Creating digital public infrastructure that empowers people | IGF 2023 Open Forum #168

Irina Soeffky

The Indian G20 presidency deserves commendation for its focus on digital public infrastructure, emphasizing the importance of integrating technology into public infrastructure. Germany is also actively contributing to the development of digital public services through projects such as EID (Electronic Identification) and the EU-wide ID, aiming to enhance digitization across various sectors.

Irina Soeffky, a supporter of international cooperation for digitalization, recognizes the need for collaboration in this field. The Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, in collaboration with GIZ (the German Corporation for International Cooperation), is actively providing open and interoperable elements to countries. Their goal is to assist countries in building their public infrastructure and fostering cooperation in digitalization, highlighting the importance of international partnerships.

The Gafstag Initiative, a noteworthy project, promotes interoperability and openness in public infrastructure. It is remarkable for creating public infrastructure that is not only interoperable but also reusable, enabling new business possibilities and fostering innovation in digital public services.

In conclusion, the Indian G20 presidency’s focus on digital public infrastructure and Germany’s contributions through projects like EID and EU-wide ID emphasize the significance of digitization in various sectors. The support of Irina Soeffky for international cooperation in digitalization and the Gafstag Initiative’s efforts to promote interoperability and openness further reinforce the importance of collaboration and innovation in building digital public infrastructure. These initiatives collectively contribute to the advancement of technology and digitalization globally.

Audience

The analysis of the implementation of digital public goods (DPG) and digital identity systems highlights the need for a coordinated and inclusive approach. It stresses the importance of instilling the DPI mindset in policymakers and leaders, especially in terms of championing successful implementations like Amado. The analysis also points out coordination problems within governments, such as turf wars and a lack of unified effort, which hinder the implementation of DPG and digital identity systems.

To overcome these challenges, the analysis suggests starting with a use case and building upon it in a way that allows others to easily plug into the system. Emphasizing minimalism can also contribute to a more effective approach.

Learning from both successful and unsuccessful implementations is crucial. The Indian experience is particularly highlighted, where a digital identity project was implemented without a legal framework that adequately protected data rights. The reliance on a centralized, cloud-stored biometric database proved to be problematic. By examining this case, valuable lessons can be learned to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

The analysis also addresses the issue of digital identity misuse and exclusion. Insights from experiences in India, Kenya, and the Philippines can inform the efforts of communities like the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) in mitigating these issues. It recommends involving human rights groups in the consultative process to ensure a more comprehensive and inclusive approach.

Furthermore, the analysis draws attention to the high failure rate of identity systems in India and its impact on public welfare delivery. Low levels of digital literacy play a significant role in these failures. A bottom-up approach for the redressal mechanism of digital identity systems is proposed to address these challenges.

Additionally, the necessity of user choice in dealing with system failures is highlighted. Allowing users the option to switch to human assistance when there is a digital verification failure can especially benefit regions with low levels of digital literacy. This user-centric approach ensures that individuals with limited digital skills are not excluded from the benefits of digital public goods and services.

Overall, the analysis emphasises the need for a coordinated and inclusive approach in implementing digital public goods and digital identity systems. It highlights the importance of the DPI mindset, learning from past experiences, mitigating harm and exclusion, involving human rights groups, adopting a bottom-up approach, and providing user choice. Following these principles will help achieve effective and secure digital public goods and identity systems.

Adriana Groh

The concept of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) extends beyond immediate innovations and necessitates a focus on the robust and ongoing maintenance of software components. It is concerning that 64% of the 133 most widely used software components are in critical shape and are only maintained by a few individuals. These software components are not only critical but also vulnerable, posing a significant risk if they were to break, as they are extensively used in our day-to-day lives.

Adriana, a strong advocate for a holistic approach to DPI, emphasises the importance of securing and maintaining these underlying software components, which often go unnoticed. She underscores the need for open digital-based technologies and the dependence on open-source software that operates in the background and is continuously maintained and available to support the functioning of various systems.

Interoperability and adaptability of public software and digital technology are also vital aspects that Adriana highlights. She suggests that sharing and learning together will help achieve this goal and points out the need for interoperable software and digital technologies. Additionally, she mentions the concept of ‘public money, public code’, asserting that software financed by taxpayers’ money should be open and adaptable.

Adriana further argues that redundancy in digital base technologies is indispensable to prevent single points of failure. She explains that having similar tools running concurrently ensures that if one fails, alternative routes can be taken to ensure uninterrupted functionality. She employs the analogy of a road, emphasising the significance of having multiple routes to reach a destination.

Moreover, Adriana emphasises the necessity of international cooperation in addressing global digital challenges. She highlights the potential risks of the ecosystem being torn apart without international cooperation and underscores the need for well-coordinated efforts. She draws attention to the “tragedy of the commons” in the context of the digital public commons, where everyone relies on it but no one feels responsible. This further underscores the importance of international cooperation and shared responsibility.

In conclusion, the concept of Digital Public Infrastructure encompasses the maintenance of software components beyond immediate innovations. Adriana advocates for a holistic approach, with an emphasis on securing and maintaining underlying software components, promoting open digital-based technologies, interoperable and adaptable public software, and redundancy in digital base technologies. International cooperation is crucial in tackling global digital challenges and ensuring well-coordinated efforts in the digital public commons.

Valeriya Ionan

The speakers provide valuable insights into the digital transformation in Ukraine, emphasizing the importance of creating a conducive environment that allows all participants to work efficiently within the digital ecosystem. The success of the DIA app in Ukraine is highlighted, with its impressive user base of over 19.5 million users. The app is not limited to digital documents and online government services; it also focuses on streamlining workflows in both the public and private sectors.

Furthermore, the government of Ukraine is commended for its effective collaboration with startups, private companies, and civil society. This demonstrates the need for governments to adopt an agile and flexible approach, operating more like IT companies. The speakers advocate for the implementation of Chief Digital Transformation Officer (CDTO) positions within governments to expedite the digital reform process across various levels and spheres.

The importance of public-private partnerships is emphasized as an effective means to enhance digital infrastructure and literacy. The creation of the DIA Education platform in collaboration with the private sector and civil society serves as an example of how such partnerships can contribute to improving digital literacy. The platform focuses on equipping individuals with the necessary digital skills and knowledge.

The speakers also highlight the value of learning from successful digital transformations in other countries. Ukraine draws inspiration from Estonia’s digital transformation and actively incorporates their GovTech products and experiences. This approach encourages governments to leverage existing successful solutions rather than investing time in seeking new ones.

Effective communication and collaboration between the government, civil society, and the private sector are seen as crucial for the progress of digital transformation. The establishment of platforms that facilitate the exchange of digital products and experiences is recommended. This allows for the sharing of best practices, knowledge, and experience across regions.

Additionally, the speakers stress the importance of world-class education programs catering to digital leaders. They argue that such programs should not only provide knowledge and expertise but also offer networking opportunities. Currently, there is a lack of academic or non-academic programs specifically tailored to preparing individuals for Chief Digital Transformation Officer roles within governments.

The speakers emphasize the need to view digital transformation as a comprehensive system rather than isolated initiatives. This holistic perspective ensures that all aspects, including user-centric and human-centric services, are considered. Building a digital country is not just about technological advancements but also about inclusivity and improving the basic level of digital literacy.

