Overview
Digital Infrastructure for Governance and Inclusive Transformation
Digital Infrastructure for Governance and Inclusive Transformation (DIGIT) is an open-source, scalable, interoperable platform for responsive public service delivery and good governance. It enables governments to digitize public service delivery with intuitive interfaces for citizens, front-line employees and administrators. DIGIT enables a seamless and unified exchange of information between citizens, employees & vendors, administrators and policymakers. DIGIT is an open-source platform built for scale. It enables the digital transformation of multiple government departments and is highly flexible enabling it to serve a variety of needs.
Motivation For Building Governance Platform
Government bodies deliver and manage a host of public services. Technology is the enabler in providing the infrastructure for seamless management and governance. The key challenge here is the several limitations (listed below) facing the effective adoption and implementation of technology, especially in low and middle-income countries.
Multiple Similar Systems - In a federated government structure, multiple agencies operate at national, regional, and local levels, each implementing its custom-built systems. The system architecture is often hard-wired to support specific requirements of individual ministries, departments and agencies for distinct sectors. These systems, though similar, cannot be reused in case the policies change in future.
DIGIT as a technology platform deals with federation within governance at national, regional and local levels. It also serves the individual ministries, departments and agencies within a sector. Therefore a federated approach to architecture is baked into the design of the platform to address the realities of how governments work.
Scalability Issues - Most of these applications are not scalable in terms of meeting the evolving demands of a growing population or achieving streamlined governance objectives. The scope of localised systems is limited to specific goals that often include data collection or coordination between stakeholders. This restricts the scope for promoting ease of service delivery.
DIGIT is a scalable platform that addresses the requirements of populous countries as well as smaller countries effectively. DIGIT drives improvements in governance and public service delivery initiatives.
Data Fragmentation - The existing systems cannot exchange data with other applications. Data is locked in siloed applications. Administrators find it difficult to get a unified view of the data to monitor performance and identify areas of improvement.
The foundations of effective governance and robust policy-making are built on high-quality data and coordination across multiple agencies and ministries. DIGIT enables this through data registries that enable a shared source of truth and robust interoperability across institutional and systemic boundaries.
Vendor Lock-In - Proprietary systems do not support scalable solutions that evolve with changing requirements.
Countries must have the ability to control and manage their data and systems as per their national priorities. DIGIT enables this as it is open source, free to use and is backed by a wide ecosystem of vendors enabling governments to switch service providers without losing strategic control.
Multiple other challenges like security concerns and limited technical capabilities hinder the government's ability to effectively utilise technology for large-scale public service delivery.
Well-designed technology ensures public service delivery is inclusive and accessible to all citizens. The DIGIT platform contains a set of reusable building blocks built using robust design principles that can accelerate the digital transformation of public service delivery systems.
Refer to the DIGIT platform design principles page.
Typical Public Service Design
A typical public service delivery starts with a citizen applying for a service or a service connection. The diagram below abstracts the typical information exchange flow required to enable the delivery of a service.
A digital system offers the following capabilities to improve citizen experience:
Register/Login - Citizens can register, sign in, or authenticate themselves. Single sign-on capability streamlines access to digital services.
Apply/Upload - Citizens can request services by completing an application form and uploading necessary documents. Services should be accessible through multiple channels and in various languages.
Pay/Bill - Citizens can make payments for services and download bills. Multiple payment options, including digital and cash, should be available..
Inform/Track - Citizens can track service progress or receive updates via SMS, email, or app notifications.
Support/Feedback - Citizens can raise support requests or provide feedback on service closure. The system should allow configuring surveys and feedback forms, with the ability to analyse responses for corrective action.
The following capabilities support the employee and management experience:
Assign - Employees or vendors can assign service applications or trigger workflows tailored to different user/agency local requirements.
Search/View - Employees or vendors can search for and view applications based on multiple attributes.
Update/Comment - Employees can update and comment on service applications, facilitating structured and unstructured data exchange between parties.
Deliver/Verify- Employees or vendors can deliver services, such as setting up a new connection, or verify and certify information provided by citizens. Offline-capable apps are crucial in low mobile coverage areas, with data synchronization capabilities to handle load spikes.
Monitor/Improve - Administrators can monitor service performance and identify areas for improvement. All transactions should generate data events in an analytical database for comprehensive performance monitoring.
Plan/Budget - Administrators and policymakers can plan and budget for service improvement, linking expenditures to outcomes.
DIGIT Service Design
DIGIT offers a set of building blocks (i.e. services) that can leveraged to develop any digital services while adhering to the key design principles. Additionally, DIGIT provides optional accelerators like DIGIT UI and Dashboard Framework that can be extended to create citizen, employee and administrator dashboards.
The diagram below illustrates how reusable building blocks interact to realise a typical public service delivery. Leveraging reusable building blocks not only speeds up delivery but also ensures well-structured digital services. The interactions between these services are detailed in the Service Architecture.
All services are built on DIGIT emits micro-level transactional data into an analytical database. This is key for real-time monitoring and auditing of the operations. It facilitates planning, budgeting and policy decision-making.
DIGIT is proven and well-supported serving over 1000 cities. Ecosystem partners including System Integrators are using DIGIT to build and deliver services. DIGIT Core LTS 2.9 version comes with long-term support. This implies that any technical issues like security or performance reported on any of these services in the DIGIT Core 2.9 LTS version will be fixed by the DIGIT team.
If you want to experience DIGIT or develop on DIGIT, you can also access the DIGIT demo using Sandbox.
DIGIT comes with several accelerators. These include UI frameworks and Integration Adapters. These are optional. You may choose to develop or reuse your UI framework and Integration Adapters.
We organize several events for architects and developers on DIGIT. Keep a watch on the Events Page for upcoming events.
Several volunteers are contributing to DIGIT in many ways. If you want to volunteer, check out our contribute page.
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