Building Digital Trust to Protect Whistleblowers - A blockchain-based Reporting Channel

Abstract

Organizations today need internal reporting channels to report illegal/unethical misconduct. For this purpose, organizations set up one or more - often digital - internal reporting channels. Persons/Employees who want to report misconduct, so-called whistleblowers, expose themselves to reprisals and therefore need trustworthy reporting channels which ensure ´Digital Trust´. Blockchain, a technology that overcomes the need for trust due to its properties of immutability and integrity of data, could be promising as underlying technology for a digital reporting channel which is recognized as trustworthy. In our research, we explored multiple perspectives relevant to a trustworthy digital reporting system. Applying design science research, we evaluated the current state of the art of (digital) reporting channels and developed a prototypical blockchain-based reporting solution called “Integrity@Inside”. The prototype is being iteratively demonstrated and pre-evaluated.