This analysis provides valuable insights into the digital transformation efforts in Ukraine, highlighting the successes achieved through the DIA app, effective collaboration between the government and other stakeholders, the importance of public-private partnerships, and learning from other countries’ experiences. The introduction of CDTO positions and the need for communication platforms and world-class education programs are also emphasized. Overall, the speakers’ arguments shed light on the essential factors and strategies required for successful digital transformation in Ukraine.

Mark Irura

The analysis highlights several important points regarding the development and maintenance of digital services and infrastructure.

One key point is the need for a community approach. This involves developers putting in their intellect and energy to build these services and maintain them over the long term. Open source development is seen as crucial in enabling the developer community to contribute to long-term development. The argument is that there is no community in between the demand and supply to be able to innovate around packages of reusable, interoperable components.

On the topic of governance, it is emphasized that the government is responsible for maintaining the vision and foresight of the digital platform in the long term. The regulation aspect or the vision or the foresight cannot be delegated by the government or funders. This illustrates how governance plays a vital role in implementing digital public infrastructure, with proper procedures required to address issues that cannot be solved by technology alone.

Long-term planning and examination are necessary for the successful implementation of digital public infrastructure. The pressure to show immediate results can hinder the progress of digital projects. It is more beneficial to think in longer terms and allow time for the development and improvement of these digital infrastructures. Data sharing across agencies also requires a long-term viewpoint to understand its implications. This highlights the need for long-term planning and examination for the implementation of digital public infrastructure.

Another important aspect is the development of skills to support the procurement of digital public goods. The government should develop skills to handle the procurement of these goods, which can help lower their total cost of ownership. Additionally, funding instruments should be designed to sustain long-term projects that, although may not show immediate results, will benefit in the longer run. For example, the construction of the foundation of a house might take a lot of resources and not show immediate results, but it is crucial for the overall structure. This argues for the development of funding instruments that reflect long-term objectives.

Increasing trust between citizens and their governments regarding digital IDs in Africa is crucial. Public participation in designing these solutions is often treated as an academic exercise, leading to a low level of trust due to a connection deficiency between data and service delivery. Regulations are needed to help citizens push back and use the instruments of the law. Trust is also hampered by the politics of how everything is done. This reveals the importance of increasing trust between citizens and their governments when it comes to digital IDs in Africa.

Citizen involvement in the defining or designing solutions can drive or stop court cases implementing the system. Testing the laws and involving citizens in the process can increase trust. Policies should take account of individual rights as data rights. This highlights the need for citizen involvement in the development and implementation of digital infrastructure.

Consideration of the ‘total cost of ownership’ is critical during procurement. Shared experiences reveal challenges in terms of costs for SMS systems and infrastructure development when handing over systems to the government. It is important for the government to try out systems before making purchase decisions to avoid being locked in and facing issues later. This emphasizes the importance of considering the long-term implications of licensing at the database, middleware, or application level during government purchases.

In terms of security and data protection, the analysis advocates for preventative and curative measures for digital public good security. The Digital Public Goods Alliance is developing good practice principles, and adapting these principles can preempt issues. This supports the need for measures to ensure the security of digital public goods.

In conclusion, the analysis emphasizes the importance of a community approach, governance, long-term planning, skill development, funding instruments, trust-building, citizen involvement, and security measures in the development and maintenance of digital services and infrastructure. These insights shed light on the challenges and considerations that need to be taken into account for the successful implementation of digital services and infrastructure.

Pramod Varma

India’s approach to Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) emphasizes the importance of civil society and citizen engagement to improve privacy and inclusion elements in DPI building. The use of civil society or citizen engagement as a supply-side tool is considered common and essential in this process. Creating one solution infrastructure and building several solutions on top of it is key for India due to its diversity and scale.

Marketplaces, NGOs, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a crucial role in the DPI ecosystem. Marketplaces are important for creating sustainability and agile innovation, while NGOs are key in addressing diverse needs, especially for vulnerable sections of society. The DPI also reduces the cost of solutioning for NGOs, making it feasible for them to develop solutions for specific sections.

A minimalistic approach is emphasized in building DPIs in India. The identity project, payment project, and credential sharing in India were built with this minimalistic principle. This approach aims to streamline processes and ensure efficiency in delivering digital public services.

Participatory governance, accountability, and dispute grievance resolution are crucial in implementing digital infrastructures. Governance plays a vital role in the effective implementation of DPI.

Resilience and redundancy are necessary aspects of digital infrastructures. India has implemented three or four payment systems for this purpose, ensuring resilience and redundancy.

Societal, political, and regulatory buy-in is necessary for the successful implementation of digital public infrastructure. Given that these DPIs impact a billion people in India, significant support and coordination from society, political leadership, and regulatory bodies are essential.

Global coordination is critical for interoperability. As people seek opportunities for work, education, and healthcare across countries, global coordination is important for seamless cross-border operations.

Support for sharing digital assets as open source goods accelerates digital innovation. The availability of Digital Public Goods (DPGs) and open-source goods contributes to rapid development and adoption of digital technologies.

A common definition and understanding of DPI have been created among many countries through G20 coordination and discussions. This has led to the development of a shared vocabulary and a common set of principles that underpin DPI.

The context of each country is unique, necessitating country-specific DPI residents. Many countries are working to create their own DPI residents to cater to their specific needs and challenges.

Efforts to share assets via the Digital Public Goods (DPG) ecosystem are supported by DPI funds. These initiatives aim to facilitate the development and sharing of digital assets, fostering collaboration and innovation.

The establishment of identity systems varies for each country, revolving around their specific context. Starting now, countries are advised to have full legal support, especially for identity systems.

Data storage in identity systems should be minimalist and secure. The identity system in India, for example, has not been breached so far, highlighting the importance of secure storage practices.

The analysis emphasizes the significance of participatory governance, the need for resilience and redundancy in digital infrastructures, and the importance of societal, political, and regulatory buy-in. It also highlights the critical role of global coordination, support for open-source sharing, and the country-specific nature of DPI implementations. These findings provide valuable insights into India’s approach to DPI.

Aishwarya Salvi

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has the potential to transform governments, economies, and societies worldwide. The rapid advancement of digital technologies has significantly changed how we interact and conduct business on a global scale. Governments are now adopting various approaches to implement DPI, recognizing its crucial role in facilitating participation in society and markets.

The successful implementation of DPI requires striking a delicate balance between the diverse needs and interests of different stakeholders. This complex task involves carefully considering the expectations and demands of governmental bodies, businesses, civil society, and the general public. By effectively managing these varying perspectives, DPI can be tailored to meet the specific requirements of each stakeholder group, ensuring inclusivity, interoperability, and accountability.

International cooperation plays a vital role in fostering the creation of inclusive, interoperable, and accountable DPI. Collaboration on a global scale allows governments, policymakers, regulators, businesses, and civil society organizations to leverage shared knowledge and resources in developing DPI solutions that empower individuals and enable seamless interactions across borders. The German Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport, in conjunction with GIZ, has organized digital dialogues as a platform for direct exchange and discussions on the importance of international cooperation in developing effective DPI solutions.

These digital dialogues enable policymakers, regulators, businesses, and civil society representatives to engage in meaningful conversations, sharing lessons, ideas, and perspectives on approaches to implementing DPI. Through this collaborative effort, best practices and innovative strategies are identified, guiding countries in establishing robust DPI frameworks.

