Blockchain Revolution

Pegging Smart Social Contracts to Political Reputations
Just as the bitcoin network uses blockchain technology to constantly ensure the
integrity of payments, government networks can use blockchains to ensure the
integrity of their transactions, records, and important decisions. Officials can’t hide
“off the book” payments or other government records, including e-mail records,
decision logs, and databases. Whereas security often derives from fences, walls, or a
perimeter of protection, the blockchain protects against tampering from both inside
and outside. Therefore, it keeps “honest people honest.”
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Transparency is crucial for changing the behavior of an institution. While we of
course cannot force these values and behaviors on our public representatives, we can
limit their decisions and actions through smart contracts that define their roles and
responsibilities as our representatives and then monitor and measure them on the
blockchain.
Remember, smart contracts are self-executing agreements stored on the
blockchain, which nobody controls and therefore everyone can trust. Political factions
such as the Grand Old Party could use them so that candidates like Donald Trump
who use their party infrastructure to debate and campaign during primaries couldn’t
run as independents in a general election. We could apply smart contracts to different
government operations (supply chain, external legal services, pay-for-success
contracts) and even more complex roles of government and our elected
representatives. We do foresee peer-to-peer networks tracking an elected official’s
commitments and his or her fulfillment of these commitments. Watchdogs already do
this through formal and informal peer networks on the Web.

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While this approach could not apply to everything we expect from our political
leaders, we could use it for all manner of specific commitments and actions. While
measurement of eventual outcomes will be more of a challenge (e.g., results achieved
with money spent), over time we will build experience and expertise with indicators
so that we base our assessments on facts rather than current spin. This is not pie in the
sky—in London, a candidate in the 2016 mayoralty campaign is calling already for
the use of the blockchain to hold elected officials accountable for public business.
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Regulators could implement blockchain processes as a verifiable means to track
the commitments of regulated industries in real time, assessing whether they are
following through on promises made (e.g., investments in sustainable energy) or
complying with regulated practices (e.g., on-time delivery, safety targets). While
publication of key performance indicators and results on public Web sites is
increasingly common, the blockchain would enable these processes to be automated
and guaranteed accurate when applied to measurable results.
The data generated by these processes ensure that the public is constantly aware
of who is behaving with integrity. How often did he show up at meetings? How did he
vote? Did he abide by his commitments to do such-and-such? Who donated to her
political campaign? Who violated the terms of her smart contract? Elected officials
and those regulated must honor their commitments or explain why they haven’t. It
also provides feedback to the electorate on whether their demands as constituents are
reasonable and fair, not reactionary. Voters often want more services but lower taxes,
or more factories but not in their backyard, or lower prices but higher wages. As such,
open data provides a means of understanding trade-offs and increasing the
accountability of all participants.