Blockchain technology – a case of county assets management in Kenya

Abstract

Integrity of database content is not absolute and cannot be guaranteed under the traditional database management technologies leaving it vulnerable to violation of data integrity requirements. This is so especially where the log files are easily accessible to a single entity who may be a malicious database administrator or an authorized third party. Currently, there is deficiency in fool-proof models and architectures that may guarantee accountability, integrity and traceability of user actions in database systems. Various surveys have been conducted in the past exposing quite a number of data integrity breaches in a public sector on management of public assets. In line with these findings, the objective of the study was to model an immutable peer to peer publicly accessible and distributed resource ledger to mimic consensus management of assets based on the innovative blockchain technology. Surveys were conducted to give further insight into the current asset management systems, and the results integrated into the development of a private-public key cryptosystem - the underlying technology for blockchain as a basis for resource management. An experiment was setup targeting County Government asset management in Kenya in view of assessing applicability of the blockchain technology through validation and verification procedures of various transactions. The generated results indicated that the framework met the three requirements of verifiability, validity and consensus in resource management; and is therefore applicable in resource management applications where data integrity is key such as managing County Government assets.