In conclusion, DPI has the potential to revolutionize governments, economies, and societies worldwide. Its successful implementation rests on finding a delicate balance between the diverse needs and interests of stakeholders. Moreover, international cooperation is crucial for fostering the creation of inclusive, interoperable, and accountable DPI. The digital dialogues organized by the German Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport in partnership with GIZ provide a valuable platform for policymakers, regulators, businesses, and civil society to exchange ideas and insights, contributing to the development of effective DPI solutions.

Moderator

The analysis focuses on the challenges faced during the digitisation process of India’s digital identity project. One of the major issues identified is the absence of a proper legal framework to govern the project. This lack of legal guidelines created uncertainties and posed challenges in implementing and regulating the digital identity system effectively.

Another significant concern is the inadequate consideration given to data protection rights. The digitisation process failed to account for the rights of individuals in relation to their personal information. This omission raises important questions regarding privacy and data security in the digital identity system.

Furthermore, the design of the system, which relied on a centralised cloud-based and cloud-stored biometric database, is notable. While this approach may have certain advantages in terms of convenience and accessibility, it also raises concerns about the security and potential misuse of personal data stored in the cloud. These issues highlight the need for a more thorough and thoughtful approach to the design and implementation of such systems.

In light of these challenges, the analysis suggests that the global community can learn from the mistakes made in India’s digital identity project. By examining these shortcomings and addressing them proactively, other countries and organisations can avoid similar pitfalls and create more robust and secure digital identity systems.

Additionally, the analysis highlights concerns about the misuse and exclusion of digital identity in infrastructure rights and governance. It argues that steps need to be taken to mitigate the potential harms associated with such misuse and to ensure that the benefits of digital identity are shared inclusively among all individuals and groups. To achieve this, the analysis recommends consulting with human rights groups and other stakeholders, as they can bring valuable insights and perspectives to the decision-making process. By including them in the consultative process, the aim is to mitigate risks and harms and ensure that the design and implementation of digital identity systems align with human rights principles.

In conclusion, the analysis underscores the importance of addressing the challenges faced in the digitisation of identity systems by considering legal frameworks, data protection rights, and the design of the systems themselves. Learning from the Indian experience and the mistakes made can benefit the global community in developing secure and inclusive digital identity solutions. Furthermore, the involvement of human rights groups and other stakeholders in the decision-making process is crucial for mitigating risks and ensuring that human rights are upheld in the digital age.

Aishwarya Salvi:
you you you you hello everyone, a warm welcome to you all who have joined us in this room and also to everyone who’s joined us virtually a big thank you for attending this session creating digital public infrastructure that empowers people. My name is Aishwarya Salvi, I’m an advisor at the German Agency for International Cooperation, GIZ, working in the field of digital governance and I’ll be your on-site moderator today. A brief note on the housekeeping and what is it that we planned for the session. Our session is being held in a hybrid format and it will be a roundtable discussion with an open Q&A. We highly encourage all participants to contribute to this discussion. For all participants who are joining us virtually please keep your microphones muted during the session. You are encouraged to post questions and comments in the chat box at any point of time. My colleague Torgy Walters will be monitoring the chat and fielding questions from there for our Q&A rounds. This session is organized by the German Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport together with GIZ. The ministry engages with digital dialogues with several key partner countries to ensure that we shape better framework conditions for digital transformations of our governments, economies and societies. As a multi-stakeholder initiative the digital dialogues provides a platform for direct exchange between policymakers, regulators, businesses and civil society. The goal of this session is to share lessons on approaches undertaken by countries represented on this panel in the implementation of digital public infrastructure. We all know digital technologies have drastically transformed the way we interact and transact in the world. The most notable means of digital transformation has been the development of digital public infrastructure. So what do we mean by DPI? DPI are society-wide digital capabilities that are essential to participation in the society and markets as a citizen, entrepreneur and consumer in the digital world. With the growing demand governments are now adopting different approaches to implement DPI based on the availability of resources, engagement with the private sector, interaction with the civil society and citizens and also support from international organizations. In this session we set out to understand the existing DPI ecosystem in the countries that are represented on the panel. Also we understand the steps taken by the governments to balance differing needs and interests of the stakeholders. Additionally we will use this opportunity to exchange the lessons from the DPI implementation and discuss how international cooperation can foster the creation of inclusive, interoperable and accountable DPI that empowers people. For this discussion we are joined by our esteemed panel members who have contributed extensively in the field of digital transformation. First off we have Valeria Yonin, Deputy Minister of Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, joining us from Kyiv. Valeria oversees Ukraine’s national digital literacy policy, development and growth of SMEs, entrepreneurship, regional digital transformation as well as Euro integration and international relations. Next we have Dr. Pramod Verma joining us virtually from the US. Thank you Pramod for waking up so early in the morning for us. Presently he’s serving as the CTO at AXF Foundation and co-chair at the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure. His extensive experience as a former chief architect of India’s Aadhaar program and his work with India stack layers like the eSign and digital locker makes him a prominent player in India’s digital infrastructure. Next up in this room we are joined by Mark Irura from Kenya. Mark is currently a technical advisor for the Fair Forward Artificial Intelligence for All project at GIZ. He possesses valuable expertise in data and digital system management. His previous background includes his role as the consultant at Open Institute and project manager at Development Getaway. He has extensive experience in implementing various digital initiatives in Kenya. And finally we have the dynamic Adriana Groh. She is the co-founder of Sovereign Tech Fund in Germany and former director of impactful tech projects such as the Prototype Fund at Open Knowledge Foundation and she has been a prominent figure in advancing digital sovereignty, participation as well as open digital infrastructures. A

Irina Soeffky:
round of applause for our panel members. Thank you. But before we dive into our discussion I would like to make a special mention here. As said earlier the session is organized by the German Ministry of Digital and Transport and we are joined by Miss Irina Zufke. She’s a director at the National European and International Digital Policy and I would request her to kindly give her opening remarks. Thank you. Thank you very much and welcome everybody. It’s wonderful that you’re all here and it’s a great pleasure for me to engage today in this discussion on digital public infrastructure. A very timely topic obviously and I must say that in particular the Indian G20 presidency did a great job in bringing this topic to the center of the stage and the process we learned a lot about what India has achieved in the field already which is quite impressive and I assume we will hear a bit more about that also today but obviously there are also other countries that have already done impressive projects in the field. So it’s great that we engage into further discussion today, talk a bit about lessons learned and obviously Germany is also doing its share in the field. We don’t usually call it digital public infrastructure internally. We rather talk maybe about digital public services but probably in substance we’re doing about the same thing. So we certainly do have an EID which is supposed to get smart so on your smartphone this year we are moving it in the direction of an EU idea which should then be usable within the entire European Union so these are pretty important projects and for good reason. They are central in our national digital strategy because we believe that implementing these projects is particularly important to enable digitization across different fields and branches. So another example for our national work would be and this is actually something that my ministry is doing, building an ecosystem of mobility data which we use to really make public data available but we also fuse with data that is provided by private sector players. So bringing the two together we hope will have an impact on making new business models, new options possible. But this is just examples of what we do at home. Maybe the even more spectacular thing is what we do together with partners internationally and that is not us but colleagues from the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and of course GIZ. That is the Gafstag Initiative which is a pretty impressive project that we also during the Indian G20 presidency talked about quite a lot. It’s all about open interoperable elements that are reusable offering them to two countries to use them to build their public infrastructure. As I said with a focus on interoperability and openness for usability which is very very important. So yeah this is maybe something that we can bring to the discussion and talk a bit about lessons learned there. But now I’m really excited to hear what what others do and I know that there are very impressive examples that we hear about. So looking forward to the discussion and the debate and very glad to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much

