (along with the date of the enforcement if the document

and name of the Notary)), additionally, title has information about the mortgage and contractual

obligations (information about the seller and buyer, ID numbers, names, description of the

selling object, land and data about the notary)) and last but not least - data about the

encumbrance and debtors is also included in the given document.

2.2.7 The Bitfury Group

Bitfury group is another major actor of Georgia’s land title project and represents one of the

world’s largest Bitcoin blockchain infrastructure providers in the world that produces

unconventional hardware and software services, solutions to the governments, businesses,

individuals and any other organisations interested into implementation of the cutting-edge

technologies into their management routines. Bitfury has developed such innovative products

as a digital ledger for cryptocurrency transactions, chips for mining the machines and software

for various non-private and for private organisations.

As described in by Weiss & Corsi (2018) in the Harvard Business Review’s case study on the

Bitfury Group, company was initially launched in 2011 and already in 2014 mined the self-

owned equipment all over the world, at datacentres in Iceland, Finland and Georgia, attracting

around half of all the global investments in Bitcoin infrastructure of the worth of 20 million

dollars. Along with several other major investors the six billion dollars came from the private

equity fund Georgian Co-Investment fund after which the Bitfury group started operating in

Georgia by opening datacentre in Gori city, which was later followed by acquiring 18ha land

plot in Gldani, Tbilisi in 2015 and granting from the Ministry of Economics of Georgia a status

of Free Industrial Zone which overall means zero or close to zero revenue taxes for the

companies operating in the zone, along with many other tax concessions (Parliament of

Georgia, 2018).

Bitfury decided to develop services to the governments for ensuring the security of citizens’

data and thus take one bolder step towards the development of the tech industry. Company

started investing in development of software for the public organisations.

3 Case Study Design

Once analysing the topic of the paper and getting familiar with the subject, it became clearer

that not much information regarding the Land title register has been is available online and

study materials cannot be obtained open source either. All the aforementioned made it clear

that paper had to follow the empirical research path in order to have relevant base to research.

As far as empirical research implies to one’s experience and observations “often without due

regard for system and theory” (Kothari, 2004, p.4). Data gathering is the main point for such

type of research instead of a system or a theory and therefore, case study research methodology

was chosen for the further development of the topic.

Case study research as the man method was chosen in order to give a brief overview of the

blockchain technology, the property registry project of the Georgian government through

blockchain reform and analyse the topic based on the real time example. Unique nature of case

study methodology gave more opportunities for studying the subject as “case studies offer an

approach that does not require a strict boundary between the object of study and its

environment” (Runeso, Höst, Rainer, & Regnell, 2012) As long as the government of Georgia

was a pioneer in application of the blockchain technology into public services briefly studying

the implemented project only seemed possible via exploration of the case.

There is no information available on the studies or research done regarding the prior base of

the blockchain project that the Georgian government has administered and not much

information is available on the technical characterisation of the project either; Given research

the case study gave an opportunity to learn more about the project and also somehow contribute

into the research of the area. Focusing on a particular example of Georgia, created the specific

environment mentioned by scholars and provided boundaries necessary for analysing the

particular topic - the experience that Georgia has accumulated in regard to the land registry

blockchain project.

Nature of the case study methodology is a qualitative one as it contributed into understanding

some crucial points of the blockchain reform of the Georgian government as follows:

identification of the weak points of the reform and prediction of the possible risks that Georgian

government might be facing in that regard; proper characterization of the nature of the reform

and provision of a definition of opportunities for applying it to a larger scale of public services

other than the land registry and answering all the subsequent research questions.

3.1 Research Questions

The paper aims to analyse potential of the blockchain as of a new tool for provision of the

public services by questioning the land registry reform of the government. Research aims to

analyse the benefits and drawbacks reform has caused. Paper will also try to identify the

capacity of the Georgian government towards switching to blockchain based public service

provision. Deriving from the given goal, research will focus on trying to give proper answers

on the following main question:

How does the blockchain technology contribute into the public service provision process of

Georgia in the context of the land tiling project framework?

In order to carry out a detailed research and ensure acquiring the topic-related results, main

research question was later supported with three sub questions, each also divided into the sub

questions, respectively.

RQ. 1 How does the blockchain fit into the narrative of contemporary e-service provision

system of the Georgian government?

RQ 2 How to determine the main criteria for evaluation the outcomes of the blockchain

based land titling project?

RQ 3 How can the blockchain based land titling system affect the process of overall services

provision?

In order to ensure the logic outcomes of the research and to predict possible answers to the

above listed research questions, author came up the with the hypotheses for each research

question, along with the sub research questions. Thus, some type of testable predictions was

formed and later in the paper, once the research data is collected and analysed, reader will be

able to determine whether the initial expectations were met or not. Hypotheses are as follows:

RQ. 1 How does the blockchain fit into the narrative of contemporary e-service provision

system of the Georgian government?

H. (hypothesis) 1 Switching of the traditional ways of doing things into public administration

towards high tech one can increase the efficiency of the government and improve service

provision process for the citizens.

RQ 2 How to determine the main criteria for evaluation the outcomes of the blockchain based

land titling project?

H.2 Technology was thoroughly studied before launching one into the state service provision

system and future perspectives of the project were initially determined.

RQ 3 How can the blockchain based property registration affect the process of overall services

provision?

H.3 Blockchain reform boosted country’s potential into application of the public-private

cooperative platforms along with becoming a first government for the cross-country

cooperation.

The RQ 1 aims to determine the essence of the property registration as a public good and

analyse the blockchain technology as a platform for the state service provision. Determine and

discuss the incentives driving country’s government towards implementation of cutting-edge

technologies into the public administration system. Given part comprises of the following

questions:

1.1. What is the current framework of the state service provision of Georgia? How can it be

characterised?

R (research). P(proposition). 1.1. IF the current model of the service delivery system of Georgia

is strictly determined THEN it will be easier to characterise blockchain reform under the

current system

H 1.1. – Public service delivery system is highly correlated with the policy country leads and

it can explain the incentives behind adoption of the technology and being pioneers in the field.

1.2. What was the property registration procedure alike before launching the blockchain?

R.P. 1.2. If the past procedure of the land registration is fully determined, THEN it will be

easier to make validate comparison between the old and new systems

H.1.2. - New model of the land registration helps country more efficiently provide the given

service and be a more effective government.

1.3. What were the factors leading to the property registration be chosen as a pilot project?

R.P. 1.3. IF the factors leading Georgia becoming the first ever country administering the

blockchain are known THEN if will be easier to come up with the proper characterisation of

the nature of the reform.

H.1.3. - For the newly democratized countries in past having a corrupted government and not

clearly specified public administration system, it was a lifesaver to switch towards

administration of cutting-edge technologies in order to find the competitive advantage over the

filed.

The RQ 2 aims to determine how the reform was being monitored and what were the standards

determining success or the failure of the one - were there any specific tools for measuring the

outcome?

2.1. What can be considered as a benefit and a drawback of the reform?

R.P. 2.1. IF the outcomes of the reform are defined THEN it will be possible to better develop

further steps towards expansion of the project.

H.2.1. Having successfully implemented the pilot project of blockchain into land title

registration as a preliminary project gave government opportunity to move towards another

round and switch full process of the immovable property registration on the given technology.

2.2. What are the criteria the reform has to meet to be considered as a successful one?

R.P. 2.2. IF the success factors of the technology are defined THEN It will be possible to define

criteria for the future development of the project.

H.2.2. Framework characterising the blockchain-friendly environment of the Georgian

government will contribute into the development of the similar projects for the governments

willing to also utilize the technology

2.3. What are the criteria for measuring the impact of the reform into the public service

provision?

R.P. 2.3. IF key factors for measuring the impact of the blockchain based public service is

determined THEN transparency of the project will arise.

H.2.3. Georgian government expanded the blockchain application into more complex services

as the outcomes of the preliminary project met the initially set goals.

The RQ 3 aims to determine how the technology can further be developed by applying it to the

rest areas of state service provision and therefore, provide suggestions for possible upcoming

developments

3.1. What are the other possible areas of the public services where the technology can also be

applied to?

R.P. 3.1. IF the land registry reform is briefly studied and evaluated THEN it will be possible

to more specifically determine future areas of development of the project.

H.3.1. Government has done research before and after implementation of the property registry

project and thus has determined future perspectives for the expansion of the blockchain

technology.

3.2. What are the main constraints for the technology implementation?

R.P.3.2. IF the government is aware of the technology limitations THEN future projects are

more likely to succeed as well

H.3.2. Government successfully implemented the project as it had the capacity to successfully

overcome all the obstacles that arose within and after the reform.

3.3. Who are the main stakeholders of the service? What is their role into the development of

the technology?

R.P.3.3. IF the stakeholders in the land registry process are defined THEN it will create an

opportunity to define their role into the adoption of the given technology as well as will help

to determine their role in the current land registry provision process.

H.3.3. Stakeholders of the project benefit from the application of the blockchain technology

into the immovable property registration system.

3.2 Research Strategy

Based on Runeson et al. (2011), different research strategies serve different purposes; one type

of research strategy does not fit all purposes. Scholars define four general types of purposes for

research such as “Exploratory – finding out what is happening, seeking new insights, and

generating ideas and hypotheses for new research; Descriptive – portraying the current status

of a situation or phenomenon; Explanatory – seeking an explanation for a situation or a

problem, mostly but not necessarily, in the form of a causal relationship; Improving – trying to

improve a certain aspect of the studied phenomenon” (Runeson et al ., 2011, p.13). Throughout

the research author partially applied all the aforementioned types as long as the topic gave

opportunity to integrate all four types of approaches – topic of the research is very immature

for the world in general, nor was Georgian phenomena fully studied or evaluated before,

therefore, author had to find out what were the grounds for application of the given technology

to the public service provision system of the country.

Nevertheless, main drivers still were the exploratory and explanatory purposes. Former

approach intends to find out how and for what things occur throughout the events, this method

is trying to analyse any phenomenon within the real-life contexts, therefore, applying the given

strategy to examination of the blockchain reform of Georgia seems reasonable. “Exploratory

case studies set to explore any phenomenon in the data which serves as a point of interest of

the researcher” (Zainal, 2017, p.3). It may be the case that Georgia as the developing country

is more open towards the reforms in all aspects of the society whether is its private or public,

therefore throughout the research topics can be defined in this regard, where explanatory

analysis will be needed. The method can be applied to the thesis at the very early stage of the

research.

As to the explanatory case study, after collection of the data interesting observation defined

can be analysed through the given method. “Explanatory case studies examine the data closely

both at a surface and deep level in order to explain the phenomena in the data” (Zainal, 2017,

p.3). The output of an explanatory analysis should help to figure out the characteristics of the

country’s public administration system and to identify specific factors that helped Georgia

implement the blockchain technology into the state service delivery system. The method can

be applied to the thesis at the later stage of the research when some data is already collected,

and certain assumptions are made.

