HELLO WORLD
Welcome to MOSIP Blogs. Take a step back. Imagine a situation where you cannot open a bank account, own a mobile phone, travel or use a credit card to shop. Unimaginable, isn’t it? Today, your digital identity is your only authorised credential to access literally almost any service in the world, enter your workplace or for you to even be recognized as a living entity. If you have a digital identity, you have to count yourself fortunate. But this is not the case for everybody across the world.
The digital identity landscape
According to the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) 2019 Annual Report, 1 billion people are invisible or persons non grata as they have no proof of their identity. They are financially excluded and lack access to critical government services. 3.5 billion people have some form of identification but no access to digital identification. The digital identity and footprint of 6.6 billion people though online cannot be securely and efficiently tracked. Governments are unable to reach unique individuals even with targeted welfare programmes.
The need for an intuitive, agile, and integrated government is imperative, particularly to provide inclusive and engaging citizen solutions.
“Digital identity is a foundational set of enabling technologies that can be pivotal in a wide range of digital interactions between individuals and institutions.’ To unlock 3-13% GDP growth via digital identity coverage and be inclusive, several low and middle-income countries launched national ID programmes but not without challenges.They faced trust issues, engagement deficiency, non- interoperability, vendor lock-ins and prohibitive costs due to deficiencies and bureaucratic procedures.
MOSIP – an open source platform and a digital public good
“The right digital ID technology designed with the right principles and enforced with the right policies can protect individuals from the risk of abuse and safely include billions”. Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) is a fitting response to such challenges.
MOSIP has a differentiated approach to architecture, design, and integration of large-scale systems — one that recognises foundational ID as a strategic asset of a country. Built on a bedrock of principles such as scalability, security, and privacy, its modular architecture, customizability, and configurability offers countries the flexibility to build digital foundational ID systems based on their specific needs. The use of open standards and open source ensures that MOSIP is agnostic to specific applications, programming languages and platforms, and prevents vendor lock-in.
MOSIP Blogs intend to build holistic awareness and engagement through thought leadership on digital identity, open source technology leverage, platform potential, adoption, and allied areas. The blogs will have something for everybody to better understand and leverage its goodness – countries seeking adoption, partners and system integrators who wish to collaborate, educational institutions looking for research tie ups, and developer communities keen on contributing towards a digital public good. Through its blogs, MOSIP will
Have knowledge champions, vanguards, and stalwarts from its ecosystem and beyond share expert advice, perspectives, experiences, and insights on the future of digital identity systems and technology leverage
● Unpack the value digital public good with specific reference to MOSIP
● Articulate how MOSIP can bridge the digital identity divide in countries seeking adoption through its configurability, extensibility, modularity, and partnership integration.
● Help you engage in healthy dialogues
● Solicit blog contributions on topics of interest
● Aspire to be the ‘go to place’ for any knowledge seeker on digital identity, potential path breakers in technology adoption, countries seeking adoption, and an open source platform which is also, a digital public good.
We hope you will find our blogs enriching and purposeful. Have a good read.
