Blockchain can prevent corruption and improve transparency –
The UN highlights the need to fight corruption, as reflected in SDG 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions, where they emphasize that one of the areas most affected on a global scale is the judiciary. The worsening of the perception of this problem is evident in Spain, as indicated by the Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International in 2022. These actions not only generate large economic costs, they also undermine the functions of state institutions, public administrations and the private sector and constitute an attack on coexistence and democracy.
Can Blockchain Technology Prevent Corruption?
Blockchain technology is a shared, decentralized, immutable and transparent database. Due to its characteristics, it is able to solve confidentiality problems and store data over time while ensuring traceability that cannot be changed. And it is ideal for implementation in outdated financial and administrative systems which has poor IT security.
Blockchain technology can therefore prevent corruption by providing digital records that cannot be changed. As published by the World Compliance Association, Spain is a global benchmark in the development of Blockchain, highlighting the relationship between the crypto and financial sectors and the use that the university sector makes of it for the validation of academic degrees.
Countries such as Colombia and Peru have also witnessed this positive results of how this technology can prevent corruption. For example, in Medellín a program has been developed to monitor the selection and procurement processes of suppliers for a school food programme, while a public procurement project has been carried out in Peru. In Spain, educational centers such as ISDI and the Carlos III University of Madrid are validating their degrees with Blockchain.
It can undoubtedly become an effective tool capable of quickly providing transparency, trust and verifiability thanks to the digitization of the public and private spheres.
Control of projects and data security
Blockchain ensures that each validated annotation is immutable and stored permanently and publicly, which means that no one can delete or change a record, as it functions precisely as a link in a chain. If it is modified, the chain breaks.
It also provides an opportunity to enforce contracts and even election manifestos, thanks to the smart contracts that are becoming increasingly prevalent in the corporate and legal spheres. These contracts are executed automatically as the agreed conditions are fulfilled, without the possibility of interpretation. This can be very attractive, for example in public tenders, as it provides full transparency and allows full monitoring through public procurement processes and other types of projects.
Within this context, it is easier to create communities that others can trust without intermediate institutions, as the data is transferred and records are produced using smart contracts.
With Blockchain, every transaction is recorded and controlled through the traceability it can offer. In this connection, more secure procurement is possible, the number of people involved can be reduced and costs can be tracked. As a result, diversion of money and manipulation of funds is prevented, and the proper execution of financial resources in public and private organizations is constantly monitored.
Due to its distinctive feature as a decentralized network protected by cryptographic language, it guarantees high levels of cyber security by preserving all information stored. If the data is stored on a traditional computer network, cyber attacks occur and access to the data are more likely to occur.
The future of electoral processes
Several governments are already considering the future use of Blockchain platforms in sensitive areas such as electoral processes, as the use of Blockchain can prevent corruption in these procedures and make them fully transparent, thereby strengthening their democracies.
For this purpose, systems are envisaged where each individual citizen will be assigned an NFT to exercise their right to vote with, which enables verification of each individual. This method will maintain the privacy of their votes and the transparency of the processes, as they can be reliably audited.
Digitization provides options such as Blockchain to prevent corruption and combat manipulation of resources and lack of transparency in public and private environments.