3.3 Data Collection

When it comes to data collection two main types of methods can be distinguished - primary

data collection and a secondary one. While the primary one refers to collecting data for the first

time, on a fresh grounds, and is mainly applied to studying yet not really researched topics,

secondary data collection method gives opportunities to explore topics that have already been

studied once, where data is already collected by someone else (Kothari, 2004). In the given

paper author applied to the primary data collection method as it suits well the empirical

researches and usually takes place either through observations or via the primary

communication with the interviewees. Moreover, for diversifying the study results, secondary

data was also collected, such as the documentations about the study object attained a analysed

throughout the entire research.

3.3.1 Interviews

Runeson et al. (2012) define interviewing method of data collection as one of the most popular

and crucial methods for data collection as long as data about the case study object is frequently

very limited, mostly information is still kept among the stakeholders that have primary

interaction with the case object, and thus, having the research object investigated form the

primary source, comes very handy and productive. Other researches also draw attention to the

output generated through interviews within the qualitative studies, and underline the fact that

very often, results generated through the interviews are very rich and fruitful (Jarratt, 1996).

Advantages of interview-based data collection method include opportunities for the researcher

to collect detailed information about the research topics. Applying the interviews to the case

study researches tend to give very comprehensive outcomes as they can be an useful tool to

find answers that the interviewer is looking for - as Yin (2018) also suggests that interviews

are very convenient tool for coming up with the explanations and understanding what

perspectives the respondents might have in regards to the Study object.

Among the other advantages of the interviews, having capacity to gather big amount of the

primary data can also be vastly important for the qualitative studies. In such type of data

collection methods researcher has direct control over the flow of the communication process

with the respondents and has a chance to clarify on the certain issues if needed too.

Disadvantages, on the other hand, include longer time requirements (preparing questionnaires,

surveys, etc. as well as interview process itself and afterwards coding an analysing the data)

and difficulties associated with arranging an appropriate time with perspective sample group

members to conduct interviews.

As to the interviewing style itself, semi-structured questioning style will be used within the

boundaries of the current research to help the researcher collect yet untold data around the

Study object. After doing initial investigations it wasn’t possible to attain diverse and

comprehensive data about primary study object, mostly general information about the Study

object was available instead, therefore, respondents will be questioned about all possible

aspects of the study object that As Jarratt (1996) says “a semi-structured approach to in-depth

interviews allows the researcher to cover a specific list of topic areas, with the time allocated

to each topic area being left to the discretion of the interviewer”(p.9), hence, current research

will also imply to a semi-structured interviews and the aspect why this type of questioning

method was chosen over the other methods is explained in the upcoming paragraph.

Differentiations among three main formats of interviews such as structured, semi-structured

and unstructured ones can be made. Each of them may lead to totally different outcomes as

their unique nature allows respondents to route the answers into various directions. Structured

interviews consist of a series of pre-determined questions and they have to be asked in the

same order, as Mathers, Fox & Hunn (2002) also say “a tightly structured schedule of questions

is used” (p.2), therefore, while picking this type of interviewing style researcher must ensure

that all the respondents will be answering in the same order. On the other hand, interviewer is

limited into the framework of those predefined questions and might constrain respondents form

revealing any important study related topic that would have been beneficial for the study if

known.

At the same time, another method of interviewing, such as unstructured approach, might be

“the best way to uncover important information that is special to a candidate” (Dana, Dawes,

& Peterson, 2013, p.513) and this way even overperform the other approaches of interviewing

styles as within the interviews some crucial facts might unleash. These types of interviews

usually go on flow with no prior preparation for the survey, which helps to those discoveries

mentioned as the positive characteristics of this approach, but it can also become a limitation

for the interview results, as researcher might lose focus from the research topic and as a result

attain fruitless data.

The third type of interviews, a semi-structured one, is a combination of the two approaches

described previously as characterized by Alshenqeeti (2014) it can be a very flexible approach

towards data collection methods as the result can benefits from the perks of the both, structured

and unstructured styles. Semi structured interview method “allows depth to be achieved by

providing the opportunity on the part of the interviewer to probe and expand the interviewee’s

responses” (Rubin & Rubin, 2005 as cited in Alshenqeeti, 2014, p.39). Therefore, it can be said

that semi structured interviewing method is the superior option among the rest approaches as

it leaves a room for improvisation if needed whilst still following the predefined set of

questions and thus ascertaining that the focus on the main research topic is still kept within the

data collection procedure. For the interest of the paper, as discussed in the previous paragraph,

author applied the latter, semi-structured type of interviewing style.

As to the style of the questions, author will apply the open-ended questions. Semi-structured

interviewing style, along with the open-ended questions, will make it possible for the author to

run the interview process in a way that maximum information from the respondents, within

their expertise area, will be attained. At the same having the predetermined list of questions

will be a backbone for the interviewing process to guarantee that the main research topic will

be covered. Some scholars point out “a semi-structured approach to in-depth interviews allows

the researcher to cover a specific list of topic areas, with the time allocated to each topic area

being left to the discretion of the interviewer. The open structure ensures that unexpected facts

or attitudes can be easily explored” (Sampson, 1972 as cited in Jarratt, 1996). Among many

other benefits, according to Popping (2015), open-ended questions also allow spontaneous

responses where respondent provides replies in his or her own words, moreover, no possible

answers are suggested which diminishes the possibility of biased responses and at the same

time allows many meaningful ideas to be provided within the responses.

At the same time to the positive side of these structure of questions, also needs to be mentioned

that open-ended questions are not the form of questions that demand one correct answer. It is

also not a question that can accept any answer. “In contrast, open-ended questions address key

concepts, processes and skills that go beyond specific instructions that define the critical

content. In general, open-ended questions require complex thinking and produce a variety of

solutions” (Badger, 1992 as cited in Husian, Bais, & Samad, 2012, p. 457). Chosen style also

leaves room for the author to apply follow up questions in case the respondent’s replies are

unsatisfactory, or on the other hand, some new topics arise that weren’t predetermined within

the questionnaire and author finds it relevant to let respondent provide information as it’s

related to the study object.

Questionnaire for the interviews was structured deriving from the research questions - each

research question along with the sub questions has been examined, so that the questionnaire

grants maximum opportunity for attaining the data that will be responsive to the main research

topic. 30 open-ended interview questions have been designed to fully cover the topic of the

study subject, whilst based on the respondents’ replies additional, follow up thematic questions

might also be asked. Overall, eight respondents have been chosen for the interviews among

which are the stakeholders of the land tilting project who either used to work on the project or

currently are implementing the one. Moreover, respondents from the civic sector, both experts

researching the blockchain technology and the ones developing technology privately will also

be interviewed, to help attain impartial and unprejudiced information, which eventually will

result in collecting the unbiased and more easily populated data. Interviews will be done face

to face, remotely via using the such communication platform as Skype for the calls.

Additionally, to help in further transcribing and coding processes calls will be recorded on the

voice recorder and hence, additional evidence will also be provided for rising the validity of

data. Just as importantly, for analysing data RQDA tool will be used – given coding platform

is better explained in the final chapters.

3.3.2 Document Review

Along with the interviews, document review as a secondary data collection method will also

be applied within the given paper, to expand and diversify data. “Document analysis is a

systematic procedure for reviewing or evaluating documents—both printed and electronic

(computer-based and Internet-transmitted) material” (Bowen, 2009, p.27). This process of data

collection applies to studying and reviewing the existing documents and thus, attaining the

information about the study object.

One of the main advantages of employing such data collection method in parallel with the

interviews, is that documents related to study question may bring up in the agenda the topics

that were not mentioned by the interviewees. “Document analysis is often used in combination

with other qualitative research methods as a means of triangulation-the combination of

methodologies in the study of the same phenomenon” (Denzin, 1970 as cited in Bowen, 2009,

p.28).

Bowen (2009), in a peer reviewed article about Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research,

provides the specification behind documents used for the analysis and it can include multitude

types of sources such as advertisements, manuals, background papers, brochures, diaries and

journals, event programs, memoranda, charts, newspapers, institutional reports even the radio

and television program scripts and so forth. In the paper author applied to the different types

of above listed documents from articles to the journals and online newspapers, all related to the

property and land registration and titling procedures. At this point it has to be once again

highlighted that author’s intention to combine the discussed two methods of data collection,

interviews and document review, intend to increase diversity and validity of the data, as

Runeson et al.(2012) also affirm “Even if the researcher studies documents that are available,

he or she often wants to know something about the quality of the documents, to what extent

they really were used, or to what extent interviewees agree with the contents in them” (p.50).

Therefore, more comprehensive results are expected to be attained via combination of the

interview and document review data collection methods.

3.4 Data Analysis

On the stage of data analysis interviewer’s focus is to understand the details of the case and

realise what has happened in the case that is being researched (Runeson et al., 2012) and it

happens once interviews are already transcribed. In order to analyse the content of the

interviews, thematic analysis as a very flexible method of qualitative data analysis was

employed. “Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns

(themes) within data” (Braun, & Clarke, 2006, p. 6). Thematic analysis ensures that it describes

various aspects of data da presents detailed, all-inclusive information. Unlike some other

analysis types of analysis such as narrative, descriptive or any other methods in thematic

analysis “anything goes” approach to the assessment of qualitative work is well applicable in

most cases due to the absence of any strict guidelines for the given method while there’s no

widely acknowledged guideline how one should be doing it, nor there’s any specific theoretical

or technological knowledge of approach requested to be employed and it can be used within

different frameworks, which is one of the most important determinants for the flexibility

characteristics of the method (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Hence, we can agree that thematic

analysis is a good tool to examine reality.

The process of thematic analysis itself may go inductively or deductively, meaning that themes,

patterns for the data might be identified, both once data is already collected, deriving from the

concepts mentioned by the respondents (for example, if interviews are used as the data

collection method author comes up with themes for analysis from the data set) as well as the

other, reversed way, determining the patterns for data analysis before actually analysing the

data set. The former approach is believed to be an inductive way of thematic analysis, whilst

the latter is deductive, respectively.

3.4.1. Data Coding

Deriving from the suggestions for the thematic analysis methods, as already stated above, data

should be analysed within specific themes. These themes, or patterns are applied to specific

parts of the data sets, in case of the given research paper, to the interview transcripts, and

represent the codes for finding the key to each part of the coded data. A code itself in qualitative

studies, is most often “a research-generated word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a

summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-

based or visual dat.” (Saldaña, 2013, p.262) and “the „keyness” of a theme is not necessarily

dependent on quantifiable measures – but in terms of whether it captures something important

in relation to the overall research question” (Braun, & Clarke, 2006, p.10).

Initially author made transcriptions of the interviews by manually transcribing the audio

records of each interview and thus, full transcriptions in a machine-readable format were

created. According to Runeson et al. (2012), during the data analysis process instrumentations

like interview questionnaires can also be updated based on the results revealed, while

researcher should stay systematic and move between data collection and data analysis

procedures constantly.

Afterwards, once transcriptions were ready, author applied the open coding method as it is one

of the handiest methods for such type of qualitative data analysis. Analysis were done after the

completion of the interviews in parallel of the data collection. Such approach gave an

opportunity to reveal if there was any additional data needed to be obtained within the

upcoming interviews. Open coding method was applied to the transcripts, meaning that list of

codes with specific thematic labels for filtering out the data from the transcripts were formed

in order to summarize the text. “Maintaining this list provides an analytic opportunity to

organize and reorganize the codes into major categories and subcategories” (Saldaña, 2013, p.

