The UK's chief scientific adviser Mark Walport says that blockchains—the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin—could be used by the government as “a more secure way of managing data." Walport yesterday published a report explaining that blockchain tech could assist in collecting taxes, delivering benefits, issuing passports, recording land registries, assuring the supply chain of goods, and generally ensuring the integrity of government records and services.

The reasoning for his suggestion stems from a variety of factors, including the fact that data management in the government typically involves “large centralised systems with a ‘high cost single point of failure.’” Additionally, Walport believes that the existing approach is more susceptible to hacking or errors.

It makes sense to some extent. Proponents regard blockchain technology as highly tamper-proof because transactions are permanently recorded within a decentralised ledger and can neither be deleted nor altered. But that doesn’t mean that malicious parties cannot negatively affect a ledger. It’s theoretically possible, for example, to introduce malware to a blockchain, as demonstrated by Kaspersky researchers during the Black Hat Asia 2015 conference.

Having said that, Walport isn’t the first to consider repurposing blockchain technology. Last year, nine of the world’s largest financial institutions partnered with FinTech company R3 to begin developing distributed ledger technologies, and to create consistent standards to encourage adoption. Barclays in the UK, which is the first major bank to accept Bitcoin, has also been working with various startups to experiment with the technology.