Public Digital platforms (PDPs) enable delivery of critical services such as payments, digital identity, and data at scale, through a collaboration between various actors in the digital economy and in the preferred local language. India’s Aadhaar and Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-led financial inclusion is a prominent example of PDPs generating innovation in both the public and private sector. PDPs help to streamline the welfare delivery mechanism and ensure transparency and good governance. PDPs are often built on open-source software, with open application programming interfaces (APIs), open data, and open standards. This allows the ‘building blocks’ of PDPs to be accessible, promotes transparency, and enables interoperability in digital public infrastructure and services. Despite the advantages, development and large scale deployment of PDPs poses a variety of challenges including privacy and security risks, exacerbation of existing inequities due to access, adoption, and usage constraints and capacity gaps.

This sub-theme will explore discussions on important issues of governance including (but not limited to):