‘Future Alliance’ part of India’s big G20 push

The G20 summit under the Indian presidency is likely to see the emergence of an India-led multilateral and multi-stakeholder institution dedicated to taking the Indian experience of digital public infrastructure global — the One Future Alliance. OFA will aim to build capacity, provide funding, offer technical assistance and synergise global efforts in the domain of DPI and will be supplemented by a new Global DPI Repository, which will emerge as a virtual and voluntary bank of DPI initiatives of G20 members. The outcome document and chair’s summary after the digital economy ministers met in Bengaluru on August 19 described DPI as a “set of shared digital systems that should be secure and interoperable, and can be built on open standards and specifications to deliver and provide equitable access to public and/or private services at societal scale and are governed by applicable legal frameworks and enabling rules to drive development, inclusion, innovation, trust, and competition and respect human rights and freedom”. The ministerial had then recognised the discussions of a proposal initiated by the Indian presidency to set up the OFA, “a voluntary initiative that aims to bring together governments, the private sector, academic and research institutions, donor agencies, civil society organisations and other relevant stakeholders and existing mechanisms to synergise global efforts in the DPI ecosystem”. “Given India’s own deep investments in DPI and the fact that it has been tested at a population scale like nowhere else in the world, the country could invest in the creation of a multistakeholder institution to start with, set it up for India to permanently appoint a chair, invest funds to create an organisation, and do so necessarily alongside partners, incumbent multilaterals, the private sector, academic institutions, the rich global DPI ecosystem, and donors and knowledge partners alike.” This, Chaudhary said, will help “synchronise funding strategies”; over time “house a fund to support capacity building and DPI deployment”; provide capacity and technical support in countries which seek DPI; provide a single window to coordinate capacity support from enquiries to deployment; and become home to the Global DPI repository.