25). Having specific code list has helped to see a pattern in every interview as well as afterwards

benefited into grouping relatively similar patterns under the thematic categories.

For analysing the data a software based approach to coding was preferred over manual coding;

therefore one of the CAQDAS (Computer Assisted/Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software)

tools, such as RQDA project was employed as unlike the human mind, CAQDAS can maintain

and permit researcher to organize evolving and potentially complex coding systems into

various types of hierarchies (Saldaña, 2013). RQDA tool itself aided into analysing the textual

data and helped to create codes, that were subsequently applied to various parts of the

transcripts, code represented a particular theme, construct. “One code is usually assigned to

many pieces of text, and one piece of text can be assigned more than one code” (Runeson et

al., 2012, p.62), therefore, some parts of the texts, based on the theme, was labelled with several

codes and generalized afterwards to draw some logical patterns.

As Runeson et al.(2012) define, once data is collected analysis follows as the upcoming step,

for generalization of the findings and provision of reporting for the future work. Therefore,

given paper also follows the same pattern for the analysis and this way author provides a

gateway to the findings as well.

3.5 Validity Procedures

Validity methods were applied to the research in order to provide authenticity of the data

collected, as also noted by Runeson et al. (2012) validity procedures are needed to ensure that

the study results are reliable. Following the validity requirements within the study process helps

the researcher not be biased and hence, provide the trustworthy results. Teegavarapu, Summers

& Mocko (2008) suggest that validity measures should be taken so that general requirements

for the soundness of the research are provided. Runeson et al. (2012) outline four types of

validity such as the reliability, construct validity and internal and external reliability,

respectively. All the four points to some extent are important for rising the credibility of the

results drawn by the study.

Suggested aspect of validity such as reliability guarantees that the data collected by the

researcher is indeed reflecting the reality. For ensuring the reliability researcher must be able

provide clear characterisation of the coding methods that have been applied to the data analysis,

as well as must cinch that the interview questions are not vague, biased, etc. (Runeson et al.,

2012). Within the given paper this validity is ensured by the comprehensive explanation of the

codlings that was used, along with the graphical visualisation of the coding results. Moreover,

as an additional evidence, author provides the materials of the coding results, along with

interview transcripts in the appendices of the paper. Essence of ensuring the given validity

derives from idea, that if any of such type of study will also be conducted by any other

researcher in future, that the results should resemble each other and at some point, deliver the

similar outcomes.

Construct validity ensures that collected data measures what it claims, and it can also be

characterized from the perspective of the credibility of the tasks performed by the researcher

within the study process to maintain operational soundness of data collection methods.

Runeson et al. (2012). In fact, in order to ensure the construct validity within the given paper,

all the respondents were interviewed in the same manner so that operational procedures would

maximally resemble each other and thus, would also deliver same results.

On the other hand, internal validity refers to validation of casual relationships where the

researches attempt to find out if the Study object is affected by any factor(s). At this point, the

first influencer factor can also be under the dominance of the second factor, respectively second

influencer by the third factor and so on. Eventually, such factors might lead the research to the

internal validity (Runeson et al.,2012). Within the Study object, author couldn’t fully determine

whether this type of validity was maintained or not, as it was unable to tell, or guess whether

something was under the influence of the direct or indirect factors whether these were the

respondents or the documents. Yet, to minimize the risk of the biased or dominated results,

different types of data collection methods were applied to the paper, along with the data from

various sources, as well as the respondents were chosen from all the stakeholder parties of the

Study object.

One of the validity factors also determining the quality of trustworthiness of the study results

is external validity. “This aspect of validity is concerned with to what extent it is possible to

generalize the findings, and to what extent the findings are of interest to other people outside

the investigated case.” (Runeson et al., 2012, p.71). One of the major incentives for the study

paper was researching particular case of Georgia, as of the country that created world precedent

of integration blockchain solution to the public sector, so that after the data analysis it would

become possible to draw some general recommendations for other countries as well. Indeed, it

can be proclaimed that due to the high interest of the society towards the technology and its

application opportunities to different sectors, study already had predominance for ensuring

external validity. Moreover, within the paper, international examples are also discussed, which

also guarantees attracting the interest on the parties outside the primary study object.

Another way of validity is member checking this aspect of validity implies to giving the

respondents the opportunities to go through their initial interviews and if necessary, provide

interpretation of their own responses (Carlson, 2010). Not only this method helps respondents

to more clearly express their ideas and double confirm of their ideas expressed, but also it

becomes possible to determine if the researcher had correctly represented their stories or not

(Koelsch, 2013). Such validity can be ensured via sending the respondents the interview

transcripts for further checking and approval. All the respondents of the current paper were

provided with the transcripts of the interviews with the request of approval validity of exposed

ideas, as well as, some of the respondents for further clarification on the analysed data were

also periodically being contacted and double approvals gained. Given method has been

beneficial for the research to ensure “true” and “authentic representation” of the respondents’

replies (Harper & Cole, 2012) and this way add credibility to the final data.

4 Results

Current chapter provides the results of the data analysis and interpretation of the interviews.

Interviews were analysed using the RQDA software, was briefly discussed in the previous

chapter. Chosen tool which gave a platform for provision detailed explanations of the results

and in the upcoming paragraphs author will briefly discuss the interview outcomes.

4.1 Case and Subject Description

Land registration system in Georgia is fully administered by the National Agency of the Public

Registry of Georgia. Currently land registration process takes from one to four days and is

almost a fully digitalized service. As the most IT advanced public authority in the country

NAPR used to strive towards enhancing the services and till the date keeps accepting the

contemporary digital challenges. One of the main, yet fully unleashed technologies of the

modern world society is the blockchain and NAPR decided to take over the implementation of

the technology into its operations use this platform to increase the effectiveness of the e-

services. Agency started exploring the technology in 2015-2016. Even though the agency’s

ICT capacity was already impressive, existing threats on data security such as the cyber-attacks

and data breach were the incentives that played major role into adopting the new technology

along with sophisticating the existing model of land titling and eliminating the tiniest risks of

corruption with it. Therefore, agency decided to outsource the application of the technology

and made partnership with the previously discussed Bitfury Group, which is among the biggest

blockchain development companies in the world.

NAPR used to digitally register the land tiles since 2006. Moreover, agency also was working

of digitization of the prior archival data of the property registry which was by then physically

kept in the old-fashioned archives. Therefore, good base and incentives for implementation of

the new technology already existed. By integration the blockchain into the administration of

the land titles, NAPR found a way to move from the centralised model of data management to

a decentralized one kudos to blockchain’s essence of distributed ledger technology, making

transactions simultaneously available for the peers to mine, check, save and validate.

Specialists from both organisations, the Bitfury Group and NAPR, started working on the

project, whilst NAPR was responsible for the content provision and Bitfury - for the

implementation of the blockchain technology itself. In order to harmonise with the existing

system of property registry along with the respective legislation, companies agreed on creation

of the “add-on” layer over the existing system, thus, the process of the immovable property

registration stayed unchanged, whilst one more layer of the blockchain was built over it to

safely save land titles on the blockchain. Maupin (2018) gives exact guide of the current land

registry process of Georgia which consist for the following steps:

“Step 1: buyer and seller reach an agreement about the purchase and sale of the parcel.

Step 2: buyer and seller travel together in person to the NAPR to submit an application for

registration of the transfer.

Step 3: upon accepting the application, the NAPR’s front office visually verifies the dentities

of the parties submitting and signing it.

Step 4: the application goes to the NAPR’s back office, where separate NAPR personnel check

the validity of the transaction (e.g. if there are any recorded claims against the property, liens,

encumbrances, etc.).

Step 5: if the NAPR clears the check, it registers the completion of the transaction by entering

it into the NAPR immovable property registry – a database maintained and controlled by the

NAPR but publicly viewable on the NAPR’s website. At this point, the property formally

transfers from the seller to the buyer, and the buyer hands over the agreed purchase money to

the seller (often in the form of a suitcase of cash12).

Step 6: upon entry into the NAPR database, a pdf extract of the relevant details of the transfer

is sent for hashing to the Bitcoin blockchain.

Step 7: once the transaction has been confirmed on the Bitcoin blockchain, parties whish to do

so may go to a public website where they can check the existence of the hash (i.e. verify that

it’s made it onto the Bitcoin blockchain), and, in principle, at least, download a pdf file

containing the information from which the hash was generated, thereby enabling them to verify

for themselves the integrity of the unique hash that was entered on the Bitcoin blockchain with

respect to that particular parcel transfer” (p.9)

Process of transforming first-hand land titles given in pdf formats towards blockchain readable

format lasts for about 10 minutes after the registration process is done and land title is sent to

NAPR’s database.

Current research aspired to find out factors that lead Georgia to becoming the first successful

administrator of the technology and thus establishing the case study of the world precedent of

an early adopter country. Moreover, research was conducted with the incentive discover the

essence of the current system behind the technology, how the blockchain model works for the

land titling systems and to find what lessons have been learned so far to better understand the

challenges that country might still be facing in terms of the technology development and what

are the next steps, what can be done in order to sophisticate the system.

4.2 Presentation of Findings

In order to investigate the problem of the study author applied interviewing method for

conducting the research, as also described in the previous chapters. All the findings attained

from the interviews are described in the upcoming paragraphs. Interviewing method is more

briefly explained in the previous chapters, but additionally it can also be outlined, that along

with the predetermined set of open-ended questions (Appendix 3), that author also implied to

the follow up questions based on the respondent’s expertise and the interview process.

Interview questionnaire was categorized into nine different steps to help more logically group

the questions in order to retrieve data relevant for the research questions. Moreover, as long as

the case study subject relates to Georgia, all the eight respondents were native Georgian

speakers and six of them preferred Georgian language to be the main one used during the

interviewing process, therefore, the interview guide was translated into Georgian, as well as all

those Georgian interviews were initially transcribed into Georgian and afterwards translated

into English. As to the coding process itself, author used the combination of inductive and

deductive approaches, already explained I the previous chapter. Once codes were generated,

code categories were also developed to help making a better picture regarding the codes

provided (thematic analysis of the codes and respective categories, combining thematically

grouped codes, is also provided in the Appendix 4). Ultimately, as long as for analysing the

data RQDA software was deployed, “categories” in terms of this tool can be characterised as

the “themes” and categories correspond to the themes we formerly discussed. Henceforth, the

term category will be used to analyse the thematic patterns identified within the data analysis

procedure. Code categories designed for the analysis are as follows:

Code Categories

01-Metrics for Evaluation the Land Titling Blockchain Project

02-Incentives for Starting the Land Titling Blockchain Project

03-Challenges of the Land Titling Blockchain Project

04-Characteristics of e-Service Provision Systems of Georgia

05-Stackeholders and their Roles in Development of the Blockchain-Based State Services

06-Further Development of the Blockchain Technology into State Services

07-How the Blockchain Solution Works for Land Titles

Table 1 Code Categories for Analysis

Each code category consisted of the specific number of codes, whilst some of the categories

also shared the same codes due to the thematic relevance, this is graphically also represented

on the thematic map of all categories and codes in the Appendix 4.

