India has big plans to export its e-government technology

By Leo Mirani

Buried on page 22 of the 29-page G20 leaders’ declaration (excluding annexures), produced in New Delhi in September and endorsed by the world’s biggest economies, is a section with the anodyne title of “Technological Transformation and Digital Public Infrastructure”. It is filled with the sort of forgettable jargon that big diplomatic summits are notorious for producing. It is also something that the world should expect to hear a lot more about in 2024.

The statement defines digital public infrastructure (DPI) as “a set of shared digital systems [that] can enable delivery of services at societal scale.” That means things like biometric identity systems, digital payments and data management. Over the past decade India has taken advantage of its huge pool of skilled technical labour to build such services for its own citizens. Aadhaar, its digital-identity system, now covers nearly the entire population of 1.4bn. Transactions on its United Payments Interface (UPI) are growing rapidly—more than 10bn payments and transfers were made in August 2023, up from 1bn in October 2019. DigiLocker, an online warehouse for official documents such as drivers’ licences and tax records, has made dealing with India’s tiresome bureaucracy easier.