India-made MOSIP: An identity tool for the world's development needs

MOSIP is helping developing nations to build inclusive and targeted programmes for their citizens

The G20 summit in New Delhi recognised the importance of digital public infrastructure (DPI) for accelerating sustainable development goals. Importantly, the summit declaration highlighted the use of open source software to deliver services for the society and standards for such work.

The declaration would have cheered a group of people working at the International Institute of Information Technology-Bangalore (IIIT-B) who have developed, using open source software, the world's first foundational digital identity system called Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP).

Around 11 countries, including Philippines, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Ethiopia, are at various stages of adopting MOSIP to build their own version of a digital identity system like India’s Aadhaar. As many as 94 million people have registered on MOSIP-based systems in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia.

To understand the importance of MOSIP we need to know a little about the digital identification solutions (DIS) market. The DIS sector is projected to grow from $34.5 billion in 2023 to $83.2 billion in 2028, a compound annual growth rate of 19.3 per cent, according to a report by MarketsandMarkets, a competitive intelligence and market research platform. Services powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and their adoption by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are powering the market’s growth, said the report.

Most technology infrastructure has come to developing countries from the developed world. Foundational identity solutions like Aadhaar and MOSIP are unique in the sense it is an infrastructure by and for developing countries. Developed countries were bypassed.

MOSIP is an identity layer that takes the best from Aadhaar and other systems created globally. It was built from scratch under the guidance of technology pioneers such as Sanjay Jain, the former chief product manager at Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and Professor S Rajagopalan of IIIT-B and others.

Experts agree that DPI, made of a unique digital identification, payments system and data exchange layer, has the potential to transform the economy and support inclusive growth.

Aadhaar was created for India’s needs. Its successful implementation saw some other countries wanting to replicate that system. “It was never envisaged that Aadhaar would be exported and thus was not built for the change accommodations which each country will required and thus giving birth to MOSIP,” said a person who has been part of the creation of MOSIP and spoke on condition of anonymity.

MOSIP’s genesis comes from India’s learning from Aadhaar and good practices of other ID systems. MOSIP – built after discussions with several national governments – offers options that work both online and offline, reducing the burden of network requirements, says MOSIP on its website.

MOSIP has a range of options for what information is required to enrol or authenticate people for services. It enables a government to design services for inclusion keeping in mind the technological and information challenges of its people.

It helps build the key core functional modules which are common to any foundational identity system. Some of these modules are registration, identification (ID) issuance, ID lifecycle management and authentication.

Morocco, in 2018, became the first country to sign up with MOSIP to implement a National Population Register (NPR) of citizens and foreign residents. Each individual in the register will be assigned a Personal Identification Number (PIN) based on her demographic data and biometric data. Morocco, which has a population of 38 million, aims to improve targeting of its social safety net programmes through NPR.

“The advantage of MOSIP is that governments can use the features that they want to. For instance, in countries where creating an identity is not an issue, but authentication is the focus, MOSIP platform can be used to create that. Whereas countries in Africa, South East Asia are similar to India where creating identification systems is a greenfield process,” said the person quoted above.

All code, documentation and white paper used for MOSIP were made available for sharing in 2019 under an open source licence on platform like Github. Countries who want to use MOSIP modules for their foundational ID system will hire a system integrator (a software company) to work locally to download the MOSIP code and configure modules to suit their requirements.

IIT-Bangalore is creating an ecosystem of developers and software companies to support other countries with MOSIP.

“Direct benefit transfers happen through targeting; without a basic identification system, this targeting cannot happen. But the tricky part is about the question of whether a single digital identification can be the only source of truth (about identity) for targeting benefits,” said Kamesh Shekar, senior programme manager – data governance and privacy at The Dialogue.

The Philippines, which has a population of 110 million, signed an agreement with IIIT-B in 2019 to adopt MOSIP, for implementing PhilSys, a foundational national identification system for all citizens and qualified foreign residents. The agreement laid out a framework of cooperation between the signatories on the transfer of code, documentation and knowledge, and support in adopting the MOSIP platform.

The fact that MOSIP is completely open source has attracted philanthropist groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Tata Trusts and Omidyar Network to back it.

“An Open-Source Foundational Identity Platform has the potential to support the transformation of the economy and support inclusive growth. MOSIP can help link the most vulnerable communities to various social security and financial services, and health and sanitation facilities. The mission of MOSIP is to create and make available a unique Universal and Intrinsically Progressive Digital Identity System that helps nations attain sustainable development goals,” said Siddarth Sharma, chief executive officer of Tata Trusts.

“Across the developing world, targeted welfare programs do not reach their intended beneficiaries; the lack of an established identity prevents the most underprivileged from accessing a host of critical services, including access to healthcare and finance. As a result, the widespread benefits of a digital identity system are becoming increasingly apparent. There is realisation that extending full digital identity coverage could unlock significant economic value of GDP growth," he said.

Shilpa Kumar, partner at Omidyar Network India, said technology that uses robust security and privacy guardrails could be a positive disruptor. “The success of Aadhaar in India has proven to the world that a digital-ready nation enables better access to aspirational services and opportunities for employment and productivity. MOSIP makes designing a new system cost-effective for countries," she said.