The Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Ajay Prakash Sawhney, released the report on “Estimating the Economic Impact of National Open Digital Ecosystems” in the post-India Internet Governance Forum (IIGF) workshops that concluded today. 

The report highlights that opening up of the national systems through Open API’s would lead to an estimated addition of over 5% to the GDP. Such value addition would happen through the innovative services that would get develop on top of the national systems that have already been developed by the government, thus unlocking significant economic value and create high end jobs, besides increasing efficiency in the economy.

While releasing the report Secretary, MeitY said, “National Open Digital Ecosystems, also called as National Public Digital Platforms, is very important for the country. The idea behind these NODEs is to take a domain, unify all the services that are available around it currently and then create frameworks that bring in the data together in a structured way. (This would) Combine the effort of Central, State and Local government entities and create a welcoming framework for startups and small and large enterprises.”

Sawhney added that each platform under NODE can help in tremendous innovation and increase the number of services being provided.  

According to the report, as more and more government digital systems are opened and are made accessible to the industry, more they will be used by the industry for creating innovative offerings that would lead to further economic growth. Analyzing the open systems of the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), an estimate has been made of the economic value addition that open systems can contribute to. The study indicates that the economic value is around USD 147.59 billion for year 2019, approximately 5% of GDP.

The report has been authored by Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya, President, Centre for Digital Economy and Policy Research; Prof. P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and