Op-eds

Free and Open Source Software has great potential in government applications: In an opinion piece published in the Indian Express, Abhishek Singh, CEO MyGov and National eGovernance Division, Government of India, and Varad Pande, Partner Omidyar Network India, outline four steps to unlock the potential of FOSS in GovTech – create incentives to increase the uptake of FOSS, curate a repository of “GovTech ready” building blocks, foster FOSS innovations within the community, and establish a credible institutional anchor. [Read More]

How to bring digital inclusion to the people who need it most — Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) can be a global force for good with responsible public-private sector collaboration. This piece, co-authored by Omidyar Network’s Govind Shivkumar, explains. [Read More]

Research

DIGITAL INDIA: Digital Public Goods Platformisation Play — A recent report by NASSCOM spotlights India’s adoption of a unique platformisation strategy. It underscores how public digital platforms can play a critical role in achieving the $5 trillion economy goal by building new solutions for service delivery, at population scale and lower cost. The report also references the ONI-BCG report on ‘Building Digital Highways’ and its findings on ODEs.

News

Account aggregators: New framework to access, share financial data: In September, eight major Indian banks joined the Account Aggregator network that will enable customers to easily access and share their financial information, acting as a digital footprint for users. [Read More]

Point/Counterpoint

How Technology can drive change in Indian Agriculture: In this opinion piece in YourStory, Hemendra Mathur suggests that farmers are ready to embrace digital solutions and a platform like AgriStack can catalyse change. [Read More]

India’s digital database for farmers stirs fears about privacy, exclusion:  This article in the Hindu Business Line suggests that data protection regulation is required to mitigate the risk of exploitation and exclusion of farmers. [Read More]  “