Digital Public Goods & How India is Dealing with it?

Heard of Digital Public Goods? It usually is recognized when said “Open-source Software”. Digital public goods are open-source software, AI models, data sets, open data, open standards, and open content that are publicly available and also are non-excludable and non-rivalrous.

These digital public goods (DPG) can be used by anyone for any advanced modification or re-using as their source code is publicly available. For it to be publicly available an open-source license has to be legally available for it to be universally available. Once after that you cannot prevent anyone from using it and its quantity also wouldn’t be diminishing for further other’s consumption.

Digital public goods are modern solutions that are built to solve modern challenges. They are used not only to build other products but also to solve many of mankind’s problems like a platform that helps social welfare programs, gender and child-based support platform, volunteering platforms, etc.

How will DPG have an effect on the Indian economy? Let’s see:

· There are countless MSMEs in India and they can certainly deliver their services faster using DPG.

· India can make use of DPG to build healthcare platforms that are advanced and that can reach all the nooks and corners of the country.

· The youth population is high in our country and can make use of DPG to build platforms that brig social welfare to the elderly, women, and children.

Although Digital Public Goods have numerous benefits, India is certainly facing challenges in using them. Let’s see what they are:

· There are obvious privacy issues where data can be highly misused.

· Digital literacy is still a major gap in the Indian ecosystem.

· Lack of End-to-End Encryption of Data on these goods is still a major loophole.

· Non-Citizen-centric digital goods can halt many people from using them.

India’s digital initiatives have been proven to be phenomenal till date. Making the best use of Digital Public Goods for the nation's and the world's welfare can bring a humongous shift in our economy.