Prototyping a Smart Contract Based Public Procurement to Fight Corruption

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper "Prototyping a Smart Contract based Public Procurement to fight Corruption" presents a conceptual framework for a blockchain based solution aiming to reduce fraud in public procurement.

While the subject is very interesting, it is the reviewer's opinion that the paper lacks the appropriate research design, methodology and presentation of the results. The implementation details are not clearly presented and the results do not emphasize the contributions of the authors or the level of novelty in the paper.

The authors should present the algorithms used for the selected phases of the procurement process and also indicate what are the other phases where this framework can be extended. In the present form, only one algorithm is briefly presented (Smart Contract 1 – Place Bid).

In sections 4-6, the authors list a set of requirements for which blockchain might be a suitable solution, but there is no discussion about the consensus mechanism employed on the blockchain network and its impact on the overall security of the proposed framework.

Section 5 provides a discussion about the requirements and limitation of the proposed solution. It is the reviewer's opinion that it would be better suited after section 6 where some implementation details are presented.

Section 5 introduces the term "oracle" and the need for such an entity for the first time in the paper, but the concept is not defined and their role is not properly highlighted. The reviewer feels that section 4 should be expanded to include consensus methods and other concepts required for the implementation.

The actual implementation is at a very early stage and the authors should expand on the differences between running the application on a public chain (with all the unpredictable costs involved) or on a permissioned chain (where the application can benefit from a more appropriate consensus method).

The reviewer feels the need for a clarification regarding the student work used in the development of the prototype and the possible copyright issues. It is not clear from the paper what are the authors contributions in the development of the prototype and the actual current stage of the implementation.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

We addressed the requested improvements as follows:

• We added a section with a description of the research design and motivated our approach.
• We added more details on the implementation by adding further pseudo-code of smart contract functions. In addition, we added the reference to the availability of the source code of the prototype. We decided against reproducing the source code in the paper, as this would have gone beyond the scope of the paper. However, the source code can be viewed at the link provided.
• Due to the in-depth description of the implementation and the further references, we decided to include the students as co-authors in the publication. They also reviewed the corresponding sections.
• We added a discussion on the consensus algorithm and its impact on the solution.
• We changed the structure of the sections.
• We explained the term “oracle” and its impact on the solution.
• We detailed the differences between a public (permissionless) and private (permissioned) blockchain and explained the impact of the chosen blockchain design on the solution.
• We detailed the current stage of the implementation. This can also be traced by the source code.
• Since the reviewers requested more details on the prototype, we included the students from the prototype project in the authorship. They also contributed to the section with design and implementation.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I am giving here my comments to further improve the manuscript. This paper proposed blockchain based smart contract solution to mitigate the corruption in public procurement. It is an interesting approach to use Ethereum network with the combination of Node-RED. However, there are some details missing which should be included. First of all the prototype implementation section should be included under the proposed section. The authors included the Node-RED prototype diagram but didn't include the details/explanation of this diagram in this section. You are proposing smart contract based system. But again details are missing on how different smart contract have been designed and the interaction between these contracts. You need to include more details in the implementation section not only the platforms you are using. Please explain how did you design these contracts.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

We addressed the requested improvements as follows:

• We added more details on the implementation by adding further pseudo-code of smart contract functions. In addition, we added the reference to the availability of the source code of the prototype. We decided against reproducing the source code in the paper, as this would have gone beyond the scope of the paper. However, the source code can be viewed at the link provided.
• We do not want to go into the details in the pictures as this is purely for illustration. Therefore, the nodes are not shown in detail.
• The source code of the prototype is integrated into one smart contract covering all functions. It can be split for a further version. The design will be revised together with the selection of the blockchain for a practical test.
• The aim of the prototype is to prove the feasibility of the approach. It should be tested whether the concept stands up to the practical implementation. The prototype was also used for discussion with experts.

Reviewer 3 Report

1. The paper is poorly written, and I feel hard to follow. 
2. I think authors should carefully read the paper again and should improve the overall presentation.
3. Figures are blurred.
4. Authors have not provided any code for implementation. It can be uploaded to Github.
5. Outline of the paper should be removed from the Abstract. The abstract should be concise. 
6. Novelty of the paper is low.  
    

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

We addressed the requested improvements as follows:

• We revised the Figures. The Node-RED Figure is for illustration only and not intended to show node details. We added a picture of a section of the user interface.
• We added more details on the implementation by adding further pseudo-code of smart contract functions. In addition, we added the reference to the availability of the source code of the prototype. We decided against reproducing the source code in the paper, as this would have gone beyond the scope of the paper. However, the source code can be viewed at the link provided.
• We removed the outline from the abstract.
• We reviewed the paper and changed the overall flow and presentation to make it clearer.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for incorporating the requested clarifications

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for addressing the reviewer comments. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors improved the paper to some extent but not actually. Some highlights are showing same contents that was in previous version and figures are still blurred. I think authors can focus more on presentation before submitting final paper.