When you think of India from a technology or digital standpoint, what comes to mind?
Outsourced tech support?
Call center operations?
Outsourced research and development?
While India certainly has done all of the above, India should be known for something else, digital innovations. Often companies hold off on implementing new technology because change is hard, and rolling out a new way of doing things requires staff education, changes to internal and external processes, not to mention the difficulty articulating an ROI. I mean we have always done it that way and it worked…
India Switching Gears?
Well, India decided it’s time for a change, time to go paperless and are rolling out digital innovations at a dizzying pace for a country of that size. If you are looking for an example of “undertaking massive social and technological change”, just look at India.
Here are some examples, now imagine if these implementations took place in the states of New York, California or Ontario.
In the first week of February, India banned cash transactions over $4500 or Rs 300,000. That’s right, you got cash? No thanks; cash is king … up to a point. After that, it is digital.
The inability to prove an individual’s identity was a massive hurdle that prevented the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies. Enter the Unique Identification project, that provides every citizen with a Unique Identification Number, assuring that the benefits were received by the right person.
This further led to India building the world’s largest biometric identity system. According to MapR, the project uses MapR and Hadoop to create and maintain the world’s largest biometric database, which can verify a person’s identity within 200 milliseconds.
Down with paper, did you know that Delhi also banned all use of plastic bags this week?
India’s Top Digital Innovations
India has several very interesting projects on the go, from eHealth to Digital Lockers, they are innovating and looking to the future. According to Wikipedia, here are some examples of the projects that are currently being worked on:
- DigiLocker
- Attendance.gov.in
- MyGov.in
- SBM Mobile app
- eSign framework
- e-Hospital
- National Scholarship Portal
Interestingly from our vantage point, India as part of their going paperless program has implemented an eSignature platform where citizens now digitally sign all contracts with the government, read more about India’s digital eSignature framework.
At Signority, we applaud India for this massive undertaking and are doing our part with our digital signature platform on this side of the planet to cut paper, reduce waste, and clean up the planet.
How has the conversation about going digital gone at your company, what are some of the roadblocks and success you have seen? We’d love to hear from you, send us a quick message at hello@signority.com.