Overall, 383 codes have been allocated to the transcripts and grouped under the respective code

categories. Analysis of the frequency of code usage per categories is also provided in the

Appendix 5, which depicts the most often and least frequently codes. Such analysis might be

useful for understanding which topic is the most appealing for the respondents per the specific

category. In the end, results of codes categories have been thematically analysed by the author

and are summarized below within the scope of each three main research questions of the study

along with the sub research questions, provided earlier in the work.

4.2.1 General Description of the Respondents

Current section provides the general overview of the respondents chosen for the interviews to

contribute into the research process. In order to ensure validity of the findings author deem it

relevant to at first let interviewers present themselves and briefly explain their working

background during the implementation of land titling project since 2016 as well as current

occupation – section 2 of the interview guide aimed to retrieve this information, whereas the

section 3 of the interview guide comprised of the questions that aimed to find out the

respondents’ knowledge about the blockchain technology and their interaction with the given

technology in general.

Interviews were conducted among the specialists primarily working on the blockchain land

titling project as well as with the blockchain experts that are currently researching and

developing the technology both, for Georgian public and private sectors. Respondents working

on the technology were from both stakeholder parties implementing the blockchain land titling

project such as NAPR as well as the Bitfury group. Respondents included land tiling project

manager from NAPR, heads of the both organizations The Bitfury group and former lead of

NAPR, project’s business processes manager, project’s IT specialist as well as one person,

head of communications partner company of the Bitfury group and two independent specialists

of the blockchain technology, one of which is also a scholar and has a tight relationship with

the Georgian government and is implementing new blockchain solutions for the state

authorities. Most of the interviews, as per respondents’ preferences, were conducted in

Georgian and afterwards transcribed and translated into English.

For the interests of the research paper it needs to be mentioned that overall author reached out

to 27 respondents both from the Bitfury Group and NAPR, three of the respondents (two from

the Bitfury Group and one from the Georgian blockchain community), who replied, were

declined from the interview as they didn’t have much interaction with the land titling project,

two of the respondents from the top management of the central Bitfury group that replied

declined the interview and suggested other people for the data collection, one person, human

resources manager of the Bitfury Group in Georgia was also contacted with the request to help

in communication with the land titling blockchain project specialists, but unfortunately, as after

also finding out form the Bitfury Groups’ head, the respondent – the company’s employees

aren’t allowed to disclosure company related data and for any type of interview they’re required

granting a permission from the Bitfury Group’s central office in the Netherlands; this process

usually takes several months, thus human resources manager also declined author’s request due

to the privacy reason. Some of the potential respondents, have never actually given the

interview even though author had constant correspondence with them. Additionally, various

channels were used to get the respondent’s agreement on the interviews such platforms as:

LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail, WhatsApp and Instagram.

4.2.2 Thematic Outline of the Interview Results

General idea behind the interviews was finding the reply to the main research question,

nevertheless, to attain deep and detailed responses, three sub research questions were formed

for the main research question, each of them was divided into three more sub questions,

respectively. Additionally, in the beginning of the research, hypotheses for each research and

sub research question were formed to more clearly visualise possible outcomes of the paper.

Interview guide was built based on the sub research questions, in order to specifically

understand each of them. Moreover, to provide the logical flow of the interview questions,

author grouped them into logical units such as set of questions related to understanding the

respondents’ backgrounds and their competency into the blockchain technology, as well as

questions to attain respondents’ evaluations of Georgia’s current public administration system

and the path that lead government towards adopting the technology; set of questions were

designed to specifically find out about the research or any other preliminary activities done

before implementation blockchain technology into the land titling public services, this part was

followed with general questions about the project as well as the outcomes and the respective

metrics for measuring the outcomes. Questions also addressed the topic of stakeholders and

their roles in the project, whilst final set of questions draw attention on the future prospective

of the project and possible application of the blockchain technology in other state services.

Below provided sections provide the interview results attained via coding and categorized into

the three chapters corresponding to the research questions.

4.2.3 Blockchain Technology in Georgian Land Registry System

One of the of the main goals of the research was to determine how the idea of having the

digitalized public services emerged in Georgian reality and to what extent “blockchainisation”

of the public administration processes indeed fit the country’s current public administration

narrative. In order to find answers for the above mentioned, one of the research questions of

the paper was “How does the blockchain fit into the narrative of contemporary e-service

provision system of the Georgian government?” hence, the following paragraphs will provide

the interview results responding the current research question. Moreover, to narrow down the

topic of interest and acquire more specific reply for the given topic, additionally, the problem

was questioned with the sub questions as follows “What is the current framework of the state

service provision of Georgia? How can it be characterised?”, “What was the property

registration procedure alike before launching the blockchain?”, “What were the factors leading

to the property registration be chosen as a pilot project?”. Answers derived from the interviews

were grouped together via the coding and results are as follows:

Once talking about the Georgian state service provision system, majority of the respondents

outlined the Soviet heritage of the country, which left country’s government with the lack or

with no knowledge of the contemporary governance methods. This evidence was already

supported from the literature reviewed in the previous chapters and the interviewees also

confirmed that the public authorities of Georgia used to be full of red tape, high in outdated

management processes as well as full of bureaucracy and corruption. To promote development

of the country and find a niche on the international scale country started the path of

implementation of major reforms within the government. One of the respondents outlined in

this regard that “Georgia stepped up on the world map as an independent country only in 1989,

thus, we had to find a quick way for departing from the horrible Soviet system and sometimes

even make some painful reforms” (respondent). Nevertheless, most of the interviewees consider

2004 as the year when development of state services started – after the Rose Revolution in

2003. One of the respondents characterised current topic followingly: “Georgia started moving

from the bureaucratised and corrupted Soviet heritage to the flexible public administration

system – all the respective reforms mainly took place between 2004-2012 and government

because provider of effective service provider. As a result, we got quasi-private public

agencies, with the respective dose of autonomy that started provision of the public services.”

On the other hand, same respondent afterwards outlined that in his opinion, government should

had been more open to the private agencies instead of forming the quasi-private agencies as it

would promoted the development of the private sector just like it had happened in the case of

Estonia where the executor of state services was the private sector.

Following the given topic and the third sub research question regarding the factors leading and

registry become the pilot project for adoption the technology, majority of the respondents

believe that only public agency that could successfully develop the technology was NAPR and

as opposed to the previous respondent’s characterisation of outsourcing the services to private

vendors, NAPR in this case represents the quasi-agency operating under the Ministry of Justice

of Georgia as well as being the first and only one pubic agency in the country fully financing

itself. Respondents characterised NAPR as the “outstanding entity” that always integrated high

technologies in the operation processes. To nourish this, former head of the NAPR stated “for

the past several years NAPR is in the top three countries among the most successful countries

by “Doing Business” and Georgia is on the 8th place among the 191 countries respectively.

These also were the factors that made us brave to step up there adopting the technology”

(respondent) as well as the current Head of Project Management and Sales Department of

NAPR who is in charge of various services besides the land tiling, such as Mortgage Registry,

Geodesy, Cadastre, cartography, etc., pointed out that “NAPR had already a very good

experience in provision of e-services, every service was already automatized, digitized, land

titling process was already electronic and therefore, it was easy for us to integrate blockchain”

(respondent), therefore, to answer the sub-sub research question and determine why the land

tiling was chosen as the pilot project it can be said that the given service, along with the state

agency supporting the service, had enough technical capacity and the human capital to deploy

such new the technology as blockchain and bravely take over the implementation of the one.

Moreover, as long as the information about land titles is publicly available for everyone, current

legislative framework of Georgia gave an opportunity to adopt the technology without need of

making any regulatory amendments, which, as per respondents’ replies, was one of the reasons

why technology was tested on the land titling service. As to the land titling process itself,

respondents outlined that the entire process of the property and respectively, land registration

takes from one to four working days and nothing in the existing land titling system was changed

once the blockchain technology was launched, but the technology became an “add-on” service

(as characterised by several interviewees) to the current land titling process, making it possible

to move already registered and approved land title to blockchain in about 10 minutes after

completion the registration process at NAPR. Some of the respondents also shared the step by

step process description document with the author, therefore, in the upcoming chapters author

will come up the business process flow diagram of the land titling based on the documents

shared as well as the interview responses attained.

4.2.4 Characteristics of the Successful Blockchain Reform

Given chapter provides the results related to the second research question, which also

comprised of three sub questions, respectively. Current chapter deals with analysing the

outcomes of the land titling blockchain project, with the sub research question - “How to

determine the main criteria for evaluation the outcomes of the blockchain based land titling

project?“ .To deeply analyse given question author came up with three sub questions that could

give clear picture about the methods for analysing the project and determining whether initial

expectations of the government were met with the achieved outcomes or not. Moreover, sub

questions also intended finding out how the metrics for evaluation of the project were

determined. Sub research questions are as follows: “What can be considered as a benefit and a

drawback of the reform?”, “What are the criteria the reform has to meet to be considered as a

successful one?”, “What are the criteria for measuring the impact of the reform into the public

service provision?”

Respondents were questioned about the initial expectations of the project, along with the prior

activities done before the pilot phase of the project, such as an academic research, or

consultations with the countries that also had prior attempt of application the blockchain

technology to not only the land titling systems but in general – to public services. As the same

time, project was piloted within a year from 2016-2017 and within this period NAPR tested

compatibility of their systems with the technology Bitfury was providing in order to eventually

launch blockchain in the real time service provision process. As to the goal of the project,

representatives of the government, NAPR employees outlined that main expectations of the

project were rising the security of current land titling processes, removing people’s

involvement in the titling process to its maximum extent and digitizing the system, preventing

data from deleting, manipulations or any other potential problems, improving exiting archiving

system. Moreover, such characteristic of the blockchain technology as the decentralisation of

the power was one of the facilitators for adopting the technology. Additionally, as also pointed

out in the previous chapters after reviewing the documentations, one of the goals of adopting

the project was the unstable Geopolitical situation of the country, as in past it had witnessed

cyber-attacks from the neighbouring countries and thus, state owned data has to be as less

vulnerable to such attack as possible - this is what one of the respondents mentioned in that

regard: “…even if we recall 2008 Russo-Georgian war, when Russia did a cyber-attack on the

Georgia, that was followed by shutting down the e-services – if we had blockchain by that time,

there would have been better security over citizens’ data and we’d have been able to provide

security of the international level” (respondent). On the other hand, incentives for the

implementation of the project for the Bitfury Group can be determined as the attractive business

environment on the Georgian market to operate as a Bitcoin mining company along with having

good relationships with the local government; moreover NAPR already a well-developed

digital and ICT base to test some blockchain related pilot projects; and additionally, it was an

unique opportunity for the Bitfury group itself to support the state operations with the

blockchain and thus, create a successful precedent of the public private cooperation by Bitfury

being the service provides side.

