Covid-19 has introduced fundamental changes in the citizen-state relationship. First, the role of the state in providing the commons is coming under increased public scrutiny in all countries.
Public debates on the effectiveness of vaccine mandates and the successes of social protection programs, among others, testify to this.
Second, the Covid crisis has forced the state to shift from “physical” to “digital” modes of operation to deliver services.
Both of these developments have justified the need to accelerate the use of technology, while building systems for tighter delivery and collective accountability.
In India, such adaptation has taken an “open digital ecosystem” (ODE) approach – where “open” technologies break down “data silos” to give the wider community access and the ability to unite, innovate and help solve problems. .
With the mainstreaming of the ODE approach, new data streams are unlocked through its implementation, and traditional monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) systems are about to undergo a paradigm shift. . This change will lead to the development of evidence-based policies.
Typically, surveillance relies on monolithic administrative systems. The Center alone has over 350 such systems and states could potentially have over 2,000! These siled systems often lead field staff to complain about providing the same data across multiple portals.
The details
These systems are also complemented by evaluations that capture program impacts on end-beneficiaries through large-scale surveys. In the Indian education sector, for example, while school management is tracked through UDISE+ and digital teaching-learning engagement through DIKSHA, actual student learning levels are measured through a centralized National Achievement Survey (NAS).
However, data collected by large surveys is time-consuming, expensive to implement, and often not fully integrated. They were also criticized for not providing “timely” evidence for the decision-making.
Here, the ODE approach can bring about a paradigm shift. The inherent structure of an ODE privileges the use of open technologies, including open APIs and open data that allow disparate systems to “talk to each other” and enable “real-time” information exchange to unleash combinatorial value of the data.
For example, a student with a unique digital ID once enrolled in a school can be tracked despite transfers between school systems. Estimates of dropout, transition, and retention rates can be generated automatically through analytics without any school officials needing to populate the aggregates. Additionally, UDISE+ could seamlessly communicate with teaching and learning experiences administered by DIKSHA to automatically update the student’s learning booklet. This can be complemented by standardized periodic assessments on a universal basis.
With wider adoption, true network effects can emerge, i.e. when digital ecosystems begin to “talk” to each other to solve the toughest MEL problems. Just as this student leaves her schooling to continue integrating her newly acquired skills into her evolved learning and skills booklet. This would allow instant evaluation and real assessment of the long-term impact of education and skills.
Similarly, cross-sectoral ODEs also hold immense potential to foster evidence-based policymaking. For example, NITI Aayog’s National Data Analytics Platform (NDAP), which aims to democratize access to public data sources by creating a “single point of data access” across government departments, can unlock several new use cases.
A district administrator who wants to decide where to place the next common service center can be presented with suitable options by combining census data, UDISE, land use, etc. NDAP’s intuitive visualization and self-service analysis can also reduce repetitive data entry tasks. , and improve efficiency.
With EDOs answering the “how” through real-time estimates of performance indicators, various large-scale surveys will see a significant shift in uncovering the underlying “why”, i.e. attitudes having a impact on performance. However, it is imperative that strong data governance with adequate privacy and data security safeguards underpin the design and implementation of ODE at every stage.
Aishwarya is at the Quantum Hub; Trivedi is a digital entrepreneur, formerly at NITI Aayog
