Digital ID community steps up: reflections from MOSIP Connect 2025

If the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) is like a jeepney racing to bring countries to their digital ID goals, control over the steering wheel will have to be handed off with care. At MOSIP Connect 2025, held in Manila, Philippines in March, early signs of that process were noticeable.

Ted Dunstone is CEO of BixeLab, the first lab accredited to certify biometric hardware under MOSIP’s new MACP device certification program, but he is also the chair of MOSIP’s Technical Committee.

He told Biometric Update in an interview immediately after the last workshops concluded that meeting new players in the ecosystem was a highlight of Connect 2025, along with learning about interesting developments around Verifiable Credentials from key stakeholders, including OpenID.

“They really have brought in a whole lot of really key technical experts in a variety of areas,” Dunstone notes. And this is by design.

MOSIP CTO Ramesh Narayanan told Biometric Update in a conversation minutes later that the organization asked countries to send the people who own and execute their ID projects to Connect, not necessarily the highest-ranking official. Partners are asked to send technical experts, not just sales personnel.

“It’s really important for the people who are in the trenches, who are responsible and shouldering the thing to be there,” he says.

This is also part of what Head of Engineering SasiKumar Ganesan describes as a focus on facilitating conversations, not just presentations.

“Our prospects who walked in could hear about what we are doing, not from us, but from others, and get validation and return comfortable,” Narayanan says. “That comfort is something that we can’t put in place, even if we take them on a pilgrimage to all the places and all the people who we have worked with.”

There were nearly 40 countries represented at Connect 2025, including more than a half-dozen that had not yet engaged with MOSIP, but were considering doing so.

Connect serves to generate excitement about the outcomes of the discussions and work during the event, Partner Ecosystem Head Sanjith Sundaram says, but also to set expectations for the future.

‘You’re not in the ID business’

The future direction of MOSIP and Connect is largely about digital ID as an enabler of digital government and public service delivery.

Dunstone also does consulting work for the World Bank on open-source tools for digital government, “so OpenCRVS, G2P, all those other platforms. They’re here.  And not just somebody with a representative hat on, the heads of those organizations are here. The ability to directly connect with those people has been amazing.”

The conversation in Manila revolved more around use cases and the tools that enable them, like the Inji digital wallet, than the previous year in Addis Ababa, Dunstone says.

Holding Connect 2025 in the Philippines was something of a lucky stroke in this regard, with the lead officials within the country’s ID system keen to share their success in building use cases on top of its digital ID built with MOSIP.

“The ecosystem needed to see that,” says Narayanan. At the same time, he recalls a comment from MOSIP President Prof S Rajagopalan during an opening keynote that how many million IDs have been issued on the platform will not be the main focus going forward.

The value comes from the services unlocked, not from the ID itself.

“You’re not in the ID business,” Ganesan says of the partners in Connect’s solution discovery space, “you’re in the use cases of the ID ecosystem.”

That’s also why “use case” is being added to the MOSIP Marketplace as a category, Sundaram says.

“Countries like to hear stories; they don’t want to hear a lot of technical things,” he explains. “They want to understand a problem statement and how it is solved in a simple way.”

MOSIP is thinking about providing this through short videos, each subtitled in several languages, showing how a particular problem can be addressed with digital services and ID, and concluding with direction on the ecosystem partners that can help set up those services.

Open-source success means community leads

For any open-source project like MOSIP to ultimately succeed, it must be community led, Narayanan points out.

The unconference format, introduced for the first time to MOSIP Connect on day two, was widely declared a success. Dunstone believes attendees got more from the attendee-directed agenda and discussion than would have been possible from another day of more conventional sessions.

Ganesan notes that countries presented problems for help, and vendors presented solutions for feedback. “That’s the conversation that we wanted to drive, and it just clicked,” he says.

“The conversation is notably more sophisticated than it was a year ago,” according to Dunstone’s assessment. Questions were more detailed, and more answers came from the other attendees seated in the audience.

The point of Connect is not just to be able to ask questions and get answers, Sundaram notes, but also to foster debate.

Narayanan specifically mentions BioRugged CEO Arn Langguth questioning the number of management servers necessary for an integrated device in the MOSIP spec, which he calls “valid feedback” the organization must consider as the platform evolves.

Sundaram says the partner outreach work MOSIP has done in the past has mostly been taken over by those already within the ecosystem. He cites a large number of technology vendors not just returning, but recruiting their partners to join MOSIP as well.

Navigating their biometrics and digital ID offerings, and the platform in general, is another area the community can further help countries with.

The uniqueness of each country’s presents a challenge for knowing what common elements should go into a demo kit, expressed in two different unconference sessions as “MOSIP-in-a-box” and “government-on-a-box.” But there is clearly interest in the concept.

Dunstone notes that countries often start their digital identity journey with a flow chart or a diagram of cogs that represent the different pieces it has and believes will help. They often need help “going from that to an understanding of what does that mean in terms of use cases.”

Creating a quick and easy way to present how the system works, from ID issuance to the delivery of a benefit, could help governments make effective decisions. “Even screen shots don’t really capture it, unless you’re using the real products,” Dunstone says.

He contends that a lot of work has gone into making popular open-source software tools like Linux easy to learn about and deploy, and open-source government tools have not caught up in this respect.

The community is taking on an ever-greater roll in the platform’s development. Examples from Connect 2025 included a university and an individual expressing interest in taking on projects to address gaps they’ve identified, and a company at the event volunteering to contribute resources outside of its own main business area.

The community’s capacity to make the MOSIP project sustainable may become even more pressing, Dunstone notes, with cuts to international aid and development budgets not just in the U.S., but around the world.

“I think that will be a significant challenge for the MOSIP community writ large in the next 12 months,” he warns.

MOSIP officials say they will continue to consider more ways for ecosystem to contribute to the Connect 2026 agenda. Ganesan notes that MOSIP holds an open weekly product meeting on Wednesdays that anyone can join.

The organization is also working to create more forums for the ecosystem so everyone can explore different parts of it without all convening in one room.

“Our program is to usher it from birth to a stage where it can be truly community-led,” Narayanan says, “and I think our job will be complete then.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital identity  |  digital public infrastructure  |  MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform)  |  MOSIP Connect 2025