Centre Envisions Centralised Portal for Digital Public Goods: Report

The central government is planning to have a unified portal list that'll have all digital public goods including Aadhar, Unified Payments Interface, and Open Network for Digital Commerce, as per a report by Economic Times. The intent is to provide lucid access to apps and services for all.

As per the report, the electronics and information technology department is probably going to oversee the development of the portal and work with all the ministries and their various departments and agencies to describe the digital public infrastructure (DPI) that they have created. 

“Almost all central government departments and even a few states have created their digital public goods (DPGs) which provide different services through apps and platforms. Anyone trying to access a service has to navigate through all of them. A single portal will at least unify all this information along with the steps to access the service,” said a government official while speaking to the Economic Times.

As per the report, government departments might be asked to provide details of the number of people that use the services, details of what the technology is based on, the tasks that are performed by the DPI and more. With several multinational companies seeking the usage of digital public infrastructure, the idea is to promote both easy access for users and ease of doing business for companies.

Further, as per the report, apps and services under DPGs that are currently under development and have not been released for public use may also be listed in the portal for application developers and software engineers in case they wish to collaborate and build on top of the DPI.

As per a report by Nasscom, “With government as the enabler, India has adopted a unique platformisation strategy by building public digital platforms across sectors. The success of these platforms in India is driven by their low-cost development, interoperable design & large scale adoption and reach.” Similarly, as per estimates, the DPG market is expected to grow to a $100 billion global market in the next five to six years.