FAQs
Commonly asked questions and its responses
About DIGIT
What is DIGIT?
Digital Infrastructure for Governance, Impact & Transformation (DIGIT) is an open-source platform that helps governments deliver public services reliably. The platform enables effortless collaboration within or across government bodies ensuring administrators and policymakers have access to the data needed for decision-making. Further, it provides frontline employees and government contractors with the information and tools needed on the ground to deliver services. The platform is continuously evolving with the needs and requirements of the governments to serve the changing needs and aspirations of their citizens.
Being open source, the platform empowers market players to design and implement innovative solutions that resolve societal problems. The open digital ecosystem empowers our partners to build system capabilities and run programs that assist ease of living, enable the development of local solutions and accelerate the impact on the ground.
The DIGIT platform is globally recognized for resolving e-governance challenges and is certified as a Digital Public Good (DPG) by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA). Find the DIGIT platform in the DPG registry along with a host of other globally recognized DPGs.
What is the background and story of DIGIT?
DIGIT - Builds state capacity for public sector delivery through DPIs (Digital Public Infrastructure). It improves the translation of policy intent into on-ground execution. We started our journey with a vision of good governance being supported and enhanced by a digital backbone. We had seen that local governments had poor capacity due to:
human resource deficits (both adequate numbers and skill levels of staff)
financial deficits (ability to mobilise own revenues as well as the ability to spend in a strategic manner
policy blockers (either lack of policies or often multiple contradictory policies in the same domain)
We developed DIGIT to address these challenges:
shifting drudgework away from staff to digital systems (routine, repeatable, codified tasks are easier to automate/disintermediate) to drive improved efficiency in public service delivery
improving resource mobilisation by easing demand generation and collections of taxes, user charges, fees, licences etc
Surfacing relevant data to government administrators and functionaries to enable timely decision-making and action.
Who are the primary users of DIGIT?
Citizens - to avail, apply, track, pay service fees, and raise complaints for services.
Governments - to interact with the citizens, provide services and collect feedback.
Field employees/officers - primary users responsible for the daily operations and service delivery.
Administrators/decision makers - use dashboards to view progress on how services are being adopted by citizens and take course corrective actions and policy changes accordingly.
What are the benefits for governments or agencies using DIGIT?
Essentially, the benefits of this open-source platform can be viewed from short to long-term perspectives. The pointers below provide the phase-wise adoption impacts of the DIGIT platform as evidenced during DIGIT implementations.
First phase: Coordination costs decrease as the execution focuses on improving existing processes.
Second phase: Data-driven reforms and performance management enabled by more consistent, granular and timely data generated by the DPIs.
Third phase: Interoperability of DPIs across departments and ministries improves targeting of policy interventions and speed of execution and improved financial and operational efficiency.
Governments use DIGIT to enable DPIs for public service delivery and governance. The platform serves multiple domains including urban governance (collecting taxes and fees, providing certificates, services, and resolving grievances), improving sanitation management, strengthening public health systems, enabling better public finance management, and managing rural water supply operations to name a few. The implementations have improved state capacity through:
Consistent improvement in revenue collections across all geographies (this is often a leading indicator of state capacity).
Reduction in employee burden – across various geographical locations DIGIT delivers average time savings of 6 hours per week to frontline workers (findings from lean data survey).
Streamlined/re-engineered policies that reduce the paperwork and process burden on frontline workers and citizens.
Find more about the DIGIT value proposition here.
What is the DIGIT value proposition?
The DIGIT value proposition highlights the key capabilities and aspirations that form the foundational base of the technology platform. Accelerated reforms, trustworthiness, productivity, adoption, sustainability, ease of access, quick deployment, a strong network of system integrators, support and global recognition - These buzzwords reflect the robust design of the DPIs built on this platform, geared to resolve complex societal problems. DIGIT has carved its own niche space with its open-source platform that leverages the capabilities of microservice design to promote responsive and agile governance solutions.
Find more about the DIGIT value proposition here.
What are the DIGIT platform capabilities?
DIGIT is a technology platform that offers multiple building blocks or microservices that can be reused by products or applications. The platform focuses on inclusion and is designed on the principle of enhancing both platform openness and choice for citizens. The platform uses open APIs and standards, creating a powerful framework to drive convergence across multiple systems currently in use and to lower the barrier to entry for locally-developed solutions.
Explore the DIGIT platform features in detail here.
What are the current applications/modules hosted on DIGIT?
DIGIT offers multiple modules that facilitate citizen services ranging from submitting public grievances to applying for trade licences, water or sewerage connections, paying property taxes or submitting applications for building permits. The platform also offers public finance management and faecal sludge management applications designed to ease the governance of funds and improve sanitation.
More about DIGIT modules here.
What are the upcoming features in DIGIT?
Planned release features and future enhancements for the next 4 quarters are available in our roadmap here.
I want to see a demo of DIGIT. Where can I see it?
Access details for the demo of DIGIT applications and features are available below:
To browse as a citizen, click here.
To browse as an employee, click here.
Additional details on how to access the demo instances are available here.
You can also access the multiple videos on our DIGIT Youtube channel as well that provide a detailed walkthrough of the DIGIT modules and platform capabilities.
Technical FAQs
What are the open source tools used to build, deploy and operate the DIGIT platform?
The list of open-source tools used is listed here.
What are the common DIGIT platform services that I can reuse?
List and details of common platform services such as notifications, file store, telemetry, payment gateway are listed here.
Where can I find details about DIGIT architecture?
DIGIT is a microservices-based platform that is built to scale. All details about the architecture can be found here.
What are the setup requirements? What technical skills do I need to set up or use DIGIT?
Setup requirements and technical skills required on the team can be found here.
Does DIGIT offer analytics dashboards for visualisation of data?
Yes, the DIGIT National Dashboard Ingest service provides a one-stop framework for ingesting data from defined sources based on configuration. More about dashboards here.
Is it interoperable with other DPGs? Can it interoperate with other systems?
DIGIT uses micro-service architecture and is interoperable with other DPGs exposing integration APIs
Relevant integration adaptors/connectors would need to be developed for this integration
For example -
What does “Building Blocks Approach” mean?
Digital building blocks are conceptually similar to physical building blocks with a few key differences
Easier and (almost) free to replicate
Exchange info to complete a task
Can be simultaneously used
Evolved differently in multiple solutions
Building blocks are the key design choice to enable solutions to evolve. The following diagram conceptually illustrates how building blocks make evolution possible.
Last updated