How do we build India’s National Open Digital Ecosystem?
The Ministry of Electronics of Information Technology (MeITY) has released a consultation paper on Strategy for National Open Digital Ecosystem. The aim of the consultation process is to come up with principles for design, governance and to strategize the national open digital ecosystem of next generation citizen delivery platforms. The paper traces the evolution of e-Governance in India and categories them into different versions of GovTech ranging from 1.0 to the current version of 3.0. Examples of GovTech 3.0 are GSTN, UPI and other upcoming stacks.
The paper has quite a set of new terms which deserves a separate dictionary with some definitions offered while others need to be inferred. The most important term GovTech 3.0 or NODE is defined as “Open and secure delivery platforms, anchored by transparent governance mechanisms, which enable a community of partners to unlock innovative solutions, to transform societal outcomes”. In plain terms NODE essentially is a tech delivery platform consisting of APIs, data registries, exchanges, stacks to help build citizen delivery products controlled by a Special Purpose Vehicle built using public private partnership.
To achieve this the paper discusses a set of 15 principles in the domains of platform design, platform governance and building a vibrant community. The principles are being open and interoperable, reusable and shareable, be scalable, ensure security and privacy, adopting an agile, data-driven development method, having accountable institution(s), establishing rules of engagement, creating transparent data governance, ensuring capacity, adopting a financial model, ensure inclusiveness, facilitate participatory design, drive user engagement, be analytical driven with the last one being enable grievance redressal.
The advantages of building NODE is illustrated citing the example of e-Transport project of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH). The journey of the e-Transport project which was built as one of the 31 Mission Mode Projects of the National e-Governance Plan is quite interesting. The ministry helped digitize issuing of vehicle registrations and driver’s licenses making it easier for citizens to obtain them, creating dashboards with analytics. It now integrates a National Vehicle Register and State Vehicle Registers with data interlinked across databases with access to government institutions like Police, National Crime Records Bureau and private institutions like banks and insurance companies.
A set of future possible nodes in the sectors of Skilling, Agriculture, MSME and State Service Delivery are cited as further examples. The architecture for NODE at some level is inspired from India Enterprise Architecture (IndiaEA), which recommends interlinking of all government databases with a new approach termed “Whole of Government (WofG)”. IndiaEA wants to help build One Nation One Government with its approach. This interlinking of all government databases is made possible by bringing in digital standards in e-Governance called Digital Service Standards.
The paper touches upon risks of building these platforms including potential for exclusion of citizens, security issues and potential violations of privacy and possible weaponization of data. Over the years it has become clear that technology systems can be manipulated or simply mal-function and can become a major issue. The questions posed in the paper want to address some of these issues. While the paper kept away from discussing any existing examples of known problems of data registries, stacks. To illustrate these potential anticipated problems that are possible with NODE, let’s look at an existing system that is already accepted as a NODE in the paper; e-transport project.
While the e-transport project is being termed a technology marvel, several components of it have recently come under heavy criticism. The Vahan database until recently has been publicly allowing anyone to check the personal information of any vehicle owner. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways also sold this information to private firms without the consent of the vehicle owner assuming implied consent and ownership of information. Not limited to these issues, the e-transport project has centralized governance of transport which is a state subject according to the constitution. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had stopped allowing states to register new vehicles online unless they followed centre rules on number plates. A clear case of excessive intrusion by the centre into the state’s affairs.
It is important how technology is built and used for governance in India. The technology communities in India have an important role to play and ensure they are just and fair. Interestingly in the paper, community only comprises Government, foundations, think tanks, businesses and entrepreneurs. Specifically categorizing them into builders and end-users consisting of consumers of the delivery platform. While the paper extensively cites terms like open-source, open-standards, open-data, open-API the exclusion of open-source communities is unfortunate.
The definition of most terms also need to be viewed from the lens of consultants who drafted it for the ministry. The word open itself is tricky and unless explicitly explained is prone to be mis-understood or used in wrong contexts.
The term “open” in NODE refers to principles of openness, including but not limited to transparency, accessibility, inter- operability, open APIs and standards and open source code, where appropriate. However, it must be noted that each NODE will have its own configuration and degree of “openness”, which may introduce certain limitations in order to adhere to specific objectives, context or to mitigate potential risks
Even though clarification for the term open is explicitly cited, none of the existing national registers, stacks, platforms or existing potential NODEs are open in any way close to the definition. The entire paper and building various NODEs could all be an interesting exercise of open-washing to just sell a consumer product while openness is just ignored.