One of the crucial aspects of the paper was to understand whether implementation of the

cutting-edge technology such as blockchain in the state services was wise from the perspective

of the effectiveness and efficiency or not. Thus, respondents were asked about the respective

topics and results weren’t astonishing - as it seems that there have been no specific metrics

defined for the evaluation of the project, no quantitative data has been gathered for determining

the efficiency of the project either. As the previous head of the agency also confirmed “…a

research for studying the financial achievements of the project wasn’t done, but I can say for

sure that prices of services hadn’t risen” (respondent) nor any other respondent could give the

comprehensive feedback about the metrics for evaluation the results of the project. One of the

reasons why no specific metrics have been defined by NAPR could be the following: project

was fully financed by the Bitfury Group, moreover, since the pilot project till the date, cost of

the transactions on the blockchain is still covered by the private company; so far more than two

million (2m) transactions have been sent to the Bitfury group. As the Project Manager of NAPR

mentioned “…[blockchain] hasn’t affected neither time nor expenses, so at this point, we

cannot say that blockchain is time and cost effective “ (respondent) Therefore, as also stated

by the interviewees, NAPR didn’t experience any major financial expenses, nor had the

upcoming financial risk if the project would fail. On the other hand, based on all the

respondents’ replies important key performance indicators (KPI) still can be determined for

measuring the effectiveness of the project such as: increased security of data, transparency of

e-services, reducing vulnerability of land records towards various internal and external

threats, decentralisation of power and thus, increasing trust towards government activities.

One of the things that almost all respondents highlighted in terms of the achievement of the

reform is increased popularity of the country on the international scale such as the first ever

government that successfully adopted the blockchain technology, which leads to the cross

border cooperation and further development of the project.

4.2.5 Future Application of the Blockchain Technology to State Services

Current section is designed to provide answer to the following research question “How can the

blockchain based property registration affect the process of overall services provision?”. To

investigate the possible areas of the development of the project author designed sub research

questions that should help with determining what is needed to further develop existing land

titling project and how it can be advanced. Sub research questions designed for answering

topics of interests, are: “What are the other possible areas of the public services where the

technology can also be applied to?”, “What are the main constraints for the technology

implementation?”,” Who are the main stakeholders of the service? What is their role into the

development of the technology?”.

From the results gathered, participants outlined that technology has a capacity of development

not only internally, within NAPR, but also in other state agencies. Moreover, cross-country

opportunities for deploying the technology and administering some shared services might also

be an option in the nearest future. As the bullet points, several recommendations can be

withdrawn from the participants’ replies. First, some of the respondents believe that awareness

about the technology has to be risen among the society as long as majority of people cannot

tell difference between Bitcoin and blockchain, which initially reflected into problems for

NAPR - some citizens even accused NAPR in mining Bitcoins by using their properties... Not

only citizens don’t understand how technology works, but also state officials may not fully be

deploying the essence of the technology that they’re developing, as also stated by one of the

respondents “Very often I think that public administration specialists do not understand how

the technology, blockchain works as well as very other technicians do not understand basic

principles of public administration” (respondent) hence, this leads to vague communication

channels and solutions that are applied may not be fully utilized or might not be developed to

their maximum extent. Second, as long as NAPR provides services not only for the immovable

property registry but also for registration of business and public entities, mortgages, geodesy,

issues all citizen related documentations and any other documents that were previously

analysed earlier in the paper - some of the respondents see the opportunity for the technology

development exactly in these areas. Moreover, not only the NAPR but other state agencies may

also administer the given technology and indeed, some of the state authorities such as Revenue

Service of Georgia cooperating under the Ministry of Finance of Georgia is currently working

on the project of issuing certificates of the origin via blockchain – as a blockchain expert, one

of our respondents pointed out that his company is developing the Smart Contracts’ solution

for the Revenue Service of Georgia via using the Ethereum blockchain technology,

additionally, given project may have cross border nature, as currently negotiations with

Azerbaijan are being conducted for the joint application of the technology to the customs

departments’ of both countries in regards to the certificates of the origin.

As to other future opportunities for technology development, respondents also mentioned that

Ministry of Education of Georgia is also considering storing the diplomas and various

certificates on the blockchain… Additionally, whilst talking about the further development of

the project, some participants, see challenges in the legislative terms, as NAPR’s project didn’t

require regulatory changes as data was already public, but based on the specifications of other

state authorities and their operations, regulatory changes will most probably be needed. In such

cases, project application delays may take place as the procedures of amendments the existing

laws in some cases might take months too. Just as importantly, current paper-based operational

systems of various agencies can also be a major constraint for the development of the

technology.

Respondents also were interviewed regarding the role of the stakeholders in the adoption of the

technology and overall assumption that can be withdrawn from all the responses is that

openness of the government towards the public private partnership opportunities is a key to

successful adoption of the technology as the private companies that specifically work on the

implementation of blockchain solutions, have better understanding of the technology. One of

the most important findings within the interviews is the concept of “Trust Contracts”

mentioned by the current head of project lead of NAPR – in the pursuit of discovering new

opportunities of the blockchain technology, agency aims implementation of Trust Contracts,

blockchain supported contracts that will help various actors of the land registry process connect

with each other and mainly aims adding a new player, financial institutions, banks to the

property purchase process – currently NAPR itself isn’t engaged into the money exchange

process between seller and buyer but citizens have to separately decide and proceed on the

payment method. “Trust contracts should address the following issues: 1. Treat the financial

risks associated with registration of property when selling/buying property and 2. Reduce the

possibilities of wrongful manipulation/fraud with real estate”. Current project also aims to

have the Bitfury Group involve as a service provider as well.

On the other hand, respondents from the Georgian blockchain community stated that they’d be

happy if government gave an opportunity to various blockchain companies other than Bitfury

to also provide blockchain services which would encourage business sector to further deploy

the technology.

Some of the respondents also raised their concerns on the current model of the blockchain,

stating that blockchain solution applied to the public services should not be of public

permissionless type, but should be permissioned and designed under the requirements of the

consortium type of blockchain, to butter this opinion, please refer to the respondent’s

confirmation “…Why? Because the rules of the consensus protocol in the public blockchain

are beyond sovereignty, that is not dependent on you, and say, for example, if you want a

specific solution, for example, in energetics (you do other things there, right?) - this cannot be

eradicated either in the Ethereum or in Bitcoin blockchain. And or some other pseudo

blockchains “(respondent). Furthermore, additionally to those stakeholders that were identified

within the interviews, such as NAPR, the Bitfury Group and citizens, same respondent also

suggested that more stakeholders should be involved in the administration of the technology if

state agencies start implementation the consortium blockchains; these stakeholders should be

the non-governmental organizations that will be granted with the permission to have limited

access on the data stored on the blockchain, so that they will be able to control the member of

consortium and prevent them from any possible corrupted agreements..

5 Conclusions and Future Work

5.1 Introduction

Following chapter provides the review about the main findings of the paper based on the results

of the primary and secondary data collected through the interviews and documentations

respectively. Moreover, in the following chapter author presents the AS IS model of the current

land titling blockchain project. Chapter outlines the major areas that need to be developed for

the better application of the technology in the public sector of Georgia as well as points out

current weak points. Chapter also discusses the limitations of the research and contributions of

the paper. Finally, topics for further research and validation possibilities are also summarized.

5.2 Summary of Findings

5.2.1 Criteria Necessary for Further Adoption the Blockchain Technology

Having thoroughly analysed the data from various sources such as interviews and internal

documentations as well as reviewing the cases of Sweden, Dubai and The Netherlands under

the umbrella of the international experience in regards to “blockchainisation” of land registries,

author came up with the recommendations in regard to the current land titling system of

Georgia. Some major aspects identified within the research that support adoption of the

blockchain technology are categorized as follows:

▪ Having a developed e-Government is one of the biggest benefits for the governments

to take the challenge of adoption the blockchain technology. This element has also been

identified as a major support factor for the successful implementation of the Georgian

land titling project as the Georgian government had long been developing the electronic

solutions to the government and based on the UN’s surveys, had already shown some

major results in the advancement of e-Government development as also previously also

discussed in the paper.

▪ Public Private Partnerships seem to be one of the beneficial and at sometimes even the

crucial components for adoption the technology. In case of Georgia it was the Bitfury

group that developed the blockchain solution for the government and since then keeps

providing the service. Same applies to the other adopter countries as well, where private

sector, sometimes even several business companies provide the solutions for integrating

the technology into existing land registry systems.

▪ Legislative framework is one of the crucial aspects for successful integration of the

technology. In case of Georgia success of the project was greatly determined by the

flexibility of the respective regulations that didn’t hinder NAPR from saving citizens’

data on the blockchain, whilst in case of other countries such as Sweden or The

Netherlands, for administering the technology into the public service, some regulatory

changes are needed.

▪ Research and Development activities can also be considered as an important element

for adoption the technology. Having in advance determined what obstacles stakeholders

might face within and after adoption the technology, will help to provide more effective

and efficient solutions. In case of the Georgian government, one of the respondents

admitted that after completion of the pilot project of the land titling “blockchainisation”

NAPR saw the need for doing the research about the legislative framework of Georgia

for the further development of the blockchain project.

5.2.2 Components Lacking in the Blockchain Project of Georgian Land Titles

Even though all the respondents in unison agree that the project is successful and praise

Georgian government for successfully dealing with the challenge of implementation

Blockchain solution into the state services there still are some factors that author deems

relevant to highlight as the weakest points of the project:

▪ None of the respondents were able to list the specific research projects that had been

done prior launching the pilot project in 2016. General understanding of the benefits of

blockchain technology and having such successful blockchain company as the Bitfury

Group operating on the local market gave a courage to the government to test the

technology within the pilot project.

▪ No specific metrics could be identified for evaluation of the results of the project either.

As stated by the respondents, main achievement of the project is increased safety and

security of citizens’ data, as well as increased transparency and better solutions for the

data traceability. As to the quantitative metrics, current project hasn’t been yet

measured in terms of the cost efficiency.

▪ One of the most crucial aspects that author deemed to be a drawback of the project is

that given blockchain solution is not integrated in the land titling service itself, but

blockchain, as also confirmed by the respondents, is an Add-on service on the existing

land tiling process. Indeed, the land titles are still registered as it used to be done before

integrating the technology, additionally, once the old, regular process of registration is

over documents get transferred to the blockchain for saving the data there. Therefore,

given blockchain solution can be characterised as an advanced “Archive” platform for

saving the data.

▪ After reviewing the current model of the land title, one of the aspects that turned out to

be the weak point of the system is that existing model still leaves a room for possible

data tampering. As one of the respondents also stated, theoretically, citizens’ data can

be amended before title gets transferred to the blockchain. Even though NAPR had long

been providing the highest standards of the data security and no publicly known cases

have been disclosed either where NAPR maliciously amended citizens’ data, but for the

sake of the paper, this drawback had to also be underlined.

5.2.3 AS IS Model of the Land Titling

Before drawing the conclusions, based on the data collected from the agency’s records and the

interviews combined, to better understand the current administration system of the land titling

of Georgia, author came up with the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) graphically

represented via the Signavio academic tool.

Due to the display format limitations of the tool, current BPMN shows the subproxecces also

depicted on the same lane as the main business processes, therefore, reader is highly requested

not to be judgmental towards the scientific notation of BPMN and cosider given diagram as a

fair replicaiton of an original process. Moreover, in the appendices section another verson of

the BPMN 2 XML format process is also provided which can be imported into the Signavio

Academic platform for the entire business process simluation puroses.

