Government as a platform, or the Lego principle as transformation leaders sometimes describe it, means establishing and accepting certain shared components and capabilities, guided by standards that are common to departments and organisations. Only unique and specialist services need to be built in a bespoke way.

Authentication tools and common application programming interfaces (APIs) make it possible to share information securely between departments. However, to get the best out of these tools, data standardisation, convergence and common standards are essential. Governments including in India, Singapore and Argentina have progressed interoperability and a core component of their success is a single digital identity, which enables citizens to access multiple government services.  

When people come to register the birth of a baby or replace a lost passport, “what they want is to spend less time with government and get to the end of the process as quickly as possible,” says María Inés Baque, AWS government transformation leader, who previously led Argentina’s digital government transformation

“Starting with citizens’ needs and working backwards from this is how you connect silos and build the end-to-end services that touch different departments and different parts of the same agency – you design with citizens, not for them – you find out what their pain points are,” she adds.

The first task is journey mapping in order to understand the existing experience citizens have when they phone a call centre to access a service. Next, observe the users of that service as they go about their daily lives and then talk to them in focus groups to establish what matters to them.

In Singapore, the government expressed this concept as Moments of Life, named this way because citizens interact with government regarding important life stages such as registering a birth. Chief technology officer Chan Cheow Hoe explains that making sure the experience is seamless for the citizen requires joined-up public digital infrastructure. He explains in this AWS Institute video, User First, how Singapore’s government was very fragmented, as many governments are. Singapore took an inside-out approach instead of seeing the services through citizens’ eyes.

Chan Cheow Hoe explains how although governments may have a lot of data, there’s no “single source of truth.” It’s technically challenging to bring together multiple systems that don’t talk to each other. Singapore’s solution was to create a government-wide API gateway. Each agency created an API that works through this gateway. This all fed into a single interface for the citizen – LifeSG.

The main technology elements that enable digital interoperability are available, says Choy Peng Wu, AWS director of government transformation (ASEAN).

“The ability for governments to know which information sits in which department and how to pull it out, those are not esoteric technologies, they are mature,” she explains. She adds that alongside the technology it’s essential to have “a good data management and sharing framework so people have trust in the system.”

The seamless experience for the citizen was enabled by the Singpass digital ID program, which made it possible to enact quickly and simply with government online services. There are considerable benefits on the government side because when departments have a clear picture of an individual’s interactions across government agencies, which a unique ID enables, fraud and overlap are more difficult.

“For a real digital transformation centred on citizens’ needs, a digital ID is essential,” says María Inés Baque. She says the move to a single digital ID in Argentina was eased because people in the country were already used to showing their identity card to access services.

However, she says that the flagship digital identity scheme worldwide is India’s. The country launched the Aadhaar ID scheme in 2009 to make it easier to get welfare payments to the poorest in society, and to reduce fraud. Citizens submit eight items of personal data including name, date of birth, address and gender as well as a biometric. They then receive a unique 12-digit number following an iris scan and validation of a photograph and their fingerprints.

Some 1.3 billion Indians now have an Aadhaar ID. In addition to accessing government services, Aadhaar is the foundation of the JAM trinity of Jan Dhan [public bank accounts]-Aadhaar-Mobile, which has increased financial inclusion in India. Being able to authenticate their identity has enabled citizens to access bank accounts and mobile phone contracts, and so carry out financial transactions.

The ID provides authentication, authorisation and access. It delivers efficiency, effectiveness, reliability, transparency and accountability in provision of government services to citizens in an inclusive manner.

The success of JAM has been accompanied by the development of a thriving digital payments infrastructure in India, which together form the basis of India Stack. India Stack Global now provides 12 platforms for digital services, including payments and telemedicine. In Singapore, too, a resident’s digital ID can be used in commercial transactions, such as with banks. The Philippines, Togo, Burkina-Faso, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Sri Lanka are also working to adopt Aadahar-like ID systems, and are at different stages of maturity.

In Canada there are digital ID solutions at province level, at different levels of maturity. For example, in British Columbia, citizens may use a BC Services Card app to access federal taxes online. The challenge now is how these solutions could be integrated to have a digital ID at national level. The federal government is in the planning stages of a digital credential system

Baque emphasises how important it is for governments to be able to keep personal data secure and use it appropriately and according to the sharing permissions granted by citizens. There needs to be a clear and positive case for governments to establish digital ID systems. Shared access, and the seamless services that interoperability enables, transform the user experience of essential government interactions. This provides a positive case for the convenience of one ID from the point of view of citizens.

“If you already have the data, you don’t need to ask citizens for it again and again,” Baque explains. “As long as they have a real need for it, you should provide it to the other departments that require it. All the pieces of this come back to delivering better services for citizens.”