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‘Future Alliance’ part of India’s big G20 push
Given the complexities involved in setting up a multilateral institution, there may be an in-principle nod to the idea of the OFA at the summit
The G20 summit under the Indian presidency is likely to see the emergence of an India-led multilateral and multi-stakeholder institution dedicated to taking the Indian experience of digital public infrastructure (DPI) global — the One Future Alliance (OFA).
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After the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, if all of a set of G20 members approve, OFA will be the third major international institution to be pioneered by India under the Narendra Modi government.
OFA and the One Future Fund, which is aimed at helping developing countries adopt DPI, were both discussed at the conceptual level at the June meeting of the Digital Economy Working Group of G20, with the idea of OFA then subsequently discussed at the digital economy ministerial in August.
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OFA will aim to build capacity, provide funding, offer technical assistance and synergise global efforts in the domain of DPI and will be supplemented by a new Global DPI Repository, which will emerge as a virtual and voluntary bank of DPI initiatives of G20 members.
While subject to the approval of leaders, people familiar with discussions on the subject said that OFA is likely to be headquartered in India and led by an Indian, but with the participation of other governments as well as private sector players, donors, and civil society outfits. Given the complexities involved in setting up a multilateral institution, there may be an in-principle nod to the idea of the OFA at the summit, while leaving the more specific modalities of how it will take shape for future discussions.
India is widely seen as a global leader in DPI. It has pioneered India Stack, a moniker for the application programming interfaces (APIs), a set of codes that allow different digital verticals to speak to each other. From a unique national digital identity (Aadhaar) that, among other things, enabled dramatic financial inclusion of the poor to a unique payment interface (UPI) that has revolutionised digital payments and made India a leader in the domain, from Co-Win (the platform that enabled India’s vaccination drive during the Covid-19 pandemic) to Digilocker and account aggregator, India has used an underlying public architecture to spur both inclusion and innovation and improve welfare delivery.
It is in this backdrop that discussions on OFA are in the final stages both internally within the Indian government, and with external partners.
The outcome document and chair’s summary after the digital economy ministers met in Bengaluru on August 19 described DPI as a “set of shared digital systems that should be secure and interoperable, and can be built on open standards and specifications to deliver and provide equitable access to public and/or private services at societal scale and are governed by applicable legal frameworks and enabling rules to drive development, inclusion, innovation, trust, and competition and respect human rights and freedom”.
This was the first time that G20 had arrived at a full definition of the idea of DPI and people familiar with the negotiations that preceded the text suggest that there were intensive deliberations on each word in the text. It encapsulates the idea of the public but also underlines the importance of the private sector, the principle of competition, and the implications for innovation to allay apprehensions of western economies where the private sector had expressed concerns about being pushed out of the market. It emphasises the principles of openness, security and interoperability that have been central to the Indian experiment. It speaks of respect for freedoms to allay apprehensions about DPI aiding the State’s surveillance capacity. And it leaves enough room for countries to adopt their own particular methods by acknowledging the diverse legal frameworks in play, and subsequently speaks of how different terminologies can be used.
The August ministerial also adopted the G20 framework for Systems of DPI, and acknowledged the growing demand for financing and implementation of DPI in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). At the same time, it recognised that without “adequate safeguards, sustained financing and technical assistance”, there could be “poorly developed DPIs” running the risks of data breaches, privacy violations, violation of intellectual property rights and security being undermined.
The G20 ministerial, once again for the first time, recognised the need for a “global multistakeholders” approach to “build capacity, provide technical assistance and adequate funding support” for implementation of a “robust, inclusive, human-centric and sustainable DPIs in LMICs”.
The ministerial had then recognised the discussions of a proposal initiated by the Indian presidency to set up the OFA, “a voluntary initiative that aims to bring together governments, the private sector, academic and research institutions, donor agencies, civil society organisations and other relevant stakeholders and existing mechanisms to synergise global efforts in the DPI ecosystem”. The ministerial had also welcomed India’s plan to build a Global DPI Repository, a voluntary and virtual repository of DPI shared by G20 members, with the aim of sharing practices and experiences of development and deployment of DPI.
Since then, it is understood that the proposal has taken more concrete forms with India keen to push forward a new multilateral institution dedicated to DPI. In his piece on the G20, published in Hindustan Times on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “The solutions we have built using our DPI have now been recognised globally. Now, through the G20, we will help developing countries adapt, build, and scale DPI to unlock the power of inclusive growth.” OFA is likely to be the institutional mechanism to do this, with India taking the lead.
Experts who have followed the negotiations around DPI carefully over the past year believe that OFA can play a major role in taking the Indian experience globally in specific forms.
In a recent piece, Rudra Chaudhary, the director of Carnegie India, noted that OFA or a similar DPI institution will serve as “a concrete institutional outcome of a presidency that has done so much to socialise the import of DPI” and serve as a multilateral based in India. “Given India’s own deep investments in DPI and the fact that it has been tested at a population scale like nowhere else in the world, the country could invest in the creation of a multistakeholder institution to start with, set it up for India to permanently appoint a chair, invest funds to create an organisation, and do so necessarily alongside partners, incumbent multilaterals, the private sector, academic institutions, the rich global DPI ecosystem, and donors and knowledge partners alike.”
This, Chaudhary said, will help “synchronise funding strategies”; over time “house a fund to support capacity building and DPI deployment”; provide capacity and technical support in countries which seek DPI; provide a single window to coordinate capacity support from enquiries to deployment; and become home to the Global DPI repository.
To be sure, the final decision on the institution, the shape and mandate of the institution, and the resources available to the institution are yet to be taken and endorsed. But the momentum, those familiar with the negotiation process suggest, is inexorably moving towards the creation of India’s third big multilateral initiative in less than a decade.