Aishwarya Salvi:
and we’ve seen Germany has always supported inclusive and interoperable digital services and the work that Gafstag has done has also helped other countries introduce and implement these digital services in their countries. So thank you so much. We now jump into the discussion. We have two rounds and each round will be followed by a Q&A. We have reserved three minutes for each speaker to respond to these questions in each round. I just want to reiterate that we will be strict with the time in order to allow everyone including the audience to participate in this discussion properly. So in the first round we will look at the existing DPI ecosystem. We all know that creation of DPI in several countries is a result of cross-sectoral partnerships between governments laying down the digital guardrails, the private sector providing the technical services, the civil society academia and citizens providing feedback to their services to make them more user-centric and each actor in this ecosystem has its own needs and interests. For instance, IT companies need a return on investments to be incentivized to participate in the ecosystem. We have data-driven models that drive innovation but they also raise privacy-related risks and could lead to exclusion of marginalized communities. So given this context, my question to all speakers is what role does each actor play in your country’s DPI ecosystem and how does the government strike a balance between deferring needs and interest of these stakeholders? I would first invite Dr. Pramod Varma. He’s worked extensively in India and would request him to respond to this question now. Thank you.

Pramod Varma:
Good afternoon. I hope you can hear me. Yes, we can hear you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Aishwarya, for setting that up. Thank you, Minister. There are two parts to your question and let me clarify a little bit of the difference in how India is looking at these ecosystems. There are supply-side ecosystems. Supply-side means building DPI. To build DPI, who is supporting you? Is the private sector supporting you? Is civil society engaging with you? I think that’s what you alluded to, Aishwarya, when you mentioned the two ecosystems are joining in. But there is also a – and that’s been done in most of the e-governance projects in the last two decades or maybe even more. You know, especially many of the countries use private sector to supplement the capacity of the government and get it done. So, IT services and other private sector services participating in the supply side, that is towards the build of the DPI, is very common. And India is no different, frankly, in that. Use of civil society or citizen engagement also as a supply-side tool to improve the privacy elements, inclusion elements, the desirability of that particular project is very, very key. And that is also essential in building up anything that is infrastructure in nature. So, DPIs, by definition, are not full solutions and they are just infrastructure in nature. So, that’s key. But there’s a significant difference in India’s approach to DPI. It’s also the demand-side usage. That’s very different. That is where you put out something like GPS as a building block, as a digital public infrastructure. And private sector innovation is innovating market solutions. These are not IT services company helping you build it. It’s a use of DPI is where the ecosystem is very key, not building of the DPI. Use of DPI, we believe, India believes, once the DPI is architected well, interoperable, minimal, I would actually put minimalism as one of the most important principles as well, interoperable, like GPS, think very minimal. All it does is very, very little. But combining and using these DPIs, market, civil society, like NGOs, and even government can build layered set of solutions, like the way solutions on the internet, that actually reaches the large population. And this is key for India, because India’s diversity and scale is enormous, 1.4 billion people, 22 official languages, but hundreds of languages. It’s like a continent by itself. So, it’s creating one solution for you or one solution for Africa, for example, it’s a continent, so a lot of people. So, different culture, different society, different context. So, one solution is not what we are after. One infrastructure, what is what we are after, many, many solutions on top of the infrastructure. So, think of internet, many solutions on internet. Think of GPS, many solutions combining GPS. So, think of infrastructure as a means to create minimal, interoperable building blocks that is left now opened up for the demand side ecosystem, which is market ecosystem, civil society ecosystem, and government. Even government can innovate, can innovation system, who creates very contextual solutions to those people. And in this market is very key, because market creates sustainability and creates very, very agile innovation, unlike government trying to do everything. So, market is key for us and UPI, Unified Payment Interface, is a classic example, where multiple unicorns and multiple, multiple large countries, like including Google Pay, plays out, but interoperability is, we have mentioned, no monopolization or colonization of that sort, right? It is infrastructure is open and interoperable. And, but NGOs are even, even key for us, because India diversity necessitates a long tail. The last long tail solutioning is very hard, solutioning for the small section. For example, a very small vulnerable section in a tribal sector is very hard, because cost of developing solutions are very high. And so, DPI is also bring down the cost of solutioning, which is what happened with digital ID, digital payments, and digital paperless interactions. It dramatically reduces the cost of solutioning and for NGOs as well. So, we believe demand side ecosystem is more important for the DPI, Aishwarya, than the supply side ecosystem, because that, that creates sustainability of solutioning and diversity of solutioning. Thank you. Thank you so much, Pramod. I think in India, it’s unique to see how the community got involved in this ecosystem, how the uptake was higher because Because everyone, right, in the remotest villages were able to get a phone to access these services on just one device.

Aishwarya Salvi:
So I think that’s unique to India. Moving next into the room, I would request Mark to give his response. Thank you. Thanks.

Mark Irura:
To add on to what’s been shared already, the supply and the demand side were mentioned. And on the supply side, we have actors such as funders, actors such as government, sometimes even private sector, and civil society. They’re trying to create something, to build something. And the way it’s been portrayed as well is that we have people who sit in the middle there, still on the, almost on the demand side, because they are waiting on this package. They are waiting on a payment system to leverage it to deliver a service. And then we have users. Users who do not care, they do not care about digital government. They know government. So they want a service. So if I could speak to Kenya previously, before we moved on to like one e-government platform, it was management information systems being led across various departments. So if you wanted to register a business, you go to one office, you fill in a form, you wait a couple of days, you go back. So when they digitized or automated, you still had to go to that office, and then you were sent to another office, even though they had a system. But now everything has kind of been centralized a little bit. But we are still finding a challenge, because there is no community in between the demand and the supply to be able to innovate around packages of reusable, interoperable components. So because of that, there is no longer term view about these digital services. What do they look like? If payments, if today for some reason the payment platform for government goes down, what’s the impact on the economy? If today, for example, there’s an outage for 30 minutes that businesses cannot be registered. And so I think to add on to what’s already been shared is the thinking that we have system integrators who sit in between. System integrators are startups. They have been mentioned, startups, or even tech companies who are able to latch on to what is already existing and build upon it. But there are some things that government or even funders, they cannot take away. So let me give an example of a responsibility government cannot delegate. The regulation aspect or the vision or the foresight. What does this platform look like 10 years from now? Because whatever we are building now in two or three years will be a legacy system. So what will that look like? Who will continue to maintain it and sustain it? Who will pay for it? So it’s if we have a community approach, then we don’t just think in terms of open source in terms of open source free beer. But it’s open source around how can this developer community not resent putting in their intellect and their energy into building these services and building them over the long term.

Aishwarya Salvi:
Thank you. Thank you so much, Mark. Yes, I think the concept of system integrators is very important because, as you mentioned, the government needs to look at governance and the regulations that they need to lay down. But when we talk about operational and management issues, we need these startups and companies to get more involved in the economy and in the ecosystem, to do the daily repair work or the maintenance of these services. So thank you so much, Mark, for your response. We now move to Adriana. I would invite her to share her experience, what’s happening in Germany, how do we balance these needs of stakeholders?

