SCO members unanimously adopt India’s proposal for digital public infrastructure

New Delhi, May 14: Leading the way in the technology world, SCO nations have adopted India's proposal for developing digital public infrastructure (DPI), according to Union Minister for electronics & information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw. India continues to make significant development aimed at expanding access to digital technologies and services like Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface, DigiLocker, and CoWin across the globe.

 

 

Under the chairmanship of Vaishnaw, the meeting of ICT ministers of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member countries was held on Saturday where they unanimously adopted India's proposal.

 

"They met today and unanimously adopted India’s proposal for developing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as the right way for deploying digital technology among member states," Vaishnaw said in a statement post chairing the meeting.

 

 

The SCO grouping includes Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and India. It also has four Observer States - Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia. Moreover, the intra-governmental body also has six Dialogue Partners namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkey.

According to Vaishnaw, DPI is crucial for ensuring that technology is made accessible to everybody. "There was also a need felt for interoperability between different systems being developed by the member states and the body recognized the need for setting up an organization for setting common standards for interoperability of digital systems among member states," he said.

According to information from the National Payments Cooperation of India, there were around 74 billion UPI transactions in 2022, totaling 125.94 lakh crore. The UPI platform processed more than 38 billion transactions worth 71.54 lakh crore in 2021. 2.2 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have already been given through CoWin, India's Covid-19 vaccination app.

“I would urge all fellow members of SCO to assess, evaluate and adopt India Stack and benefit from this digital public infrastructure,” Vaishnaw said.

India Stack refers to a set of digital infrastructure services that have been developed by the Indian government to facilitate the delivery of various services to citizens, businesses, and other organizations.

The core components of India Stack include Aadhaar, a biometric identification system that provides a unique identification number to every Indian citizen; e-KYC, which allows individuals and businesses to electronically verify their identity; and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is a real-time payment system that enables instant transactions between bank accounts. Together, these components provide a digital foundation that can be leveraged by various organizations to offer a range of services, such as e-commerce, financial services, and healthcare, among others.