A Digitalized Social Architecture

Back to the basics - What can create a social architecture that provides digital "Ease of Governance" that a society of more than a Billion requires?

With the stupendous success of the UPI process (automation) based on AADHAAR data (digitization), India is at the forefront of the distinct possibility of automating Governance at scale.

The Pandemic has shown us that digitization at scale - AADHAAR - has fundamentally altered our capacity to innovate solutions at population scale. With UPI we established our capacity to handle the roll-out of Infrastructure /Applications to meet the scale of the problem.

The early phase where Government boldly automated and enhanced digitization, has also seen an aggressive government push towards getting the banking infrastructure democratized to cover 80% of Indians with Bank Accounts - an underlying social requirement. (Source : Statista)

India needs a Digital Highway that allows every individual to purpose their data. Just as a road is a Public Good that allows Private vehicles to operate, analogously, the country needs a Digital Infrastructure that allows individuals to purpose their data, allow it to flow with complete Trust in the infrastructure - that any two parties on either side of a transaction are assured the data is verified and the entire track of the transaction is recorded.

As the blockchain universe tamps down its irrational exuberance on algorithmically self-regulated money, it is time to put the focus back on the blockchain as basic governance infrastructure. The state and its institutional capacity is necessary for a social system to maintain its integrity, and the various roles of participating entities ( Custodian / Issuer / Authorizer /Guarantor etc.,) cannot be wished away through na?ve design.

The securing of digital Immutability and non-tamperability in a blockchain implies that only valid processes can alter the state of data (bringing it to its current state). The state of data presented by everyone on this information infrastructure, as a consequence - is always verified.

Can a simple premise of Digital immutability disintermediate governance ?? YES.

What is required?

It requires Digitized Data to be provided by ISSUERS and this data is owned/ used by end-users (individuals in many cases) to transact using APPS.

The State and various statutory authorities are the Issuers of CREDENTIAL data - essentially its CUSTODIANS, storing data in VAULTS.

INDIVIDUALS are users and OWN their DATA, and purpose through their explicit / implicit content.

VERIFIERS are those who require the data in a transaction. (Ex. A college Admission requires your records)

What is DISINTERMEDIATION in Digitalized Governance?

It is the remediating of access to Government Services using a Digital interface.

It is the ability to transact from anywhere in the country using VERIFIED Digital Records - that makes Governance in the last mile

- Transparent and Trackable (as required / as permitted)

- Available 24X7 - where the process is rules based and can be entirely automated

- Allows Government to respond to service request (particularly emergencies ) in-situ - using aggregate and individual data - triangulation of person/location on a need to know basis.

With a large number of schemes, and a strong intent to effect change in the last mile, we need more innovative capacity and a continued drive to convert policy intent to action. Unleashing our public registries into a framework which provides mobility to the data, with strong governance rules for its use by individuals, and safeguards that protect and simultaneously allow for the capability to innovate applications across domains - is a necessary condition for the next wave of governance innovation.

The time is just right for our Public Policy apparatus to use the inherent capacities that we have built, to unleash a wave of innovation in Governance. Building anticipatory capacity in governance and fundamentally altering the "equilibrium of low expectations" is a distinct possibility.

Reimagining Theodore Lowi's typology - the 4 major areas of public Policy are - Distributive, Redistributive, Regulatory and Constituent. It is the Constituent Part that is critical to Government today, the most fundamental capacity of Government is its Constitutive capability - that moves society along continuous change, with the social legitimacy required to effect change.

Government works by interpreting a structure of possibilities and precedence is only one of them - but, it is always the constitutive capability of Government that is vital to protecting the interests of a billion and moving us forward, to a transparent, high integrity environment of governance.

Data Digitization and Digitalization is a key asset and it is vital to our interests as a country. In the backdrop of weaponization of information assets, it is a necessary condition that we maintain (the custodianship of) these assets securely, and within the country - while ensuring its global mobility for commerce.

The ideational turn in Public Policy is the zeitgeist and a necessity as we address issues of scale, governance and effective delivery to the last mile - and the digitalization of governance is one of the big ideas that needs a comprehensive drive by government fresh from the success of its other initiatives in this area.