For the further explanation of the graphical notation provided in the process flow diagram of

current AS IS land title registry (Appendix 6), the legend with respective lements of the

notation are provided in the Figure 7 below, where based on the BPMN Signavio notations,

Start and End events are untyped notations and usually idicate the beginning of the process and

the end, respectively. Connection objects, on the other hand, for the sequence flow notation

defines the execution order of activities; association (undirectional) objects indicate the

information flow, and the association (undirected) objets to a sequence flow indicate hand-

over of information bewteen the activities involved. Taks represent an unit of work – the job

to be performed. It is an automatic activity within a process flow. As to the other element of

acitivities such as event subprocess, it becomes active when its start event gets triggered and

can interrupt the subprocess context or run in parallel (non-interrupting), depending on the start

activity. Another notation as intermediate time event shows that execution of the task is delayed

until a certain point in time is reached or particular duration is over. Exclusive (XOR) gateway

at the same time is in charge or routing the sequence flow to exactly one of the outgoing

branches based on conditions. When merging, it awaits one incoming branch to complete

before triggering the outgoing flow. Artifact is just an object associated with a text annotation

to provide additional documentation. Data object represents information flowing through the

process and lastly, data store is a place where the process can read or write tada, e.g. a database

or a filling cabinet. It persists beyond the lifetime of the process itself.

Figure 7 Legend for BPMN

Given diagram of the land titling “blockchainisation” process (Appendix 6) consists of the

following steps:

▪ Initially seller and buyer physically pay a visit at NAPR’s local office (to give NAPR’s

agent opportunity to visually verify the identities of both parties) and submit a joint

application for the registration of transfer.

▪ PDF (land title doc) extract is generated at registrar’s desktop client application

▪ PDF is sent to NAPR's database (servers maintained by the agency itself) for signing

the document digitally, so that the offline df document is secured from data tampering

▪ Digital signature integration service (software for digitally signing PDF documents and

placing a time stamp on them takes new pdf documents from database) makes necessary

adjustments to a file to get it ready for signing

-In case there’s some factors restraining either seller or a buyer to make a purchase then

document is ejected from further processing and at this point the land tilting process is

over, therefore, no document gets sent to the blockchain.

-In case the transaction is valid, then it goes to further processing.

▪ Digital signature integration service sends document for signing to the Digital Signature

Service

▪ Digital Signature Service signs the document. Given phase consists of several sub

processes such as:

-Hash of PDF file signature gets Generated

-Signature is put on the PDF file which is signed digitally with the private key held by

NAPR only

-Third party timestamp is applied to the document

▪ Signed PDF file is sent to Blob storage, where it is saved permanently (Blop is a server

owned by NAPR and On the Blop storage files are immutable, they can’t be deleted or

edited.)

▪ Upon entering the document into the Blop storage blockchain gateway makes

transaction to Bitcoin blockchain where transaction is hashed and validated by Bitcoin

blockchain miners. Given phase consists of several sub processes such as:

-Gateway reads the newly signed files from Blob storage and generates hash code of

every single file

-Gateway creates Merkle's Tree of hashes.

-A new Bitcoin transaction object is created that contains Merkle's Tree root hash

-The transaction is sent to Bitcoin network for validation

-Bitcoin miners help to verify the transaction, where it involves producing a hash-based

(SHA256) PoW

▪ Once transaction is validated it also gets published on the NAPR's publicly available

webpage.

AS an example of the land title published at NAPR’s website #892017311858 (NAPR, 2018)

that was randomly retrieved from the agency’s database, has already been discussed in terms

of the data contained in the land titles. But as it was also described on the AS IS model, once

the transaction containing Merkle’s Tree root hash gets validated on the blockchain, this status

is also updated on the NAPR’s database, where individual land titles are kept. So in case

citizens want to check whether their land title is also saved on the blockchain or not, they can

check if from the online document itself where validated land title should have on it displayed

hashes both for the specific land title and for the Merkle’s tree (Appendix 8) along with the

Bitcoin blockchain transaction to double check its validity in the open source transaction

tracker platforms and in case of NAPR www.btc.com is suggested to the customers (Appendix

Having the business process graphically displayed is of a high importance as it helped to

analyse the possible drawbacks of the current system. As it was also stated by some of the

respondents, the given blockchain solution was applied to that land titling existing system,

which means that not the business model of the system was not modified, but the existing

digital solution was improved by adding additional layer to the land titling process.

Having elaborated such model at some point contradicts the previously discussed state of art

blockchain in terms of decentralisation as long as the control over the citizens’ data is again

under the central authority’s subordinance and before the task, where blockchain gateway

makes the transaction on the blockchain is executed, technically, risks of data tampering are

left.

Additionally, this AS IS model shows that blockchain solution is applied to the existing

business process as a previously mentioned “add-on” service, hence, it is difficult to say that

Blockchain solution, in this sense, benefits to the cost-effectiveness of the existing land title

registry process, on the other hand, as long as the transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain have

their fee determined by the value of the cryptocurrency, land title registry process, the e-service,

has become even more expensive process. Therefore, it would be the best option for the

government to start about reengineering the model instead of application new digital solutions

to already digitalized services so that the blockchain application doesn’t just look like a modern

archive, as mentioned previously.

On the positive note for such application needs to be noted that in case of any technical glitches

with the blockchain gateway, or in case of abortion the project of “blockchainisation”, core

processes of the title registry will remain the same, as well as duplicate data will always be

stored at the agency’s data base as well.

5.3 Impact/Implication

In the given study author explored the factors promoting the digitalization of government

agencies in terms of adoption the high-tech solutions and administering state services via

cutting-edge technology such as the blockchain. Paper identified the issues in the current public

service provision processes that the blockchain technology helps to address and in this regard

reducing corruption, reducing the red tape, improving speed of transactions, increasing the data

security, offering more transparent state-citizen relationships and creation of better tools of

data traceability have been identified.

Within the paper main factors facilitating Georgia becoming the world pioneer blockchain

adopter government have been identified and to generalize findings specific recommendations

have been suggested for adopting the technology in the state services.

Within the study author came up with the business model of the current land titling system of

Georgia where focus on the model’s Achilles' heel had been made along with the

recommendations of solving one and suggestions on the further development of the project.

Along with these discoveries as a background, having scrutinized perspectives of adoption

the blockchain technology in the state services by examining the case of Georgian government,

it can generally be implied that main criteria that governments will possibly have to meet for

administering the technology is willingness to change the existing business processes,

technological readiness of public services provision systems for integrating the new technology

– blockchain, moreover, drawing new technological solutions under the existing regulatory

frameworks of countries seem to be the most efficient and fastest ways for adoption the

blockchain technology, otherwise, existing legislations have to also be amended to make digital

advancements compatible with the regulations. Additionally, public private partnership has

been identified as the essential part for successful adoption of the technology as the private

actors’ possess the necessary knowledge and experience about this cutting edge technology as

blockchain. And last but foremost, research and development is one of the parts of adopting

the technology that governments have to pay attention too as preliminary research activities

are supposed to help determine which blockchain solutions will be most compatible with the

specific governments’ state ecosystems, as well as will help to determine criteria and metrics

for evaluation the projects, which, respectively, is one of the recommendations study gives to

the governments willing to adopt the technology; Having properly realised goals and designing

the criteria for evaluation the blockchain based projects open doors to more fruitful exploitation

of the technology.

5. 4 Limitations

For drawing the limitations of the study author applies general criticism of the single case study

research discussed by various scholars. By some critics, case study research is believed to be

limited into the terms of usefulness and that the given methodology can only be useful for the

casual and explanatory inquiries (Krusenvik, 2015). Some of the critics argue the

generalizability capacity of the case studies and characterising case studies as the works that

are highly specific, therefore, limited to study object specific context or some specific units.

On the other hand, some authors argue that intensive use of the empirical evidences attained

within the case study research might lead to overly complex theory. “A hallmark of good theory

is parsimony, but given the typically staggering volume of rich data, there is a temptation to

build theory which tries to capture everything. The result can be theory, which is very rich in

detail, but lacks the simplicity of overall perspective” (Eisenhardt, 1989, p.547) and eventually,

such high amount of data might lead the researchers to switching focus from important aspects

of the study to the vague findings.

Overall, risk of being incapable to draw any scientific solutions may also become an issue

(Krusenvik, 2015). Some authors also argue that case study lacks systematic approach to the

research subject, as well as doesn’t provide strict guidelines and often doesn’t show

thoughtfulness in analysing da reporting data, therefore, case study researches lack

Based on Miles (1979), Krusenvik (2015) in his work about the advantages and disadvantages

about the case study research methodology, also summarizes some main limitations of the

process of analysis of case study researches and characterises as “intuitive, primitive and

unmanageable in any rational sense which lead to unreliable and invalid conclusions.”

(Krusenvik, 2015, p.7). Scholar also questions the validity of the as study results, as such type

of the methodologies researches is personally interacted with the case subject and thus, biased

outcomes might be a final result of the research (Krusenvik, 2015).

In his work about “Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research” Flyvbjerg (2006) also

lists five most broadly discussed limitations of the case study research methodologies as

follows:

▪ “General, theoretical (context-independent) knowledge is more valuable than concrete,

practical (context-dependent) knowledge.

▪ One cannot generalize based on an individual case; therefore, the case study cannot

contribute to scientific development.

▪ The case study is most useful for generating hypotheses; that is, in the first stage of a

total research process, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing

and theory building.

▪ The case study contains a bias toward verification, that is, a tendency to confirm the

researcher’s preconceived notions.

▪ It is often difficult to summarize and develop general propositions and theories based

on specific case studies” (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p.221)

To generalize the above listed limitations of case study research methodologies to the given

study paper, some drawbacks of the chosen methodology may result into following limitations:

Paper studied the land titling blockchain project of Georgia, but the findings of the single case

study might not be applicable to the other state services nether within Georgia nor in other

countries due to the limited scope of the case study research topic.

Opinions of the respondents that work at NAPR or The Bitfury Group might be biased and not

fully reflecting the objective reality. Moreover, as the Bitfury Group’s representatives revealed,

they’re limited from sharing data about the company’s activities (which was the reason why

lots of the potential respondents declined request of the interviews) some [abstract] aspects of

the data about the blockchain solution used at NAPR may not be identified within the given

study.

Even though respondents were interviewed from various fields to add more credibility to the

data, a smaller number of respondents from The Bitfury Group as opposed to NAPR’s

representatives can also be a limitation in a sense of biased responses

As the barrier for attaining more data can also be considered the remote communication with

the respondents, as physically visiting the interviewers and conducting face to face interviews

might have also revealed some unmentioned topics.

Subjective perception of the research topic by the author can also be deemed as a possible

limitation for the study topic as.

Sparse of data about other countries of adopting the blockchain technology can also a limitation

as better companions to the research topic could have been developed if more similar cases

were discussed.

5.5 Future Work

In the course of the given study some aspects for the future exploration have been identified

and are defined as follows:

Firstly, as identified within the data collection process, so far qualitative researches have been

done in regard to integration blockchain in the land registry system of Georgia, therefore, as

the continuation of current study paper, further quantitative researches can also be conducted

to nourish the data more.

Secondly, as long as the NAPR is already working on the new Blockchain solutions such as

Trust Contracts as well as is reviewing the opportunities of integration the Smart Contracts to

the land registry and other registries of the agency, it would be reasonable to also officially

study the given technologies; define their compatibility with the NAPR’s services and

determine expected outcomes from the qualitative and quantitative prospective.