Adriana Groh:
Thank you. So now I’m stretching the definition and, there while, the topic we’re talking about a little bit with the work that we’re doing with the Sovereign Tech Fund in Germany. But we’re not limited to software that is developed in Germany. So maybe a few words about this, so you understand how I’m stretching the definition of DPI that we’re using right now. The Sovereign Tech Fund supports open digital-based technologies, that’s how we call them, to not use digital infrastructure again, because otherwise the term just gets really bloated. And what I mean by that, to put it simple, is software that developers use to develop software. And we, not speaking for this room maybe, but most people don’t think about that, although it’s very necessary. This software is very critical and very vulnerable, and if it breaks, it scales massively through everything that we’re using every day. But it’s invisible for many people who are not software developers, because you’re just using the interface, but there’s a lot behind that. We’ve seen with Heartbleed way back, but also with Log4J, how it impacts everyone, basically, when it breaks. And the Sovereign Tech Fund’s mission now is to, well, probably won’t be able to prevent it forever, but to work on it and increase the awareness a bit for this layer of the software stack. So what I mean then, by stretching or complementing the DPI approaches we already heard, is to, well, basically saying, look a bit deeper. Because everything we build relies on software that is running in the background, and that community and software developers also in companies and businesses need. I have some numbers, they’re all very, very terrible, but I’m just going to say maybe one there, like 64% of the 133 mostly widely used software components that everyone relies on are in a very critical shape and only maintained by a handful of people. Can be two, can be three. They are doing this, nobody notices, most people don’t notice. It’s a community of very intrinsically motivated people, some of them work for companies, but most of them do this critical work in their free time. So what we need to do is to develop a more holistic approach when we talk about DPI, in a way that we need to secure the foundations, innovate, and maintain. It needs to be the whole life cycle. I think people in this room know about this, but because this work is also very, not very thankful, it’s a little bit like the road you take every day to work. You don’t think about that road until it’s blocked or broken, and there’s long maintenance work and then you’re really annoyed. But if it’s just working, it’s just there. That’s the same for the layer, the focus of the Sovereign Tech Fund, and so if that’s not working, all the great missions we heard just about are also not working. So that is my short pitch. I’m really looking forward, if we’re opening up the room for the discussion, because it’s a particular topic, the production logic, we also heard about this, is different in this field. So I mentioned the intrinsic motivation of many people. It’s also a very old legacy, so to speak, and our whole very successful global digital economy relies on this software running. The whole world relies on software, of open source software actually, running in the background, being maintained, being available. One of the key reasons why we’re innovative, why we have competition, why we have startups and SMEs. So it’s a really important topic for civil society, for governments, and for companies worldwide, and if we manage to have this holistic approach, I think that’s going to really get us far, and also secure us, everyone, in a position to act in the future. Because if the roots are not well maintained, then the growth will not be long-lasting.

Aishwarya Salvi:
Thank you. Thank you. I think you’re absolutely right. We need to stretch the definition of DPI, because when we talk about infrastructure, the mentality is, is it hardware, just hardware? But it’s not. It’s also software, and as you rightly mentioned, the entire economy relies on these softwares. So, yeah, we should include software as well in the definition when we talk about DPIs. We now move online, and I would request Valeria to kindly respond to this question. Yes, good afternoon, dear colleagues.

Valeriya Ionan:
So I would like to echo, in some ways, the previous speakers. Well, we believe in golden triangle of relations, government, private sector, and civil society, but we think it’s not about building the ecosystem. It’s about, first of all, creating conditions that enable all participants to work efficiently. So instead of discussing the ecosystem stakeholders, which are, to my mind, more or less similar in all of the countries, I would like to concentrate on several concrete examples, which we have in Ukraine. So just for the content, for the context, in Ukraine, we have our state super app, DIA, which is used by 19.5 million of users with digital documents, digital services, and digital signature. And even before the full-scale Russian invasion to Ukraine, Ukrainians already have been able to pay fines, to pay taxes through DIA, or to use DIA for digital documents. But DIA is not only about digital documents and online government services. We are also digitizing the workflow of both public and private sectors. We use such features as document sharing, validation, and DIA signature to speed up document flow and customer service, and replace paperwork with digital and intuitive services that reduce costs and save time. So let’s say some organization can receive electronic copies of digital documents of DIA users using a sharing scenario. Through validation, companies can check the digital document validity just in two clicks, for example, in stores, post offices, or governmental institutions. So just as an example, the financial sector in Ukraine is one of many industries that most actively uses DIA services. 59 banks have already integrated sharing and DIA signature into their processes. This allows them to conduct quick customer identification and verification, open a bank account without visiting a physical branch, verify a customer when working with payment terminals, etc. So one of the most popular banks in Ukraine, Monobank, registers customers using a sharing scenario, and the record registration for this is 99 seconds. Also, one of the banks had around 80K open bank accounts per day because of basically the possibility of DIA signature opening bank accounts online. Another great example is our project DIA Education, which is a national edutainment platform for rescuing digital literacy, and the majority of content is created together with private sector or civil society. And that’s really great because that helps us to, you know, I would say, enable our citizens with new knowledge and expertise, which is really needed on the market. Another great example is our partnership with private sector. So when the full-scale Russian invasion started, we have been able to create fast an app, which is called AI Alert or AI Alarm, that sends alerts about missile attacks. And we have basically a lot of other examples where government is communicating and working really efficiently with private sector companies, with startups, with civil society. We have this fast track of communication, and we think that that’s exactly the way how modern governments should operate. They should be working like IT companies more. They should be more agile and flexible. So what we are doing here in Ukraine, we are basically changing with such solutions as DIA the way how government communicates with the citizens. So with that, DIA really became a love mark for Ukrainian citizens.

Aishwarya Salvi:
Thank you. Thank you, Valeria. We now open the floor for questions. We would take one or two questions if anyone in the room has any questions to the panelists. Otherwise, we can move it to the end of this discussion. All right. So moving to the next round, thank you, everyone. In the next round, we basically look at what role does international cooperation have in this ecosystem? So considering the diverse approaches have been undertaken to implement DPI, it’s still an evolving concept. And there is still so much we don’t know, so much we need to do. And we also see a lot of countries are struggling to implement DPI because of limited technical capabilities and financial resources. So my question to all speakers is, what lessons did you learn in implementing DPI in your country? And how can international cooperation be leveraged to build interoperable, inclusive DPI that empowers people? I would first request Mark to respond to this.

