The International Monetary Fund stated in a working paper that India's journey in developing a "world-class digital public infrastructure" highlights the lesson for other nations embarking on their own digital transformation.
According to the working paper titled "Stacking up the Benefits: Lessons from India's Digital Journey," the development of India's stack is governed by a foundational building blocks approach and a focus on supporting ecosystem innovation.
Unbundling the parts of a solution to a set of problems and locating a minimal common core is the building block approach.
The paper says that a building block approach gives people closer to the problem the basic tools they need to make custom solutions for a diverse country like India. The need for interoperability between the various digital public infrastructures (DPIs) and a design that prioritizes competition is implied by the focus on sustaining a vibrant ecosystem. Open standards supported interoperability in India, making it possible for anyone to use India Stack's features.
According to the paper, "These principles are applied to other DPIs in education and health, including the CoWIN vaccine and distribution platform."
"India was able to quickly scale its vaccine delivery and overcome obstacles like widespread internal migration by utilizing a digital backbone. CoWIN's technology has been used in Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Jamaica to make their vaccination programs easier," the paper said.
The role that information technology (IT) plays in the creation of the identity layer has also been acknowledged by India. India already had a variety of identity cards and databases (such as PAN tax ID and ration cards) prior to the introduction of the Aadhar card, but none of them had universal coverage, the promise of being unique, or the capacity to handle more than a billion people.
The paper also talks about how other nations looking into digitization can take lessons from the India's successful operations and implement their own.