Thirdly, it is recommended to determine clear metrics for evaluation the current project and

analyse the outcomes of the blockchain solution from the efficiency and effectiveness

prospective, which will on the other hand contribute into any other upcoming applications or

developments of the technology into NAPR or any other state agencies.

Additionally, to generalize findings, it will be more beneficial for the Georgian public agencies

to more actively cooperate in regard to the blockchain solutions they’re applying under the

specific agencies as sharing the knowledge among G2G and B2G sectors might lead to more

fruitful outcomes. Nevertheless, given study is limited in the data about the extent and intensity

of cooperation various agencies regarding the technology and this issue is also the subject for

the further research and development activities.

Las but not least, coming out from the limitations section discussed previously, initially, for

increasing the credibility of the chosen research methodology as well as approving the validity

of the findings identified within the research, other researchers can also investigate the topic

and afterwards multiple studies can be compared to each other.

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Appendix 1 - Example of the land title #892017311858 (part 1)

Appendix 2 - Example of the land title #892017311858 (part 2)

Appendix 3 - Interview Guide

Step 1 . Introduction

▪ Interviewer presents the research topic and explains the goal of the interview.

Step 2 . Introduction and discussion about the interviewee’s work situation.

▪ (Eng) Where do u work currently?

(Geo) ამჟამად სად/რომელ ორგანზაციაში მუშაობთ?

▪ (Eng) What is your current position within an organisation?

(Geo) რა არის თქვენ მიერ დაკავებული პოზიცია?

▪ (Eng) Please list your main duties on the current occupation

(Geo) გთხოვთ, ჩამოთვალოთ თქვენზე ამჟამად დაკისრებული

სამსახურეობრივი მოვალეობები

▪ (Eng) Where did you work during the implementation of the property registry reform?

(Geo) ქონების რეგსტრაციის პროექტის განხორციელების დროს სად, რა

თანამდებობაზე მუშაობდით?

Step 3 . Understanding the respondents’ knowledge base of the technology.

▪ (Eng) What is your knowledge about the blockchain? Have you ever worked on the

blockchain related project? Please describe

(Geo) რა იცით ბლოკჩეინის ტექნოლოგიის შესახებ? გიმუშავით თუ არა

ბლოკჩენთან დაკავშირებულ პროექტზე? გთხოვთ, აღწერეთ.

▪ (Eng) In general, how would you characterize successful blockchain reform? What are

the success factors- please determine?

(Geo) ზოგადად, როგორ დაახასიათებდით წარმატებულ ბლოკჩეინ

რეფორმას? - რა არის წარმატების განმსაზღვრელი ფაქტორები?

Step 4 . Understanding the respondents’ opinion about Georgian public administration

system.

▪ (Eng) What would you distinguish as the main characteristics of the current Georgian

public administration system?

(Geo) საქართველოს თანამედროვე საჯარო ადმინისტრირების სისტემას

როგორ დაახასიათებდით?

▪ (Eng) Do you think it is a smart move for Georgia to have a high tech government?

Why?

(Geo) როგორ ფიქრობთ, რამდეად მიზაშეწონილია, რამდენად სწორი

ნაბიჯია საქართველოს მთავრობის მხრიდან high tech მთავრობის

ფორმირება, რატომ?

▪ (Eng) When, to what point, did the country (Georgian) decide to move towards

digitalized services?

(Geo) როდის, რა ეტაპზე გადაწყვიტა მთავრობამ (საქართველოს)

დიგიტალიზირებული სერვისების მიმართულებით განვითარება?

▪ (Eng) What are the main benefits for the implementation of Blockchain in the public

service delivery?

(Geo) ზოგადად, საჯარო სერვისების მიწოდების პროცესში ბლოკჩეინის

გამოყენებს რა ბენეფიტები აქვს?

Step 5 . Questions about the preliminary activities before implementing the blockchain

land titling project

▪ (Eng) What research(es) was done before launching the project was done? What?

(Geo) ქონების რეგისტრაციის პროექტის გახორციელებლამდე რაიმე კვლევა

თუ ჩატარდა, რა კვლევა?

▪ (Eng) What literature was used for planning the project? Is there respective literature

available on the use of blockchain in the public service provision and especially what?

How was it incorporated?

(Geo) რა ლიტერატურის გამოყენება მოხდა პროექტის დაგეგმვის

დროს?რაიმე კონკრეტული ლიეტერატურა ლოკჩეინის საჯარო სექტორის

აპლიკაციისთვის თუ არსებობს? როგორ მოხდა ამის გამოყენება პროქტში?

▪ (Eng) What was the experience of the government before making the project? Was

there enough knowledge about the blockchain and its influence of the state service

provision? If YES – lease describe what and how it helped the project? If NO- please

describe then how it affected the project implementation?

(Geo) რა გამოცდილება ჰქონდა მთვარობას პროექტის განხორციელებამდე?

საკმარისი ცოდნა არსებობდა ბლოკჩეინის საჯარო სერვისების მიწოდებაზე

გავლენის შესახებ? თუ კი - აღწერეთ რა გამოცდილება და როგორ დაეხმარა

ეს პროექტს?

▪ (Eng) Were there any facilitating factors for the Georgian land titling project? If YES,

which? If NO then why did the project was put into the agenda?

(Geo) იყო რაიმე კოკრეტული ფაქტორები, რამაც ქონების ამონაწერის

რეფორმა წაახალისა? -თუ კი, რომელი? -თუ არა, რატომ განხორციელდა

მაშინ?

▪ (Eng) What was the goal of the project?

(Geo) რა იყო პროექტის მიზანი?

▪ (Eng) What were the main incentives for the Georgian government for the

implementation of the Blockchain in the public service delivery?

(Geo) რა იყო მთავარი ხელისშემწყობი ფაქტორი ქართული მთავრობისთვის,

რომ ბლოკჩეინი საჯარო სერვისების მიწოდებაში დაენერგათ? მიზანი?

▪ (Eng) What were/are the main constraints for the implementation of the Blockchain in

the public service delivery for Georgia?

(Geo) რა იყო/ არის მთავარი ხელისშემშლელი ფაქტორები ბლოკჩეინის

გამოყენებისთვის საჯარო სერვისების მიწოდებაში?

Step 6 . Questions about the results of the blockchain land titling project

▪ (Eng) What areas of the government were specifically affected by the reform? What

was the major change?

(Geo) მთავრობის რა მიმართულებები შეიცვალა რეფორმის შედეგად? რა იყო

ცვლილებები, რაც მთავრობაში დადგა პროექტის შედეგად?

▪ (Eng) What are achievements of the reform?

(Geo) რა არის რეფორმის მთავარი მიღწევები?

▪ (Eng) What improvement will the the Blockchian technology bring into the public

service delivery in processes of Georgia?

(Geo) როგორ გააუმჯობესებს საქართველოს საჯარო სექტორს აღნიშნული

პროექტი?

Step 7 . Questions about evaluation the project

▪ (Eng) What are the metrics for the project evaluation?

(Geo) პროექტის შესაფასებლად რა საზომების გამოყენება მოხდა?

▪ (Eng) What were the initial expectations regarding project and overall did they meet

with final outcomes?

(Geo) რამდენად მოახერხა პროექტის შედეგებმა წინასწარ დასახულ

მიზნებთან თანხვედრა?

▪ (Eng) How were/ are the needs of the stackeholders addressed? Was there any specific

problem in the agenda?

(Geo) როგორ მოხდა დაინტერესებული მხარეების საჭიროებების შესწავლა

რამდენად იყო პროექტის რეალური განხორციელების საჭიროება? რაიმე

კონკრეტული პრობლემის გადაჭრის საკითხი იდგა დღის წესრიგში?

Step 8 . Questions about the stakeholders

▪ (Eng) Who are the main stackeholders of the project?

(Geo) ვინ არიან პროექტის მთავარი სთეიქჰოლდერები?

▪ (Eng) Why did the country choose cooperation with the private Sector?

(Geo) რატომ გადაწყდა კერძო სექტორთან თანამშრომლობა?

▪ (Eng) What do you think about cooperation with private sector(Bitfury)? Why was the

priate sector chosen for cooperation, pros and cons of it?

(Geo) რას ფიქრობთ Bitfury-თან კოოპერაციაზე?-რატომ გადაწყდა კერძო

სექტორთან თანამშრომლობა, რა დადებითი და უარყოფითი მხარეები

ჰქოდნა ამას?

▪ (Eng) Does the reform address the needs of customers/citizens? What needs exactly?

(Geo) ეხმიანება თუ არა რეფორმა საზოგადოების საჭიროებებს - როგორ,

რომელს?

Step 9 . Questions about the further development of the project

▪ (Eng) Do you see the same technology applied to other areas of public services? If

YES – which ones? If NO – why?

(Geo) როგორ გგონიათ, რამდენად შესაძლებელია, რეალისტურია რომ

მსგავსი ტექნოლოგიის დანერგვა სხვა სერვისების მისაწოდებლადაც

გამოიყენებოდეს?

▪ (Eng) What could be the potential areas, services for the development of the project.?

(Geo) პროექტის განვითარების პოტენიციური მიმართულებები რა არის?

▪ (Eng) Does the reform have the capacity for the cross country collaboration? If NO

why? If YES – which countries? How can this experience shared? In what aspects do

you see this collaboration? Can the project be commercially effective for the country?

(Geo) აქვს თუ არა პროექტს სხვა ქვეყნებთან თანამშრომლობის

პოტენციალი? -თუ კი, რომელ ქვეყნებთან.? -როგორ შეიძლება ამ

თანაშრომლობის გაზიარება? -კონკრეტულად რომელი მიმართულებით

ხედავთ კოლაბორაციის პოტენციალს? შეიძლება კომერციულად მომგებიან

პროექტად მივიჩნიოთ?

Appendix 4 - Thematic Map of All Categories and Codes

Appendix 5 - Individual Codes per Code Categories

01-Metrics for Evaluation the Land Titling Blockchain Project

02-Incentives for Starting the Land Titling Blockchain Project

03-Challenges of the Land Titling Blockchain Project

04-Characteristics of e-Service Provision Systems of Georgia

05-Stackeholders and their Roles in Development of the Blockchain-Based State Services

06-Further Development of the Blockchain Technology into State Services

07-How the Blockchain Solution Works for Land Titles

Appendix 6 - Land Title AS IS model

Link to the AS IS diagram

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dS4KgutBJRKV87R1s0Sh5XWsSOQO7ZN8/view?usp=sha

ring

Appendix 7 - Interview Records

Link to the interview records

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RqrjHdpnHmaPzQKAoURTNJQYJ1HQ1FRB?usp=

sharing

Appendix 8 - Merkle’s Tree for Land Title #892017311858

Appendix 9 - Bitcoin Transaction Tracker for #892017311858

Appendix 10 - Additional Matetrials

Links to all the thesis materials

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14lqY23Ha9QpZHZIeMCeKAQxGDkcI-dti

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Jun 2022

A. V. Nikitin

Purpose: the purpose of this article is to study the current and potential opportunities for using blockchain technology in systems for recording and registering property rights to land. Methods: the work was based on a comprehensive and system analysis, a comparison of international practices for working with blockchain technology, as well as the study and comparison of existing international practices in the subject area under consideration. Results: systems based on blockchain technology can be used in systems for recording and registering rights to land plots, however, they must be adapted to the existing procedure and consider legal requirements. Since an institutional infrastructure is needed to guarantee real estate rights, only the use of closed private or hybrid blockchain technology, administered by employees of a public institution and used by legitimate participants in real estate transactions (e.g., notaries and real estate lawyers) with the provision of proper user identification, can be accepted. into account. These theses are confirmed by practical examples based on the results of the analysis among 12 countries. In states with a high degree of digitalization of rights registration systems, a significant level of involvement of state bodies remains, and a system based on the principles of a private closed blockchain is used as an additional technology that supports existing registration systems. Conclusions and Relevance: blockchain technology can be used as a tool to improve the efficiency of existing land registration systems and increase the security level of ongoing transactions. At the same time, transactions will be transparent, immutable and recoverable. However, taking into account the specifics of registration and transfer of rights, features of legislative and legal norms. It is recommended to continue the discussion of the optimal legal and technical ways to use the opportunities offered by blockchain technology, in accordance with the main functions of accounting and registration systems for land rights.

