India expands digital government through UMANG and DigiLocker access layers

India is extending its digital public infrastructure by building common access layers that let citizens use thousands of government services and digital credentials through a handful of platforms.

Citizens can now easily access thousands of services via the UMANG one-stop shop mobile and web platform and DigiLocker DPI access layers as the country strengthens its efforts towards putting in place an integrated, inclusive, and paperless governance ecosystem.

The country is doing this through a multi-channel approach where citizens can access services via mobile, web, or village‑level kiosks, according to a recent statement by the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw.

Per the statement, UMANG was host to 2,575 services as of July 31, with more than 116 million users. The platform has recorded over 7.9 billion transactions in the past three years.

DigiLocker on its part has over 724 million users and has seen more than 728 million document transactions to date, supporting 5,437 document types. These numbers suggest that the service is used by more than 50 percent of all adult Indians.

With regard to Common Service Centers (CSCs) which aim to drive inclusive access to services, there are over 407,000 of them, more than 70,000 of which are operated by women. This service is used mostly by people in rural and difficult-to-reach communities who may not be digitally onboarded, enabling them to have access to services from government, banks, other financial institutions, insurance companies, pension services, and utility payments.

The figures of UMANG, DigiLocker, and CSCs usage are an indication that India’s digital government strategy is moving beyond building individual digital services towards creating a common access layer through which citizens can better interact with thousands of government services and documents. These are part of the India Stack, the reason why the country is considered a DPI model by the IMF.

UMANG is increasingly functioning as a single service-discovery and transaction layer, while DigiLocker runs as a digital credential and document verification layer. With both channels, India’s digital government service is becoming a platform rather than a collection of websites, meaning that people can access multiple services through a single application and web platform.

In order to drive usage of DigiLocker, the government has continued to encourage the adoption of the document verification platform by linking municipal services to it, Times of India reports. It is proposing a model that could enable local government authorities to easily verify documents such as birth certificates and other identity credentials, which would make it easier for entities seeking to verify municipal records to do so without needing any physical documents.

In the meantime, digital service adoption is advancing in the area of digital ID. Last month, the government announced that the new Aadhaar digital ID app had surpassed 40 million downloads as the preference for digital-first identity services expands across the country.

Article Topics

DigiLocker  |  digital government  |  digital public infrastructure  |  digital wallets  |  government services  |  India