NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Theme : Government Policies ; Cyber Security
Paper:GS-2 and GS-3
Digitization initiatives in India and the work with digital public goods have been extraordinary, said Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella.
TABLE OF CONTENT
- Context
- Digital Public Goods (DPGs)
- How are they different from Physical Public Goods
- DPGs in India
- India Stack
- Need of DPGs
- Road Ahead
Context : Digitization initiatives in India and the work with digital public goods have been extraordinary, said Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella.
Digital Public Goods (DPGs) :
- Digital public goods are public goods in the form of software, data sets, AI models, standards or content that are generally free cultural works and contribute to sustainable national and international digital development.
- Several international agencies, including UNICEF and UNDP, are exploring DPGs as a possible solution to address the issue of digital inclusion, particularly for children in emerging economies.
How are they different from Physical Public Goods :
- Abundance: The nondepletable, nonexclusive, and nonrivalrous nature of digital public goods means the rules and norms for managing them can be different from how physical public goods are managed.
- Everlasting: DPGs can be infinitely stored, copied, and distributed without becoming depleted, and at close to zero cost.
- Inclusiveness: DPG is a good that is both non-excludable (no one can be prevented from consuming this good) and non-rivalrous (the consumption of this good by anyone does not reduce the quantity available to others).
DPGs in India :
- Aadhaar: Built on the foundation of Aadhaar and India Stack, modular applications, big and small, are transforming the way we make payments, withdraw our PF, get our passport and driving license and check land records, to name just a few activities.
- Unified Payment Interface (UPI): To give an example, consider the surge in UPI-based payments in India. This kind of growth doesn’t happen with a few entitled and privileged people using UPI more and more; it happens with more and more people using UPI more and more.
- DIKSHA Portal: The use of DIKSHA, the school education platform built on the open-source platform Sunbird, has followed the same trajectory — today close to 500 million schoolchildren are using it.
India Stack :
- India Stack is a set of (application programming interface) APIs that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilize a unique digital Infrastructure to solve India’s hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery.
- The Open API team at iSPIRT has been a pro-bono partner in the development, evolution, and evangelization of these APIs and systems.
Need of DPGs :
- Cost Effectiveness: The cost of setting up an open source-based educational infrastructure, to supplement the physical infrastructure, for an entire country is less than laying two kilometers of high-quality road.
- Lower investment required: The investments required for transporting digital public goods are minuscule in comparison and there is no chance of a debt trap. Also, the code (platform) is highly reusable.
- Instantly visible outcomes: Unlike physical infrastructure such as ports and roads, digital public goods have short gestation periods and immediate, visible impact and benefits.
- Faster service delivery: Processes get streamlined and wait times for any service come down dramatically. Issuances of passports, PAN cards and driving licenses are such examples.
- Plugging the leakages: It eliminates ghost beneficiaries of government services, removes touts collecting rent, creates an audit trail, makes the individual-government-market interface transparent and provides efficiencies that help recoup the investments quickly.
- Wider outreach: Productivity goes up and services can be scaled quickly. Benefits can be rapidly extended to cover a much larger portion of the population.
Road Ahead :
- Data localization: India needs to ensure that digital goods diplomacy doesn’t become an exercise to gather data and provisions must be made for data localization.
- Training of Individuals: Individuals across the countries need to be trained in cyber security for successful digital goods diplomacy. A lead can be taken up by CERT-In.
- No Authoritative nature: India needs to ensure that data with the state doesn’t lead to authoritarianism in these countries. Decentralized and distributed storage using Blockchain technology can be used by India.
- Ensuring Inclusivity: Digital ecosystems should be guided by factors of availability, accessibility, affordability, value and trust.
- Citizen-Centralism: There is a need to ensure the design is citizen-centric and ensures inclusive access to services at the last mile will help drive adoption and sustain these ecosystems.
- Data privacy robustness: Designing privacy-protection and secure databases are critical. It is, therefore, imperative that regulations governing any digital initiative must take into account provisions of the Personal Data Protection Bill.
FAQs :
-
What are DPGs?
ANS.
- Digital public goods are public goods in the form of software, data sets, AI models, standards or content that are generally free cultural works and contribute to sustainable national and international digital development.
- Several international agencies, including UNICEF and UNDP, are exploring DPGs as a possible solution to address the issue of digital inclusion, particularly for children in emerging economies.
-
What is IndiaStack?
ANS.
- India Stack is a set of (application programming interface) APIs that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilize a unique digital Infrastructure to solve India’s hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery.
- The Open API team at iSPIRT has been a pro-bono partner in the development, evolution, and evangelization of these APIs and systems.