USI Vision

A deep-dive into what USI aims to resolve and how

Context

Government departments today are endeavouring to become digital and are offering access to their services through channels like Web, Mobile or Whatsapp. But the citizens' are experiencing DIGITAL, way better than other parts of the ecosystem – for e.g. home banking – opening accounts from the comfort of their home in 15 mins, getting loans in less than 30 mins etc. These experiences are …magnifying the gaps in the experience when seeking services from the government and it leaves them disappointed and wanting more.

Let's imagine a situation.

When citizen buys a new home and wants to move in, the experience of registering the property at the Registration department, getting the title from the Revenue department, getting the Mutation certificate from the Municipal department, Getting Power connection from the Utilities corporation, Getting water and sewerage connection from the Water and sewerage board is a non-trivial set of tasks leaving the citizen to Program manage and coordinate these between so many different government entities. These challenges are compounded if he/she wants to open a business – need for Trade License from the Municipal authorities, No Objection certificate from pollution board etc.

OR

When a girl child wants to get an eligible scholarship for her 8th standard – the number of departments the family has to work with to avail that scholarship is about 14. This makes it a very significant challenge for “daily wage” dependent families, to run around different offices with a significant assumption - they know all the steps involved with each of the departments.

The good news is that some of the proactive governments around the country are beginning to think about making citizens life easier and are seen adopting different approaches such as

1. Single window from where citizens can avail government services (from any department)

2. Integrated bills

3. Structural changes – like a separate department which acts as a front end for all government services

4. Single portal providing easy discovery and access to services

While all these are commendable initiatives and steps in the right direction with the right intent - this approach is a bit piece-meal and has limited potential.

Can we imagine a visionary approach?

Can we Imagine a situation wherein citizens get Government Services proactively like

• Automatically get the Birth Certificate once a child is born

• Triggers reminders for Vaccinations for the newborn child and directs the nearest asha worker to reach out to them OR direct the family to the nearest facility to avail the same

• Get services availed as per your choice when you buy a property

• Grant the “girl child” her scholarship automatically as soon as she completes her 7th standard exam - without she or her family being aware about the scheme and running around multiple departments to get the scholarship.

Can we imagine - Government being able to flexibly allow multiple market participants to offer service delivery entirely or in specific scope like (access, collections, last mile delivery etc.) so that government can get services delivered efficiently and effectively.?

To realize this vision, these departments will have to embrace technology in a more thoughtful, profound manner and build it smartly with the long term in view.

Challenges with the current approach

The state departments have usually adopted 2 broad approaches to digitise their operations.

• The approach that is adopted in most implementations is an “application approach” wherein the focus is on one functional area. It approaches the task from

  • the demand-end for citizens and

  • the supply-end for automation for the department officials. In many situations - the automation levels are often not end-to-end but many manual interventions.

  • Here the UI is tightly coupled to the actors/ process

This is a fragmented approach - and will need integration with other systems in another functional area. While Integration is possible through potential APIs, each pair of systems will need to have point-to-point integration which over time will create a complex web of integrations that will be difficult to maintain over time.

For e.g. an innovation is possible if 4 applications has to work together, then there is a need for 2**4=16 different integrations. Any change to one process will need changes to the integration again, which becomes cumbersome to coordinate and manage.

• The other approach the State departments have adopted is an ERP like approach. This is an integrated approach within the state department and what they build is on a single database. While this solves the point to point integration problems within the department. But integration challenges remain when these applications have to work with another department’s processes and application. In addition , many state departments have experienced problems with Vendor lock in. And for simple improvements they are held to ransom on license fees and huge maintenance costs etc.

How can this vision be realized?

Realizing this vision will need strong intent and willingness to challenge the status quo. This might lead to redoubled focus on organizational structural effectiveness and processes and willingness to change.

But such an endeavor and effort has to be supported adequately through appropriate investments in Design and building of the supporting IT infrastructure to improve its chance of success. Such an IT infrastructure needs to be defined - such that it can allow the absorption of change towards the vision, in a steady, consistent manner without having to rebuild solutions where not needed. The subsequent part of this document presents the imagination of how to build the support IT infrastructure to enable such a proactive vision.

An imaginative approach wherein, all Citizen Services are defined through a common set of Interface Specifications and every application for a functional area adheres to the common specification to interact with any other. This way, we can avoid Point-to-Point integrations while allowing each application to evolve independent of the other.

This can be imagined through a Unified Service Interface (USI). USI will be a set of Specs on the Service Demand side and Service Supply side. Apart from this, USI affords an opportunity to leverage TOOP - (The once only principle) to specs development.

Citizen side (demand side)

Set of APIs with specification supporting citizen Side transactions. They can be called the Demand Side APIs. These APIs can enable access options through Portals, Chats, Voice or Assisted channels as needed.

