Strong stakeholder collaboration celebrated as MOSIP Connect gets underway

The President of the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), Prof Santhanagopalan Rajagopalan, says robust stakeholder collaboration from partner countries and philanthropic donors is at the bedrock of the platform’s sterling results in the six years of its existence.

In a synoptic report highlighting MOSIP’s progress and achievements, the academic said “we are not here to celebrate MOSIP, we are here to celebrate you the stakeholders,” acknowledging that they have received “immense affection, cooperation, guidance, and support from a whole lot of organizations.”

Prof Rajagopalan was speaking at the opening of the three-day MOSIP Connect 2024 which is now underway in Ethiopia. For the next three days (March 5-7), delegates from over 90 countries will share notes, lessons and best practices on forging ahead with the inclusive digital ID agenda.

“Good innovation is only meaningful with good adoption,” he said, further hammering home the vitality of the collaboration and growing interest in the MOSIP project.

17 countries engaged in MOSIP-based ID projects

As part of MOSIP’s achievements, Prof Rajagopalan said the platform, to date, has Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with 17 countries in Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America, all of which are at different levels of their digital ID implementation.

The journey in the last six years has come with many lessons, said the MOSIP President, adding that one of such lessons is the fact that the Global South can work and succeed on its own on development matters, without necessarily relying on any other party. This, he said, is exemplified by countries such as Morocco which have successfully, and almost singlehandedly, implemented MOSIP-based national ID and social registry schemes, proving vital for the socio-economic advancement of the country.

He added that this year, MOSIP also crossed the 110 million mark for digital ID enrollments by countries using the platform for identity and civil registration projects, a feat that reflects their commitment towards building good ID systems and maintaining the steam of team work and fruitful collaboration.

In an earlier intervention, the Executive Director of IIT Bangalore, the University where MOSIP is incubated, Prof D Das, also expressed immense gratitude to MOSIP’s partners, who are contributing to making sense out of the open-source technology. “Technology, when harnessed properly, has the power and potential to address some of the world’s biggest problems. MOSIP has been doing just that,” said Prof Das.

While enumerating some of the advantages of open source technologies, the official noted that MOSIP is also interested in capacity building and sustainability for digital ID that is designed to render the maximum of service delivery benefits.

MOSIP’s technology stack

Following up on MOSIP’s success with another presentation, Nagarajan Santhanam, chief dissemination officer at MOSIP, explained the platform’s entire technology stack which he said is premised on five aspects, to wit, identity and verification, events and data sharing, credentials and consent, schemes and benefits delivery, and third-party services with governments and the private sector.

Speaking further on MOSIP’s MoUs, Santhanam said of the 17 countries concerned, seven of them are at the level of national rollout and they include Morocco, Philippines, Ethiopia, Togo, Uganda, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

The other ten countries which are at different levels of trial are Guinea, Niger, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Congo, Peru, Nigeria, Mexico and Zambia.

Appreciating the diversity of MOSIP-based project undertakings, Santhanam said “the different flavours of implementation make the whole program so interesting,” suggesting there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Leveraging MOSIP for other DPI services

Apart from helping in the establishment of ID systems or helping in improving existing ones, MOSIP is interested in seeing how countries can leverage the platform to build other related digital public infrastructure services, said Santhanam.

Another MOSIP-focused presentation delved into the platform’s core implementation principles of modularity, inclusion and privacy. Here, two MOSIP staff explained the platform’s role in the building of trusted ID and how it is serving as a backbone to empower authorities manage the entire lifecycle of their identity systems.

In this session, one of many which went on simultaneously, two of MOSIP’s ID verification and authentication products, the eSignet and INJI were also elaborately explained. eSignet is an online verification system which was used for a pilot in Cambodia, while the INJI is an upcoming digital wallet and authenticator – a trusted and inclusive mobile wallet which will be used to securely download, store and share verifiable credentials. It is yet to be officially rolled out.

This first day at MOSIP Connect has been spiced by a rich gamut of multi-topic presentations, fireside chats, networking moments and an exhibition in the “solution discovery” hall by over 50 biometrics and digital ID companies drawn from all the corners of the globe.

Article Topics

digital ID  |  digital public infrastructure  |  MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform)  |  MOSIP Connect 2024