IndiaStack: Government as a Platform
Reflecting on my key learnings in digital government
Introduction
As someone who feels intimidated by the world of technology, I have really been pushed and challenged by the key theories, concepts, and tools presented in this class. Even though I am still barely scratching the surface of digital government, I feel that, slowly but surely, I am making progress in grasping some of the key concepts that will define the future of governance. As an aspiring elected representative in Indian politics, my hope from DPI662 is to equip myself with the language, tools, and frameworks of digital government, in order for me to be an active and productive stakeholder in the public service delivery process.
Digital government, for me, is about learning the art and science of technology deployment in improving the efficiency and scalability of public service delivery. As such, in this blog post, I wish to deconstruct and discuss the concept of Government-as-a-Platform (GaaP) map and critically evaluate the implementation of IndiaStack as a platform in India.
Interpreting Government-as-a-Platform
GaaP, to my understanding, is a digital infrastructure — with a certain set of rules — provided by a government as an ecosystem of APIs, components, etc. in order for several players including citizens, corporations, non-profits, and government actors to access the realm of delivering service, convenience, and function. It allows the government to ‘do more for less’ by sharing data, software, and services (Margetts and Naumann, 2017). In the words of its chief architect, Tim O’Reilly (2010), it is ‘government stripped down to the essentials’; it is ‘isocratic administration’ in which citizens take charge of their own affairs (Margetts and Naumann, 2017).
Estonia’s X-Road and the UK government’s Digital Service are but two examples of how a platform ecosystem has addressed the challenges and inefficiencies of traditional government operating models — albeit using different approaches. Indeed, a number of countries, including Finland, Denmark, Palestine, and Azerbaijan, among others have followed suit and contextualized the adoption of GaaP to suit their needs (Aasmae, 2015). Having said that, GaaP should not be adopted for the sake of novelty and keeping pace with the world, but the decision to do so should be informed by the evolving needs and expectations of the user — the citizen. Indeed, without a sound understanding of the costs and/or benefits of platforms as well as that of operational and legacy structures within the government, GaaP may actually prove to be counter-effective.
Deploying IndiaStack
The past decade or so in India has witnessed an unprecedented thrust towards ‘digital’, for instance designing the Digital India program, deploying Aadhaar, prioritizing digital literacy, enabling digital finance, and so on. Much of this has been enabled by IndiaStack, the genesis of which began around the year 2010.
IndiaStack is a set of APIs that allows multiple stakeholders, including governments, businesses, startups, and developers to access a digital infrastructure in order to solve some of India’s most pressing challenges. It operates through four distinct technology layers — presenceless, paperless, cashless, and consent — that enable the transfer of money, storage of documents, and digital identity authentication, among other functions. Aadhaar essentially utilizes this infrastructure, and has become the world’s largest biometric identity project.
The IndiaStack platform has facilitated the delivery of government schemes, healthcare, transportation, digital payments, and so on. It has allowed ‘high variability’ apps such as Aarogya Setu (contact tracing for Covid-19) and Jan Sahayak-Aapka Sahayak app (Haryana’s governments one-stop e-governance portal) with ‘stable interfaces’ for instance UPI, eSign, DigiLocker, Aadhaar UID, etc. to be built on its ‘low variability’ core. By 2020, more financial transactions were being made in India via UPI than through debit and credit cards (Reserve Bank of India, 2020).
Evaluating IndiaStack
Arguably, IndiaStack has brought millions of Indians into the formal economy, by allowing state and private players to build innovative products for financial inclusion, healthcare delivery, educational services, and so on. From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that I can now pay taxes and open a bank account using Aadhaar, store my driver’s licence electronically in my DigiLocker, make digital payments using UPI, and so on. The people in my constituency of Hisar are able to access healthcare, cooking gas, farming insurance, food subsidies, and financial support schemes more efficiently and conveniently than ever before.
Having said that, there have been widespread concerns about data privacy and security over the last few years. For instance, in 2017, anonymous people sold Aadhaar data for an equivalent of $7. On another occasion in 2018, one of the government’s utility firms was found to utilize a precarious portal that made data hacking quite simple. Ever since, the government has introduced some security measures to address these challenges, but the battle is far from won. Furthermore, challenges with biometrics have excluded key beneficiaries from the process. The Indian government has been quite forceful about linking Aadhaar to all financial data, which has exacerbated fears of surveillance. There will always be unintended consequences with technology deployment, especially in the realm of governance. This underscores the need for agile thinking and mid-course corrections.
Concluding Remarks
GaaP as a concept holds immense potential in improving public service delivery, as we have witnessed in Estonia, the UK, and others. In India, the IndiaStack platform is the world’s largest API ecosystem. In fact, nation-states like Morocco and tech giants like Google have adopted learnings from it. At the core of this idea is for its design to be user centric. It is designed for people, and IndiaStack has somewhat succeeded in doing so in that 80% people feel that Aadhaar has made public service delivery more reliable (State of Aadhaar, 2019). Furthermore, when Kerala witness devastating floods in 2018, DigiLocker enabled people to access their documents faster. However, since ‘data is political’, adequate safeguards need to be implemented within IndiaStack to eradicate fears of data breach, privacy, and security. Moreover, sufficient feedback loops should be incorporated in the future design changes of IndiaStack to optimize on its efficacy.
In my view, technology should be deployed to improve governance, and not be adopted for its own sake. Furthermore, policymakers and practitioners need to take into account the implications of these systemic and attitudinal changes on all stakeholders involved. In the case of GaaP, citizens may not be the direct users; developers, politicians, civil servants, non-profits, and administrators may be the real users of platforms who then design and deploy applications and systems for the use of citizens (Pope, 2019). Therefore, the design of GaaP should take this into account.
Generally, my key learning in DPI662 thus far has been to approach digital government by placing the ‘user’ as the anchor in its design and implementation. This applies to agile processes, the Wardley map, and Value Proposition Design as well. IndiaStack isn’t a solution in itself, but a platform on which solutions can and need to be built. This implies a systems change, and possibly a decentralized approach that allows citizens and other stakeholders to be active players in the process of service delivery, each working to amplify each other’s efforts. This path is mired with uncertainty and resistance, but is definitely worth pursuing.