Citizen Facing Apps can be built by Government agencies or even by Market Players who can offer these services through their existing APPs. For e.g. “My gate” app used in Apartment complexes can offer payments, Register Grievances, service requests - such as Payments for Property tax, Utilities, Sanitation or Applying for Permits (Pet Licenses) or for recording their grievances. The democratization of Demand Side APIs can allow creative improvisation which comes from market participation.

Service delivery side (supply side)

The supply side APIs allow Government employees to ensure smooth service delivery of the services. These definitions and specifications will also enable governments to onboard service delivery vendors without losing observability on effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery.

Fig 1 below, depicts an overview of how this can be achieved amongst various Systems/actors

Fig 1 - High level Layout of the Architecture that can support the Vision

Fig 2 below, depicts the basic set of APIs that will be needed on the Demand Side and Supply Side for the USI to work effectively. These are defined based on the commonly envisaged citizen journey when they seek services from any government service.

Fig 2 - The Potential APIs needed on the demand and Supply side

The above fig-2, includes a list of potential APIs that need to be enabled. These APIs and what they do are in Annexure I

Facilitate Improvements/ Innovations

Building such an IT infrastructure can greatly facilitate opportunities for innovation, Privacy protection, efficient service delivery and improved governance across all participating departments. The departments can focus on building new innovative solutions knowing very well they will still be adherent to the principles of unified service delivery.

Some examples of potential Ideas that can be explored for better / proactive service delivery are given below

1. The departments can strategically explore “Smart outsourcing” services by contracting services out to agencies who can deliver these services better and innovatively. They can focus on clear outputs/ outcomes which can allow market forces to create healthy competition which promotes innovation and consistent improvement of services towards better citizens outcomes.

2. The government can strive to give an “One Government Experience” for all services rendered through Multiple departments

3. Integrated Applications for availing multiple/ related services, which can trigger off service requests in multiple departments

4. The Government can build standard common services which can be out of the box offered to all other departmental applications - which can reduce cost of service delivery enabling better compliance, avoidance of Duplication enable better compliance and reduced efforts / capability duplication at all levels of government. For e.g. they can Standardize - payment gateway services, Digital Signatures, analytic services and any other focussed areas which can enable more bang for the buck and provide reliable services to the implementing Departments.

5. Better Coordination / Online coordination with Other departments. For e.g. validation with other Departments. For e.g. The Registration Department can validate Identity with the Driving License issued by the Transportation department or the Health department running a campaign can validate eligibility with the Education qualification, Income certificates etc. from other departments.

etc.

Further, this allows significant opportunity to Service Analytics which can focus on Monitoring, Service Improvements, Service Budgeting, Improved planning etc.

Fig 3 below shows some enablements, if it accompanies the USI can deliver improved IT capabilities out of the box for departments to leverage without having to rebuild it and enable the government in upholding principles of public finance.

Fig 3 - USI (with a slew of supporting capabilities) which can make Innovation Possible

Summary

Thus Unified Service Interface (USI) is a Citizen focussed approach that has potential to change the way citizen experiences government services through

1. Improved government ability to guide their departments and allow them to align the IT initiatives to a state level vision

2. Allow market participations in rendering services to enhance quality, efficiency and effectiveness of service

3. Improve visibility of services, avoids duplication of efforts, data capture and dramatically improve the coordination ability amongst departments for service delivery.

4. Unlock multiple innovations with appropriate data led insights and innovative approaches to drive citizen centric reforms - thus improving agility in transformation of citizen experience of government

All these can be done by upholding principles of good governance.

Annexure I

This has a short description of what the APIs mentioned in Fig 2, are expected to achieve for the unified Service delivery Framework.

The APIs on the Demand Side are described below

Register - Allows users for e.g. citizens/ businesses to register themselves on the system and also help captured their basic preference / personalisation requests focussed on localisations

Search_A - enables discoverability of available services without the citizen having to know which department provides what service.

Initiate - Initiates the Service/Services for the citizen with the relevant department and renders the relevant forms

Confirm - the service by allocating the application ID (at times these might need some payment confirmation as well)

Status - provides the status of the service proactively as well as on demand.

Support - Can initiate support requests for any changes or request additional information to be considered

Download - Download proceedings/ certificates/ proofs of transaction completion as appropriate to the service

Feedback - Provide the ability to capture suggestions and feedback/ ratings on the service experience which can be used for improving the quality/experience of the service rendered.

The APIs on Supply-side are described below:

Search_B - Search for an application to work upon

Assign - Allows the task to be assigned to the appropriate person who will actually work on the service request

Verify - Validates the service request and allows the conduct of validation of information furnished with the claim or service request

Update - Update the service with details of its progress/ expectation of next steps etc which allows multiple actors (for e.g. last mile employee, verifier, approver etc.) to update the work done indicating the progress of the service request.