Aligning Stakeholder Interests, Governance Requirements and Blockchain Design in Business and Government Information Sharing

Abstract

Governance requirements for systems supporting information sharing between businesses and government organisations (B&G) are determined by a high variety of stakeholders with often conflicting interests. These conflicting interests can hamper the introduction and scaling-up of ICT-innovations that change their roles and authorities. We address one such innovation: the introduction of blockchain technologies in the B&G context. Who can govern data and the system depends on several elements of the design of a blockchain-based system, particularly the data structure, consensus mechanism and network topology. Design choices regarding these elements affect who can make decisions and hence we call them blockchain control points. These control points require an explicit and well-understood relationship between the design decisions and the interests of stakeholders. Yet, the literature on blockchain technology and governance does not offer such insight. Therefore, we developed a framework to assess the alignment between stakeholders interest and blockchain design choices. This framework consists of three views and their interrelationships, 1) a stakeholder view providing insight into the tensions between stakeholder’s interests and governance requirements, 2), a governance view on the rights concerning the data and the system, and 3) a blockchain control view describing how design decisions on the control points affect whether governance requirements are met and how parties can exercise their rights. Making these links explicit enables an understanding of how technical design choices can trigger organizational dynamics from the stakeholder view and vice versa. Based on the framework we formulate a research agenda concerning blockchain design choices and governance.