India’s experiments with expanding public digital infrastructure, starting with Aadhar, moving along to UPI and culminating in the digital transformation of eCommerce through ONDC is finding favor at a global level. In fact, seven countries are on the verge of signing up to use India Stack’s public infrastructure solutions.
A report published in the ET quoted IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar as saying that the agreements would be signed during the World Government Summit scheduled at Dubai on February 13 where more than 140 participating countries would be present. The report further quoted sources to state that most countries found DigiLocker, the secure cloud-based platform capable of storing and sharing verified government-issued documents.
Already some platforms are fetching interest
Some of the other platforms that garnered interest include the modular open source identity platform that is the backbone behind Aadhar, the unified payments interface that decentralized payments, the covid-19 health stack, the digital infrastructure for knowledge sharing and the national digital education architecture – both involved in streamlining the knowledge economy.
The IT Minister also told media representatives that a developers’ conference starting today is also hosting foreign embassies, startups, state and central government representatives as well as app developers and system integrators. He said this would help countries intending to use India Stack but do not have the digital infrastructure or know-how to implement on top of it.
The Minister further made the point that India would offer certification courses to create and train certified developers and system integrators who can help other countries integrate their existing digital infrastructure with the APIs of various digital public goods that form the India Stack.
The article quoted sources to state that France, Dubai and Singapore had already evinced plans to use UPI, which has also been offered to all central banks across the world. Agreements with the regulators of these countries would kickstart the real activity around use of digital stack and in case financial institutions or regulators are interested, Indian companies and app developers could follow where the UPI goes.
