India’s use case of digital public goods phenomenal, applicable globally

Subject: Science and Technology

Context:

Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella lauded India’s strides in the adoption and work with digital public goods and termed it to be “phenomenal”.

What is Digital public good?

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.

Origin:
- Use of the term “digital public good” appears as early as April 2017, when Nicholas Gruen wrote Building the Public Goods of the Twenty-First Century, and has gained popularity with the growing recognition of the potential for new technologies to be implemented at a national scale to better service delivery to citizens.
A digital public good is defined by the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, as: “open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the SDGs.
Digital technologies have also been identified by countries, NGOs and private sector entities as a means to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This translation of public goods onto digital platforms has resulted in the use of the term “digital public goods”.
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.
Example of DPGs in India: Aadhar, UPI, account aggregator system, ONDC, Open AI protocols, India stack, etc.

Why is it called a public good?

Digital public goods share some traits with public goods including non-rivalry and non-excludability.

How is it different from physical public good?

Most physical resources exist in limited supply.
When a resource is removed and used, the supply becomes scarce or depleted. Scarcity can result in competing rivalry for the resource.
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.
Digital public goods can be infinitely stored, copied, and distributed without becoming depleted, and at close to zero cost.
Abundance rather than scarcity is an inherent characteristic of digital resources in the digital commons.

Usage of DPGs:

A public good 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).
Extending this definition to global public goods, they become goods with benefits that extend to all countries, people, and generations and are available across national borders everywhere. Knowledge and information goods embody global public goods when provided for free.
The online world provides a great medium for the provision of global public goods, where they become global digital public goods.
Once produced in their digital form, global public goods are essentially costless to replicate and make available to all, under the assumption that users have Internet connectivity to access these goods.
Examples:
- Wikipedia
- DHIS2, an open source health management system.
- Free and open-source software (FOSS), Since FOSS is licensed to allow it to be shared freely, modified and redistributed, it is available as a digital public good.
- Open educational resources, which by their copyright are allowed to be freely re-used, revised and shared.

Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA):

In mid-2019 the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation published The Age of Digital Interdependence.
In response, in late 2019 the Governments of Norway and Sierra Leone, UNICEF and iSPIRT formally initiated the Digital Public Goods Alliance as a follow-up on the High-level Panel.
The subsequent UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, published in June 2020, mentions the Digital Public Goods Alliance specifically as “a multi-stake-holder initiative responding directly to the lack of a “go to” platform, as highlighted by the Panel in its report.”
The report further highlights digital public goods as essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in low- and middle-income countries and calls on all stakeholders, including the UN to assist in their development and implementation.

India Stake:

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 evangelisation of these APIs and systems.

The four distinct technology layers provided are:

Presenceless layer: Where a universal biometric digital identity allows people to participate in any service from anywhere in the country.
Paperless layer: Where digital records move with an individual’s digital identity, eliminating the need for massive amount of paper collection and storage.
Cashless layer: Where a single interface to all the country’s bank accounts and wallets to democratize payments.
Consent layer: Which allows data to move freely and securely to democratize the market for data.

APIs included in India Stack:

The following APIs are also considered to be societal platforms built on similar principles like India Stack:

GSTN – The Goods and Services Tax Network
BBPS – The Bharat Bill Payment System
ETC – Electronic Toll Collection (known under the brand FASTag)
Utility
Citizens: Brings millions of Indians into the formal economy by reducing friction.
Software ecosystem: Fosters innovation to build products for financial Inclusion, healthcare & educational services at scale.
Government: Brings a paradigm shift in the way government services are delivered in a transparent, accountable and leakage free model.