The Bank of England announced that it would explore Distributed Ledger Technology for settlements. On the heel of this announcement the UK Government Office for Science published a document called “Distributed Ledger Technology Beyond Block Chain.”
Applications in government distributed ledger technology is already having a profound impact on how private companies manage data and interact with customers and suppliers. If applied within government it could reduce costs, increase transparency, improve citizens’ financial inclusion and promote innovation and economic growth.
The paper concludes that distributed ledgers undoubtedly hold value for government, offering new ways of operating that reduce fraud, error and the costs of delivering services to underserved users. At the same time, these technologies offer new forms of innovation and the ability to reduce transaction costs for SMEs in the UK. This chapter has highlighted only some of the possible use cases. As distributed ledgers are adopted more widely, it is likely that a new form of operating government services will emerge.
The document can be downloaded from the following source: UK Government