Mark Irura:
Thank you. Thanks for the question. So I’ll begin by agreeing with what has been said by Valeria about governance. So that is very important. So in Kenya, we have this platform, eCitizen, that has been in use. But then it’s beginning to come under, not scrutiny, it’s beginning to be tested, its limits. And part of it is because there are governance issues that cannot be solved by technology. And there are technology issues that cannot be solved by governance necessarily. And I think on the governance side, there is need to look at it a little bit more critically. In what ways? So for example, how do we have a very robust infrastructure to deliver these services? And how do we begin to look at a community around it? So that’s one. As a funder, and those who are in the room, we have to think about this in a longer term view than we do right now. Because a lot of times there is pressure to show results. Sometimes we don’t want to accept we are failing. But it is important to show, to think a bit about it in a little bit of a longer term view. Because if you’re talking about governance and governance of data, so what does it mean now? Yes, it’s very convenient that at the proverbial click of a button, I can log in and do something in five minutes. But data has been shared across multiple agencies without me being aware. What does that mean? And what does that mean when I’m aggrieved, when I want to complain? So we have to think about that, and that takes time. Then number two, we also have to think about the technology and the economics of the technology. Because there’s something for government when they say, we want to lower the total cost of ownership of this technology. We don’t want to pay recurrent licenses because we cannot afford, and that is valid. So do they have the skills to procure digital public goods? So that’s another consideration, just building that capability. And then that takes time. So as funders, are we looking at that and looking at that? Do we understand it even as we speak to it? And then, I think, lastly, I will just mention that… we have to create maybe funding instruments that like look at it and maybe collaborate with others so that we look at it as we are putting the foundation of a house. When you’re putting the foundation of a house, and I’m speaking about Kenya now, you sink a lot of money in the ground, and you do not see results. But once you kind of get the foundation is done, then you can have a lot of progress when you’re constructing. And people will come around and see something. But for a long time, you’re just under the ground, like just putting in money. And people could not see what you’re trying to do. But then if you have a longer-term view, then you have a robust infrastructure that maybe continues to be relevant even when some of the technologies become obsolete in seven to eight years. But those tools are still in use. Thank you, Mark. I think we all agree that there is a need for long-term planning because these technologies are fast-changing. And as government, as private sector, and even communities, we need to keep up pace with these dynamic technologies. Thank you, Mark.

Aishwarya Salvi:
I would now request Valeria to respond to the question. How do you think international cooperation can be leveraged to build interoperability PI? Yes, thank you for the question.

Valeriya Ionan:
So first of all, it’s important to say that all governments are facing the same challenges, especially when it comes to digital transformation. So it’s, again, digital services, digital literacy, interoperability, cybersecurity, now AI, and many, many others. And there is absolutely no need to waste a lot of time in order to find the solution to some problems if the solution already exists and operates efficiently. And it’s not just about the concrete technical products or technical solutions. Like, for example, in Ukraine, we are learning a lot from Estonia. Estonia has been our mentor in digital transformation. We are using a lot of Estonian GovTech products, including X-Road for interoperability, which in Ukraine is called Trambita. But now with our DIA and DIA ecosystem, we also have a lot of achievements. And we are ready to share our experience with the world. So what I’m trying to say is that the world should be more aligned when it comes to the questions of digital transformation and understand all the existing solutions in order not to waste and to optimize time and to use those. And also, it’s not about just products, not about just solutions. It’s also about the experience in some soft questions. For example, in Ukraine in 2020, we have created a new position in Ukrainian government, which is called CDTO, Chief Digital Transformation Officer. So these people operate on the level of deputy ministers or deputy governors. And for today, we have CDTOs in every ministry, in every governmental agency, and in regional councils. So that basically gives us a possibility to move fast with all digital reforms in different spheres and on different levels. And we know that when it comes to such kind of organizational structure that in other governments, in other countries, the organizational structure is, I would say, slightly different. But what we see is that especially this organizational structure was one of our success cases, which helped us to make a huge leap in digital transformation just in three years. And if we would have a good platform for communication between government, civil society, private sector, where we could share not just products, which obviously could be open sourced or not, but also could share such kind of experience, I think that this is something important, at least, to elaborate on. Also, there is no great, I would say, academic or non-academic programs which really prepare people to become Chief Digital Transformation Officers for their governments. So there are some high-level strategy or leadership courses. But when it comes to finding some concrete solutions, I think the new world-class education for digital leaders from all over the world, which will give not just knowledge and expertise, but also the possibility of a regular unofficial even networking, would improve a lot and give a lot of new possibilities. So of course, we can speak in this panel and in this question a lot about interoperability, lots of different technical solutions. But I believe this information is more or less available on the web. And that’s why I think my main message here is that we have to focus more on communication, on networking, on finding more points for cooperation between our countries and different institutions. Thank you. Thank you, Valeria. I think all governments need to make drastic institutional changes, create positions like the Digital Transformation Officers that Valeria mentioned. Because these people can reach out to the citizens, build the capacities and also ensure that each citizen uses these digital services.

Adriana Groh:
Thank you, Valeria. I would next ask Adriana to respond. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, I agree also with what has been said. I think it’s important to stress that we need to be in a position where we can do the sharing and learning together. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it’s good to have similar tools running at the same time and test which one works better and then plug and play a little bit. So it’s necessary, I think, to stress that, yeah, public money, public code has been heard before, I guess. But you need to be able to share, adapt and change software that is around if you really want to push it to the maximum, this learning and sharing approach. Coming back to the focus of the Sovereign Tech Fund, those digital-based technologies, it’s a bit different. Because maybe you do want redundancy. You want to have two or three things that do the same job running at the same time. Because coming back to the road analogy, if you only have that one road that is then blocked that one day, what are you going to do? So it’s maybe less about finding that one solution, share it, adapt it to your specific needs. It’s maybe about deliberately seeing where we need redundancy and how to maintain it. And coming back to the international cooperation, this is a global digital common. There are no geographic boundaries around those parts of the software that we’re talking about. They’re used in all different kinds of contexts everywhere. So it is particularly important to be well-coordinated here. Because what could happen is that, with all the good intentions that we have, is ripping this ecosystem of the very foundations that we all rely on apart. Because you’re not coordinated. You’re pushing and pulling in different directions. You can also not fix it by just throwing money at it. There needs to be a strategy. There needs to be community that advises you. There needs to be engagement from the private and the public sector. So if we’re not doing it together, it’s not going to work. So it’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a real must-have to be well-coordinated and understand that for this digital public common, we need to fix also the tragedy of the commons. Because I think right now what we have is everyone relies on it, but nobody feels responsible for it. So this is, I think, our exercise for everyone to analyze this, to then come up with solutions, and then sit down together and really implement that. And not do it in our little boxes, but really from the very, like, day one, do it together. Thanks.

