# Blockchain Technology and Its Potential to Benefit Public Services Provision: A Short Survey
## 5 Applications
### Social Welfare and Social Protection Processes  
In a modern society characterized by social inequalities, social welfare and social protection play a fundamental role. Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, they have different meanings. Social welfare refers to the overall well-being of individuals in a society and includes all services aimed at helping those in need, whereas social protection focuses on helping those who are vulnerable and facing critical risks such as poverty, unemployment, and illnesses. As mentioned in [19], in terms of social protection, blockchain could be leveraged to disintermediate governmental transfers to citizens, transforming the way social policy is implemented thanks to its security and transparency in handling transfers [35]. Ref. [26], which explores Estonia's blockchain project in general, focuses on organizations from the social welfare and healthcare sector in particular. For example, the Health Insurance Fund, an organization responsible for the provision of health insurance, benefits, and digital prescriptions, is planning to expand its platform with e-consultation services and nationwide databases, relying on distinctive blockchain features to enhance accountability and reduce costs. Thanks to improvements in traceability enabled by blockchain, each health item could be marked with a code which would be used to verify its authenticity and composition [36]. The Unemployment Insurance Fund is likely to experience similar advantages thanks to the adoption of technology. Several European countries have started conducting experiments regarding the implementation of blockchain in this area. For example, Ref. [64] mentions that the German Office for Refugees proposed a blockchain-based solution aimed at simplifying the asylum process by making public authorities issue digital certificates whose authenticity and integrity can be easily verified [66].  
Initiatives can also be found at the local level. In Northern Italy, the municipality of Cinisello Balsamo, as explained in [59], was among the first in the European Union to adopt blockchain to simplify administrative procedures. Its \"free nursery\" trial measure was aimed at simplifying access to the calls, cutting administrative steps, and relying on blockchain technology to verify eligibility thanks to digital certificates stored in one's digital wallet. Chieti, a city in Central Italy, is another virtuous example that is worth mentioning. As reported in [33], the municipality experimented with blockchain for the registration of practices such as maternity allowance, access to home care services for the disabled and the elderly, access to transportation services for the disabled, and applications for obtaining home educational assistance for people with sensory disabilities, all practices of great social relevance whose transparency and security are a key priority for citizens. The authors in [31], in collaboration with the Danish Syddjurs municipality, implemented a prototype for a specific social benefit process (compensation for earnings lost due to the caring of a child with a long-term illness) as an Ethereum-based smart contract that acts as an intermediary between the citizen, the municipal government caseworker, and the Appeals Board. The proposed system consists of a back-end of smart contracts written in Solidity, a front-end of web apps that communicate with the blockchain through the MetaMask library and a local database for the municipal government. As sensitive data are involved in the process, the system only stores a hash of the information, whereas a full copy is stored locally by the municipality.  
Finally, blockchain-based technologies such as the Metaverse find applications in the social welfare context, as evidenced in both [43; 49] concerning healthcare provision.