The Finance Ministry on August 21 called UPI services a “digital public good”, and said the government was not considering levying charges for them.
- The statement comes four days after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) floated a discussion paper on levying charges in payment systems such as the UPI, NEFT and IMPS.
- On August 17, the RBI issued a discussion paper on charges in payment systems, stating that such charges should be reasonable and competitively determined for users.
What are Digital Public Goods?
- Digital public goods are types of open-source software, models and standards that countries can use to operationalise their digital public infrastructure.
- Digital public goods (DPGs) combine three fundamental characteristics: they are non-rivalrous, non-excludable and globally available.
- Digital public goods are open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm by design, and help attain the SDGs.
Digital public goods open software in India
- ‘Indiastack.global’ is a global repository of key projects implemented under India Stack like Aadhaar, UPI, Digilocker, Cowin Vaccination Platform, Government e-Marketplace (GeM), DIKSHA Platform and Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission. These are open-source digital public goods.
- Indiastack.global offering of India to the Global Public Digital Goods repository will help position India as the leader in building Digital Transformation projects at a population scale and prove to be of immense help to other countries which are looking for such technology solutions.
- Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) aims to create a seamless online platform that will enable interoperability within the digital healthcare ecosystem. The mission has been conceptualized as a set of ‘digital building blocks’. Each building block is seen as a ‘digital public good’ that can be used by any entity in the digital health ecosystem and provides key capabilities that enable the ABDM vision.
About Digital Public Goods Alliance
- The Digital Public Goods Alliance is a multi-stakeholder initiative with a mission to accelerate the attainment of the sustainable development goals in low- and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods.
- The DPGA is governed by a board, which functions as a strategic decision-making and oversight body for the DPGA Secretariat.
- Current board members include the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Government of Sierra Leone, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), iSPIRT, UNDP, and UNICEF.