Pramod Varma:
I would now request Pramod Verma to respond to the question. Yeah, I think many of these best practices and learnings have been actually shared quite widely, and it’s available on various papers, you know, writings and talks. But I’ll give you maybe three different parts of at least the learning we went through. One, when you build DPIs, at least for us, we were looking at just one component of that that allows a lot more innovation to happen. That’s why I keep using the GPS analogy. It is not about thinking through the whole solutions. We are letting the market and society and other parts of the government and so on to put together solutions later. So for others to build solutions, what do we need to build? And that was a real question we were asking. So hence, minimalism was a big principle that we kept playing out. If you look at our identity project or a payment project or credential sharing, and like in Ukraine, the paperless ideas, the paperless workflows. We wouldn’t build the workflows, but we built the credentialing infrastructure that allows many, many workflows to be built. So minimalism was very, very essential. Interoperability, of course. Decentralization. And India is very diverse and we have the federal hierarchy between the center and the states and quite a lot of autonomy spread across many different parts of the system. So centralizing as an architecture or design never works out. It never gets implemented well. It’s also good for privacy. So decentralization as a design principle is very key. And of course, thinking through privacy and cybersecurity for any digitization is very key. This is sort of the technology principles, but on the governance, I think very good comments were made in the panel. Policy interventions are necessary. Creating a participatory governance, especially if this highway or this road is used by many, many people. How does the governance of the road itself work? Because many people are going to depend on it. Marketplace and others are going to depend on it. So participatory governance, accountability, dispute grievance resolution. My colleague talked about that. It’s importance thereof because something will always go wrong. And if things go wrong, what are the process of addressing that wrong is very, very key. And most importantly, resilience. I think the redundancy topic was key. Resilience in India is not one payment system. We have three or four payment systems that seem to do somewhat similar things, but this is actually a good thing because depending on the entire system for one digital building block is key because if you get attacked or down for some reason, the entire system can come down. So resilience and redundancy is very key. But one more learning, other learnings we had, non-technical, non-participant, non-governance learning is also regulatory, political, and social, societal buy-in. Many of these DPIs touch, at least for India, most of them touch a billion people, and that requires significant buy-in from society, political leadership, and regulatory leadership, and most importantly, market incentive alignment. Market, why should they use the DPI? Can they create a closed loop or a walled garden, a monopoly? They would all want to create those private solutions that are locking the users and locking the country, but what is their incentive in playing interoperability? So I think there’s a lot more discussion that needs to be done to get those buy-in, especially if you’re implementing at scale, whole country scale, then it’s very key to get the alignment. And on the global coordination, I mean, this is a no-brainer, frankly, global coordination, because as somebody mentioned, there’s no border to people’s aspirations. People’s aspirations are not limited to borders, geographical borders. Now, people want to go across the countries. They want to work across economic opportunities, education opportunities, healthcare needs. People travel and go across. So it’s discussing interoperability and portability of my data and credentials so that I can continue to use as a citizen. I can continue to use my data instead of depending on large systems to coordinate is very key. And we saw that with vaccine certificate in the COVID time. It was essential that we allow people to move around with the vaccine certificate. So interoperability, sharing of learning, and I’ll also add sharing of assets. I think most of the panel said our assets are now available as DPGs, so digital public goods, open source goods. I think sharing of assets of what we are building with others also help accelerate this journey.

Aishwarya Salvi:
Thank you. Thank you, Pramod. So do we have any questions from the chat? Also looking into the room, of course, if there are questions in the room, happy to take them as well. We have one microphone in the middle. Please line up. But thank you for lining up already. As Mr. Abdiaziz Ahmed posed a question quite a while ago in the chat, I would read this out first. It goes towards Africa. And so I look to Mark. He might have a response on this. Question goes, how can we increase trust of citizens with their governments, especially when it comes to digital IDs in Africa? I go for it? Okay.

Mark Irura:
So there’s probably four things. Part of it has been mentioned by the last speaker. So we have people, we have processes, we have the product that you want to sell, and we have politics. And it’s things that are taught when you’re developing IT solutions in terms of maturity models and managing change. So I think one of the solutions is we of course talk about the citizen at the center or human-centered design. It might be challenging or difficult to do it with very many people. But I believe one of the things that can drive or stop these court cases, you know, you implement a system and people go to court to stop it, is just because anchored in the processes like how do we treat with my individual rights as data rights? And the citizen is often left out of, you know, public participation is an academic exercise. So I think having the regulations is good because it helps citizens to push back and use the instruments of the law. And that’s a good thing. And I think then we are kind of testing the laws and seeing how best to involve citizen in defining or designing these solutions. And I think that might be part of the issue right now in just, you know, the low level of trust. If I sign up today, how does it translate to a public service being delivered to me? And that connection between data and water or electricity is not direct, but it’s also because there’s a trust deficit in the politics of how everything is done. Thank you so much, Mark. I will not do what most moderators do and kind of repeat the gist of what has been said because we were warned we only have a few minutes left and still many questions in the chat and in the room. And we take the first question from the floor.

Aishwarya Salvi:
Please, Leah. Yes, thank you so much.

Audience:
My name is Leah Gimpel. I’m from the Digital Public Goods Alliance. And I really love that we speak so much about sharing technologies and open source here in the session. However, we work a lot with countries, right? And I think we discussed here already that it’s not only about technology being available. It’s also about the governance and in general, an approach, DPI is an approach much more than technology. And what we hear a lot from countries is that they’re… afraid of making the same mistakes again that they did in the past. So, what I mean by that is that we, what we find is that there are coordination problems within governments, and there is turf wars, and people are not working together on the same thing, right? And in that sense, I’m wondering how we can instill this DPI mindset, really, in people. So, I’m very much with Pramut who’s saying it’s about minimalism, it’s about starting with a use case, and building it in a way that others can plug into it. But how do we instill this DPI mindset in people, apart from champions such as Amado here in the room, who is a champion in his country, building an export implementation. But we need more of those people, right? So, how do we get the message across the policymakers and leadership? Thank you. Thank you, Lea. I’m looking to the panel. So, I’m going to take the question up. Yeah, please go ahead. Do you want me to quickly answer?

Aishwarya Salvi:
Yeah.

Pramod Varma:
So, I’ll give some perspective on at least a few things that we are trying. One, I think the minister mentioned about G20 coordination and discussion. So, many of the countries came together on a shared definition, understanding of what DPI is. It’s just a vocabulary, as everybody’s been doing this. But there’s a common vocabulary that was created, and common set of principles were laid out. And they said this is important as the digital economy gets developed in many, many countries in the next 10, 15 years, and so on. So, how do we help every country create their own digital rails that allow their own digital economy to get pushed, and we talked about GALSTACK and many other efforts that are going on. So, from the people perspective, I think the journey has begun, and many of the discussions are happening. But the one thing, in addition, we are also doing is that there are DPI funds now. DPGA, of course, continue to support the sharing of assets via DPG ecosystem. And we also just started, I’m a co-chair at the Center for DPI. We just started a Center for DPI as a pro bono effort to spread, create DPI fellows and DPI residents around the world. So, we are creating proper training certification, both certification for policymakers and certification for actual implementers. These are sort of bootcamp-ish things that you go through to actually build. So, we are working with 21 countries, at least for now, to create their own DPI residents in their own country, because contexts are very different, and everybody needs to think through their own context in their own country. So, there are some efforts that are going on, but I think it needs to get accelerated. So, maybe more panels like this, more efforts, events like this, more training and support systems like this can actually be useful to bring it together,

Mark Irura:
bring a common understanding together. Thank you. Thank you so much, Pramod. I think Mark, you also wanted to react to the question, right? Yeah, very quickly. So, the issue of total cost of ownership, like during procurement, I was once in one of my previous roles, I was once in Malawi and a system had been put in place that was able to transmit some results to patients. So, when it was time now to hand over to government, they were like, do we put in infrastructure like hospitals in bed or we pay for these SMSs? So, from the start, there was a lack of understanding of procurement and what it implies to put this tool, because how do you go back to the taxpayers and say we bought SMSs? So, I think it is important to consider what it means. So, do we license that database at middleware or at application level? And what does it mean over the long term? So, I’ll just add that to the response that was given. For government to try out without burning their fingers and being locked in and having to go back to parliament and say we bought a license and it costs X amount of dollars and, you know, there’s a problem with that.

Moderator:
Thank you so much, Mark. We have another question on the floor.