Blockchain-Based Land Registry Platforms: A Survey on Their Implementation and Potential Challenges

Article

Feb 2022

In recent years it has been demonstrated that the use of the traditional property registry models involves the risk of corruption along with long waiting times. This paper points out the main problems associated with conventional models and makes a survey of the new ones that are based on blockchain technology. This type of model is already being developed as a proof of concept by different countries. With the use of this technology in land registry systems, it is possible to improve the transparency of the processes as well as optimize costs and execution time. To show the theoretical results of this study, the Spanish land registry has been taken as an example of a use case scenario.

استخدام تقنية البلوك تشين في السجل العقاري (الاحتمالات والتحديات) دراسة في القانون الليبي Blockchain

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2021

Esam Alhain

من الجدير بالذكر أن تشهد الأعوام القادمة تغيراً جذرياً في أنماط حياة الأفراد وطرق إدارة الدول والمؤسسات التابعة لها، من النظم التقليدية القديمة إلى الأنظمة التقنية الحديثة. ويضاف إلى هذه التقنيات نظام البلوك تشين القادر على إدارة المعاملات البشرية كافة، خصوصاً في ما يتعلق بالمعاملات الواردة بالسجل العقاري، حيث يُتوقع أن نرى في السنوات القادمة نظاماً رقمياً خاص بالتسجيل العقاري في الدول العربية والغربية وانتهاء النظام التقليدي الورقي المتعارف عليه بالسجل العقاري. كما يُتوقع أن تكتسح "الثورة الذكية" كل المفاهيم والطرق التقليدية التي عرفتها البشرية، وهو ما يتطلب وجود رؤية شاملة لما ستكون عليه حياة الأفراد في الأعوام القادمة، وكيف يمكن التعامل مع التحديات والتهديدات التي تطرحها "الثورة الذكية"، وتحديد الاحتياجات الجديدة للأفراد، حتى لا يقع الإنسان ضحية إنجازاته التقنية والتكنولوجيـــــــــــــــــــــــة.

Integration of Blockchain Technology into a Land Registration System for Immutable Traceability: A Casestudy of Georgia

Chapter

Aug 2019

Land as an immovable property represents an important asset for which such crucial aspects evolve as ownership rights, security of land records, possible disputes, corruption risks and sundry transparency matters of land registry processes. Critical issues are traceability of records, hazards of document forgery as well as vulnerability to various errors. Delivering accountable land registry systems and particularly increasing validity of land titles is vital for present-day governments in terms of suppressing corruption, eliminating red tape, enhancing transparency, improving speed of the stated public service and eradicating risks of possible disputes. Furthermore, integration of the blockchain technology into land registries leads to achieving a disruptive transformation of public-service provision systems. This Georgia focused casestudy-based research ascertains how blockchain technology resolves the issues above concerning contemporary land registry systems and examines determinants for a successful application of the digital novelty. The findings from semi-structured interviews and document studies we analyze and scrutinize the present blockchain model of the Georgian government. Additionally, we provide recommendations for administering the blockchain-based digital solutions present in the public land registry service-provision system.

Survey of Consensus Protocols

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2018

Distributed ledger technology has gained wide popularity and adoption since the emergence of bitcoin in 2008 which is based on proof of work (PoW). It is a distributed, transparent and immutable database of records of all the transactions or events that have been shared and executed among the participants. All the transactions are verified and maintained by multiple nodes across a network without a central authority through a distributed cryptographic mechanism, a consensus protocol. It forms the core of this technology that not only validates the information appended to the ledger but also ensures the order in which it is appended across all the nodes. It is the foundation of its security, accountability and trust. While many researchers are working on improving the current protocol to be quantum resistant, fault-tolerant, and energy-efficient. Others are focused on developing different variants of the protocol, best suited for specific use cases. In this paper, we shall review different consensus protocols of distributed ledger technologies and their implementations. We shall also review their properties, concept and similar-work followed by a brief analysis.

Controlling corruption through e-governance: Case evidence from Bangladesh (U4 BRIEF)

Technical Report

Full-text available

May 2015

Hasan Muhammad Baniamin

E-governance is gaining popularity as a tool for improved public service delivery in developing countries. It is often argued e-governance reduces corruption risks through improving monitoring of public officials and by reducing the need for citizen interaction with gatekeepers for key services. Recent case evidence from Bangladesh shows that merely introducing e-governance is insufficient for controlling corruption. The nature and maturity of e-governance matters. Although e-governance can potentially improve monitoring of public services, whether it does depends on the effectiveness of related law enforcement efforts, among other factors.

Digitalization of Land Records: From Paper to Blockchain

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Dec 2018

This research in progress discusses two country use cases of land record modernization by adopting blockchain technology. Through the cases in Honduras and Georgia, we examine how socio-political and technical issues influence the IS readiness of public organizations when adopting an emerging technology. While both countries partnered with private firms to gain expertise in blockchain, one case was less successful than the other. In Honduras, the lack of a comprehensive country-wide land registry with valid and complete land records, as well as political resistance to changing the status quo, put a stop to the blockchain project. In contrast, a strong public private partnership with political buy-in, along with more modern and reliable digital land records, facilitated the adoption of blockchain for land registry in Georgia. The analysis of these two cases helps to identify enabling and constraining factors related to the digitalization of public records and the adoption of land-registry blockchain initiatives. While these projects do not rely on invention of new technology they do require process redesign and technological readiness. As these two cases show, the combination of socio-political factors with technology-related factors such as infrastructure and readiness create the conditions for the success or failure of advanced digitalization initiatives.

Blockchain challenges and opportunities: A survey

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2018

Blockchain has numerous benefits such as decentralisation, persistency, anonymity and auditability. There is a wide spectrum of blockchain applications ranging from cryptocurrency, financial services, risk management, internet of things (IoT) to public and social services. Although a number of studies focus on using the blockchain technology in various application aspects, there is no comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology in both technological and application perspectives. To fill this gap, we conduct a comprehensive survey on the blockchain technology. In particular, this paper gives the blockchain taxonomy, introduces typical blockchain consensus algorithms, reviews blockchain applications and discusses technical challenges as well as recent advances in tackling the challenges. Moreover, this paper also points out the future directions in the blockchain technology.

Blockchain Characteristics and Consensus in Modern Business Processes

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2018

Blockchain technology has attracted a great deal of attentions as an effective way to innovate business processes. It has to be integrated with other Business Process Management system (BPM) components to implement specified functionalities related to the applications. The current efforts in integrating this technology into BPM are at a very early stage. To apply Blockchain into business processes efficiently, Blockchain and business process characteristics must be identified. Inconsistency of confirmation settlement that heavily relies on the implementation of consensus protocol poses a major challenge in business process operations, especially ones that are time-critical. In addition, validators, nodes responsible for performing consensus operations in a Blockchain system, can introduce bias and as a result are not trustable. This paper first defines Blockchain and also investigates the characteristics of Blockchain and business processes. Then, we suggest an architecture of business processes in Blockchain era to overcome the problems of time inconsistency and consensus bias. The architecture provides persistency, validity, auditability, and disintermediary that Blockchain offers. The architecture also provides flexibility by allowing business partner to select nodes in performing consensus; thus bias is mitigated.

Blockchain applications in government

Conference Paper

Full-text available

May 2018

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.

Anticipating the Economic Benefits of Blockchain

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2017

Melanie Swan

In this general overview article intended for non-experts, I define blockchain technology and some of the key concepts, and then I elaborate four specific applications that highlight the potential economic benefits of digital ledgers. These applications are digital asset registries, blockchains as leapfrog technology for global financial inclusion, long-tail personalized economic services, and net settlement payment channels. I also highlight key challenges that offset the potential economic benefits of blockchain distributed ledgers, while arguing that the benefits would outweigh the potential risks. The overarching theme is that an increasing amount of everyday operations involving money, assets, and documents could start to be conducted via blockchain-based distributed network ledgers with cryptographic security, and at more granular levels of detail. One economic implication of widespread blockchain adoption is that the institutional structure of society could shift to one that is computationally-based and thus has a diminished need for human-operated brick-and-mortar institutions.

Design of Land Administration and Title Registration Model Based on Blockchain Technology

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2017

Land administration and title registration system is the system for storing land title information and managing transactions involving land titles. Due to the sensitivity of land issues, land administration and title registration system should be strong to avoid any document forgery, available all the time, and take a short time to complete tasks. Thus, this study aims at designing a model for such system based on blockchain technology. The proposed model is designed using UML diagrams and then tested for verification using statistical usage models (Markov chains). The proposed model integrates the Integrated Land Management Information System (ILMIS) with factom and bitcoin blockchains which enables encryption of information from ILMIS to get the fingerprint information of each land title and store it to the blockchains. The model further encrypts the land information from ILMIS when needed and then compare it with fingerprints from blockchains for verification. Such implementation of the proposed model will help ILMIS to have the capability of providing tamper proof for stored data, providing the self-notarization mechanism, and availability of evidence for the land title from distributed databases. Furthermore, the society is expected to benefit from this study as the time and cost for registering land title will decrease and the possibilities of a piece of land having more than one owner will not be there.

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

Article

Oct 2017
GOV INFORM Q

Blockchain Technology as a Support Infrastructure in e-Government

Conference Paper

Sep 2017
Lect Notes Comput Sci

The blockchain technology, including Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, has been adopted in many application areas during recent years. However, the main attention has been on the currency and not so much on the underlying blockchain technology, including peer-to-peer networking, security and consensus mechanisms. This paper argues that we need to look beyond the currency applications and investigate the potential use of the blockchain technology in governmental tasks such as digital ID management and secure document handling. The paper discusses the use of blockchain technology as a platform for various applications in e-Govern-ment and furthermore as an emerging support infrastructure by showing that blockchain technol-ogy demonstrates a potential for authenticating many types of persistent documents.

INTEGRATION OF THE BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY INTO THE LAND REGISTRATION SYSTEM. A CASE STUDY OF GEORGIA

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