Blockchain and Internet of Things (BIoT) in Smart Government—Impact Analysis
Marian Stoica, Marinela Mircea · IEEE Access · 2025
Smart information and communications technology and its extensive use usher significant changes in all spheres of society. As a result, there emerge new business models, new organisational and management forms, as well as new demands, both in the private and the public sectors. As far as the developments in the administrative paradigm are concerned, increasingly more governments are making efforts to move from e-government to smart government. The Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, artificial intelligence are the technologies which enable smart government and make it possible to develop and provide smart services to citizens, organisations and public agencies in a variety of fields. Taking into account the current incipient stage of blockchain and IoT (BIoT) adoption and of the transition to smart government, our study focuses on the identification of the main characteristics of smart government, as well as on the main benefits and challenges related to BIoT in e-government. Moreover, in order to capture the impact of BIoT on e-government, the study proposes a conceptual model in which we define and describe a set of hypotheses on how the BIoT adoption in e-government will impact: 1) the government provision of public services to the citizens (G2C), 2) to the business environment (G2B) and 3) the intergovernmental processes and relations (G2G). The proposed model relies on the current stage of research and is validated through the data collected from a Romanian survey. The study uses the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM model) in order to test and analyse the impact of the identified variables on the use the BIoT based public services. The results indicate that the use of BIoT may contribute to delivering higher quality public services. Furthermore, our paper also lists the main recommendations that may step up the transition to smart government.