‘Leaving no one behind’. This is the powerful but challenging promise that United Nations member-states have pledged to work towards in the pursuit of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). India has discovered some of the ways to move closer to this promise. With a vast and diverse population of 1.4 billion people, the progress made in the past decade to reach out and give social protection to every Indian has been impressive.
One of India’s most powerful tools in this journey has been Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). As the Norwegian Minister of International Development, I am impressed by the development benefits of the use of digital public goods. Aspiring to leave no one behind, India has been able to issue digital identities to almost all its citizens. In turn, this has provided them access to social services, the digital economy, government support services and more. These lessons can be used as a blueprint to maximise international development efforts.
The first is India’s role in accelerating the digital public goods agenda. During India’s G-20 presidency this year, the world saw that digital public goods are part of the international development architecture of the future. India made digital public goods and DPI more tangible. One key step was in getting all G-20 countries to agree to the G-20 Framework for Systems of Digital Public Infrastructure. Arriving at this common framework is an impressive feat. The definition (which describes “a set of shared digital systems” used to “drive development, inclusion, innovation, trust, and competition and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms”) captures the idea behind digital public infrastructure very well.
