That's the right argument for the wrong customer. The end user is supposed to trust the government to act as one - that's the point. But a government is always

That's the right argument for the wrong customer. The end user is supposed to trust the government to act as one - that's the point. But a government is always in a state of partial synchronization with respect to record-keeping. That's why there are delays and loopholes in the system. And the naive answer of "just trust the one database bro" immediately creates gridlock: for the number of services that government provides, all pragmatic answers instantly turn into Byzantine General negotiations: who hosts the servers, who gets access, what kind of access do they get, whomever has the most stringent uptime and disclosure requirements will push the others into adopting the same, and so on... On the other hand, if you say "it's append-only and distributed at the top level and every agency can put what they want on top of that, add new nodes at will, etc.", you have a blockchain. It redefines the desynchronization problem in a way that narrows the scope of the technical/political crossover. Negotiations still take place, unnecessary duplication and desynchronization still happens, but basic issues around where the global source of truth "is" are no longer a factor. I don't think the effort described is even a perfect match for the tech, but it's the kind of "wrong in the right direction" needed to move forward in studying the issue.