Audience:
Thank you so much. My name is Ramanjit Singh Cheema. I’m Senior International Counsel and Asia Pacific Policy Director with Access Now, the International Digital Rights Organization. And my first, and it’s a two-part question. So, the first question and comment is to promote online and then my second part is to the panel. The first one is to promote and there’s been a lot of discussion around digitization and learning from lessons from the past. So, I’m just curious for this group, wouldn’t it also be useful for the global community engaged in this conversation to learn from the Indian experience and mistakes? For example, having a digital identity project out that didn’t have a legal framework, that did not account for data protection rights, that in fact disputed with the privacy was a fundamental right. But also most importantly, the very design concept and I know you in particular promote extensive experience in this around the design of the system, namely a centralized cloud-based, cloud-stored biometric database. Would that be something that’s good for other countries to adapt to learn from? And the second question therefore, the second part of the question to the panel is given infrastructure has rights and governance concerns, what steps has the DPGA or this community around digital public goods taken to mitigate harms around digital identity, misuse, exclusion, specifically have them in consultation with human rights groups or others around lessons from digital identity experiences in India, in Kenya, in the Philippines and elsewhere? And how do human rights groups be baked into this consultative process?

Moderator:
Thank you. Thank you so much. I first look over to Pramod. Do you want to react? Yeah. So, yeah, I think much of these learnings have been actually again documented.

Pramod Varma:
We don’t have to, it’s especially with the identity story. It’s actually 12 years, 13 years now into the system. It was done with full executive support, parliament approval, budgets, all the regulations. I agree. The laws could have been, law could have been done earlier. So, if countries starting today should definitely look at a full legal support, especially for identity. Identity is a sensitive topic today, but unlike things like payment or anything else that will get laid about that. So, but every country has their own journey, and those journeys are in the context of that country. I think we did have existing laws that supported, that deferred, and subsequently, you know, laid the special purpose law for the identity itself. The cloud part is actually wrong. You are wrong about the cloud part, because any unique attestation, any unique identity attestation necessitates the uniqueness part of the you, you part of the uniqueness need to come, and that requires most of the national ID project, even in Germany or anywhere else, have identity database or social, you know, security or anything else. Now, maybe in the future, there might be technologies, I’m not aware at this time, that can actually do a uniqueness attestation without storing the previous data. So, that means there’s some storage of data, but minimal, it has to be minimalist. It has to be secure. Identity system never been breached by the central system, never been breached so far. There were obviously, on the edges, incorrect usages and data leaks that has happened, unfortunately, but it is not the central storage that actually worries me. It’s the governance around it, security around it, but there’s a purpose necessitates the storage of data it needs to store, and needs to store a minimum set of data. So, I think that fundamentally is not an architecture issue at all.

Aishwarya Salvi:
It’s not a design issue.

Pramod Varma:
It’s how every identity system would play out. Of course, the question can be, how is it protected? How is it used, or how do we make sure it’s not misused and so on? So, these are important questions, and much of those learnings have been documented. So, I think countries will have their own context. 2020, 10, 2015, 2023, when you implement, or 2030, when you implement, new technologies can be leveraged to create, you know, relook at some of these design constructs.

Aishwarya Salvi:
Thank you. Thank you, Pramod.

Moderator:
I’ve already seen the sign that our time is up, unfortunately. There was a second part to the question, which was about which measures are being taken that digital public goods are actually secure and protect the data of citizens. Is there a very brief reaction from the panel on this question? Also looking to Valeria and Pramod. No? Mark, please.

Mark Irura:
So, there’s preventative and there’s curative measures. Of course, we run to the law when it’s curative, but I think preventative, there’s work that’s being done by, say, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, and they are coming up with, like, these are practices, these are good practices that we can adopt, and we take them as principles, and the reason we do that is you are preempting an issue happening by just following this set of practices that have been done. So, I’d offer that as a response, but I think Pramod really did talk about it. I’m just going to say one sentence. I think it’s going to make, like, in general, everyone safer if we understand that we need to support an open, available, and secure ecosystem of digital infrastructure components, because that’s where a lot of security issues also arise. So, we should understand it as a public’s job

Moderator:
to invest with public money in that area as well. Thanks. Thank you for that statement. I know we are over time. I would still take one very short, very, very last question from the floor.

Audience:
Okay, hi. I was going to frame this as a question, but I think I’ll leave it as a comment, and the panel can choose to react or not. I was wondering if you’d think about taking a bottom-up approach to the redressal mechanism to a lot of DBIs, right? We have seen in India that the failure rate of identity system can be really high, and that affects the public welfare delivery system to a lot extent. So, maybe thinking about providing the user with a choice if the digitization or the digital aspect of the verification mechanism does not work, they can go to a person who can help them out, because we’re also dealing with a low level of digital literacy here in a lot of countries. So, thinking about those redressal mechanisms particularly, and then also giving the user a particular level of choice where they can deal with these systems in terms of failures would be interesting. And I wanted to know what DBIs in your respective areas are doing around this, but I guess you can choose to react. Thank you. Thank you so much. Any spontaneous, very short reaction? Yes, Valeria, please.

Valeriya Ionan:
Yes, thank you for the question. So, obviously, when it comes to digital transformation, it’s important to see everything as a one system. In Ukraine, for example, we have projects which are working simultaneously. For example, we have a national program on the development of digital literacy. So, everyone who would like to increase their knowledge of digital literacy, they could do it either online or offline in a special digital centers where there is a gadget and internet connection and a facilitator who can facilitate the first contact between a person and a gadget or the platform. But when it comes, for example, to digital identity and to DIA app, which is our state’s super app and which has 14 digital documents, and I would use this opportunity to remind that Ukraine is the first country in the world where digital passports are totally equivalent to paper or plastic ones. So, for example, DIA does not store any personal data. DIA uses the approach data in transit and connects directly to the high secured state registers and shares basically shows this data. So, that’s a really good question, but probably there is no short and easy answer to that. When it comes to digital transformation in government or in country, to my mind, the most important thing is the vision. In Ukraine, we are building the most convenient digital country in the world. That’s why we are created user-centric and human-centric services and products. And when there is a need to create something new or service, product, whatever, we ask ourselves whether this really brings us closer to our vision, to the most convenient digital country in the world. It’s impossible to build it if you don’t have, if you have a basic level of digital literacy in your country. So, it means that you have to do a lot of measures in this regards. It’s impossible to build the most convenient digital country if you will not have digital services which are available for everyone and which are inclusive. It’s impossible to build digital country if you will not have a digital economy, which is working. It’s impossible if government will not have a specific person who will be responsible for digital transformation in their own sphere and in their level, like national level or regional level. So, the really great question, but I think it’s a topic for probably separate discussion. Thank you.

Aishwarya Salvi:
Thank you so much. I would quickly summarize the entire discussion for our audience. So, sorry to keep you waiting. And then, so in this discussion, largely we need to understand what do we mean by DPI. And when we look at this concept, we need a holistic approach, not just include the hardware, but also the software, because again, there are no boundaries. We also need to look at the demand side. We need to see what the community needs and how they can participate in ensuring that these DPIs are built that are safe and are user-centric. From the government side, we need to make drastic institutional changes, have data officers who are responsible for ensuring that the citizens are using these services and their grievance redressal is in place. So, just a quick summary here, and thank you so much to the audience and our speakers, especially to Pramod, who’s woken up so early in the morning for us. Thank you so much. And thank you, Reena, for joining us in this discussion.