Developing a blockchain network for efficient public-private partnership projects implementation in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Over the past decades, the demand for infrastructure has increased exponentially to cater to the public's needs. In contrast, the public funds to develop them remain the same. This led to the inception of public-private partnerships (PPPs), in which private and public sectors enter into partnerships to cater to infrastructure needs. However, PPPs globally suffer from issues like poor coordination, lack of transparency and accountability, lack of trust and confidence, and societal discontent. The inception of blockchain is often dubbed as the next disrupter of Information Technology. It is a decentralized database that chronologically and securely records transactions, utilizing avant-garde cryptography. A preliminary review of blockchain reveals that it has several key features like decentralization, persistence, anonymity, security, veracity etc. A closer look at these features of blockchain reveals that several barriers to PPPs, such as lack of trust, transparency and accountability, could be directly addressed by integrating blockchain due to its key features like decentralization, transparency, and auditability. Based on this, this study intends to explore how blockchain integration would contribute to the success of PPPs and how they could be integrated with the PPP processes and develop a blockchain network to be used in PPPs, with the Sri Lankan PPP sector as its context. Accordingly, it was identified that integrating blockchain has the potential to address corruption, lack of transparency and accountability in procurement, evaluate unsolicited proposals, and communicate feasibility studies of Sri Lankan PPPs. Finally, based on the above findings, a private blockchain is developed using the HyperLedger Fabric platform to be integrated into the evaluation and approval processes of Sri Lankan unsolicited proposals. The functionality of blockchain has also enhanced communication among the relevant stakeholders while effectively addressing corruption issues, lack of transparency and accountability in the Sri Lankan PPP sector.