It is our privilege to have featured on ID4Africa’s Livecast on ‘Digital Public Goods Initiatives as Pathways to Identity Development’ on 3 December 2020. Sharing a global stage with Identity and Development experts on the invitation of ID4Africa which is accelerating the value and realization of digital fID systems through multiple players, was highly encouraging. This follows our recent recognition as a digital public good by Digital Public Goods Alliance.
Keynote sets the stage
After a fitting introduction by the host and moderator, Dr Joseph Atick, Executive Chairman, ID4Africa, the session opened with a keynote on the ‘Principles for Identification for Sustainable Development’ by Vyjayanti Desai, Program Manager, ID4D – World Bank. She spoke of the purpose and common vision of ‘Good ID’, and 10 principles centered around inclusion, design and governance, and their impact. Four of these principles promote and are enabled by Digital Public Goods (DPGs), with potential to accelerate inclusive and trusted digital ID systems, advance principles, and be part of a broader digital infrastructure. She also highlighted the importance of digital IDs in the wake of COVID-19, benefits of designing ID systems as part of a broader digital stack, and how DPGs such as open software and standards are essential to realize the principles at scale.
MOSIP shares the spotlight
The Rapid-Fire Open Source presentations included those by Liv Marte Nordhaug, Co-lead, Digital Public Goods Alliance (DGPA) and Sanjay Jain, Chairperson of MOSIP’s Technology Committee.
Beyond the genesis and intent of DGPA to help accelerate achieving SDGs in low- and middle-income countries through discovery, development, use of and investment in DPGs, Liv outlined DGPA’s roadmap and mandate to implement DGPs as a response to COVID-19 and realizing SDGs. She further defined ‘public’ as being financially inclusive, and DPGs in accordance with the roadmap, core characteristics (open source with transparency in design) and type (foundational and functional). She highlighted the importance of DGP technologies to help countries build their foundational infrastructures, enable inclusion and financial service delivery, and have an impact across multiple SDGs. Being open source, she illustrated how they facilitate sandboxing and pilots to evaluate technology integration in new use cases. MOSIP and Open CRVS were showcased for pilot integrations leveraging open-source technologies.
MOSIP: A DGP with significant impact and potential
After briefly introducing MOSIP as a robust open source platform to build national digital ID systems, Sanjay outlined how it covers the entire ID lifecycle. He delved into dimensions that make MOSIP a DGP that enables identities – Open Source, platform approach that unbundles a monolithic ID system, interfaces-specifications-standards to enable interoperability and prevent vendor lock-in, future readiness through latest technology adoption, and sovereignty to allow countries control, continuity and choice, among others. He also touched upon MOSIP’s capacity building capability to help countries make changes and reduce cost, strong ecosystem of support, and data security features. He emphasized the need for trust as an underlying factor in new digital economies, and how open source ID systems like MOSIP play a critical role in providing ID verification as a service for governance and economy.
Later, he walked the audience through MOSIP’s journey -- releases, country adopters and stages of implementation, reference integrations, and working and advisory groups. He stressed on MOSIP’s holistic value via an ecosystem of commercial and biometric integrations, contributors, university collaborations and developer communities, before deep diving into MOSIP’s focus on Africa. He also provided an overview of critical success factors for countries and MOSIPs support of these and other areas of ID such as financial inclusion and borderless economy.
In closing, he shared MOSIP’s vision for a digital future as an interoperable, inclusive, and trusted DPG from the perspectives of people, ecosystems, and countries.
Watch MOSIP’s presentation here.
No better endorsement than testimonies!
It was humbling for MOSIP to be referred to and endorsed by DGPA, CRVS, and in the country testimonies of Ethiopia and the Republic of Guinea who are leveraging MOSIP to pilot fID systems specific to their needs.
The audience questions indicated encouraging interest in MOSIP and its potential for collaboration and impact.
Grateful for this unique opportunity, MOSIP now looks forward to engaging with global experts and collaborators to blaze the trail of Digital Public Goods Initiatives as Pathways to Identity Development leveraging Open Source.
Watch the country testimonials here.
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