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Mapping Policy a major Progressive reform for Digital India

Almost everything in the tangible world has a location attached. In the future Data Economy, map information is going to be one very important piece of information.

The Government of India announced a policy and new guidelines of using Mapping and relaxed the Policymaking it simple enough, aiming at unbundling the economic value across all sectors in the economy. 

Click here to read the entire notification issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.

iSPIRT organised a panel discussion on the policy announcement to understand the policy and its importance for India. This blog post is an exciting read and listen for young innovators wanting to reimagine the economy as almost each and every thing will require mapping.

Following participants took active part in discussions.

  1. Lalitesh Katragadda, Co-Founder of Indihood
  2. Umakant Soni, Co-founder & CEO of ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park), AI Foundry
  3. Mohit Gupta, Co-Founder of Zomato
  4. Sudhir Singh, Volunteer at iSPIRT (Policy Hacks Anchor)

Recorded Video Transcript

Subsequent to introduction, Sudhir Singh (anchoring the Panel) opened the discussion asking Lalitesh Katragadda to explain important features of Policy announced.

Lalitesh explaining the policy salient features said “all the other Map’s policies that used to exist in various departments currently stand null and void, and they are replaced by this one very simple policy that has been issued, and people who embark on Mapping don’t have to worry. 

He further added, “ if you are Indian company you can map anything except for a small blacklist of attributes and features that you should not map, I’m sure will be related to military and security. And, you can map using whatever technology that you want, you can use lidar, you can use high-resolution cameras, underwater, over water, anything. You cannot just create Maps you can disseminate, sell and distribute.” 

“The only restriction if anything is that international mappers are restricted to a higher level of resolution for security purposes and they can also have access to high resolutions Maps created by Indian entities. This new policy is so simple that it creates freedom to map”, he said.

Mohit Gupta said, “for me the most important thing is Government taking notice”, and “coming to an understanding about the digital infrastructure required to build high-quality businesses and services across a large spectrum of different areas”.

He also expressed his happiness on the news that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), a Government organisation and MapmyIndia a private Indian company are collaborating.  

Mohit Gupta informed that they tried in the past, experimenting with various different players who provide mapping services both Indian and international and understand the importance of alternative options to handle both the precision mapping and business economics.

Umakant Soni started the discussion by quoting an example of google maps and how they had increased the cost from free to 10X to 20X and made it expensive to use their service and almost single-handed dependence upon them.

He said that, “fundamental thing that was different in the mobile revolution was the use of location” and that, “the immersion of the digital world into the physical world started with the whole mobile revolution and I think Zomato and Ola kind of companies have actually really profited from that”.

According to him, If out of every ₹4 that a business earns out of its services, it is spending ₹1 on mapping, then it is tough to sustain certain kinds of business models. Hence, it is a great move to create more options, thereby reducing the price in the long-term and benefit the Indian consumer.

He gave a perspective on the amount of value mapping technology and applications can unlock. Quoting the survey he explained 90% of the value lies in intangibles and this is not possible to unlock this value without having easy reformative mapping policy, that will help India to build the 5Trillion 10 Trillion Economy. 

“The challenges that we are at 3 trillion, wanting to go to 10 trillion, and we are talking about additional 7 trillion out of that 90% i.e. 6.3 trillion is going to be in the digital domain. If you’re not own the critical pieces which are going to create the intangible assets,  we will not be reaching 10 trillion. We might actually get to 3.7 or 4 trillion that’s it in another 10 years” explained Umakant.  

The other perspective on the value that Umakant gave was on how Google is inherently underestimating its business targets of 5 billion revenue from mapping. Quoting Baidu’s estimates from China, he explained that more than 70% of this value is lying in the future data economy, where location and mapping data will actually flow from sensors, almost everywhere in our lives. According to him, this data will augment the present Satellite imagery and physical mapping. 

“You will be able to catalogue and tag every single object that you see in the physical world around you and that is the future of mapping, and this policy, actually unleashing this whole system of innovation that is now possible because this tiny little camera has got lidar,  you can actually see a single object, and that’s where the computing moving onto the edge”, said Umakant. 

He further added that “I mean we have not even started to comprehend what it might be”, And  “that’s why it’s great news for Indian start-ups founders. What is next right after the mobile revolution, I think Maps. You know combined with AI and robotics they are going to form the next big wave of change in terms of massive business potential we have”, said Umakant.”

On the question of whether we can go International, Lalitesh answered,  “when we have the best mapping technologies available and that will only happen if we start in our own backyard.” 

He had further explained that according to a rough guess not more than 15% of India is mapped and we need to map everything that matters in India for development. According to him, there is a lot of work to be done, it won’t happen with just one company building it. 

He further added that “democratization can only happen if the underlying layers become accessible which is both coverages has to increase quality has to increase and that can only happen with large amounts of innovation” and making it as easy as creating websites’.

‘So, I am looking forward to a world where we have you know hundreds, if not thousands of mapping innovations coming”, he added. 

Mohit expressed his agreement with Lalitesh on how unmapped India was and explained the Challenge it posed to them in food delivery even to urban dwellers. 

He went on to explain how they had to innovate and add a pre-recorded voice (audio instruction) message for consumer location to solve a problem of precision mapping.

He said that the “Audio instructions “we had to launch and are being used very widely, the last mile addresses and ability to get last-mile addresses accurately is very poor as a result a lot of our riders would end up calling customers for last-mile instructions.”

“Reality is that, there is a lot of ground to be covered for maps”, he added. 

He also informed that they do not like over-dependence on a single player and hence has been doing a pilot almost every year with MapmyIndia. He felt that MapmyIndia has also a room to improve and become competitive to existing major services. 

Sudhir posed a question on how easy it will be to use maps and if the process of using mapping information will be as stringent as existing offline maps, which sometimes require the approval of a senior official like joint secretary of Government of India, to obtain a physical map and use. 

Lalitesh answered, “policy calls for all the government agencies cooperating, obviously if not of security sensitivity, which is most of the mapping data, to be made accessible to Indian company I’m hoping see changes coming” 

Maps that you can depend on how to run on good quality data otherwise they will fail so so this is really enabler I don’t look at the map a product at the map enabling piece of infrastructure that every you know digital entity in India needs to have access to 

Lalitesh further went on to explain how mapping can change lending, by using mapping in property and land record.  According to him, it has the potential to unlock more than 4 and a half-trillion dollars of capital both for small business.  

****The End****

Disclaimer: The discussion and ideas expressed here should not be construed as legal advice. The discussion is conducted with Industry practitioners and experts for purpose of benefiting the Industry members in Software product, IT or ITeS Industry

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iSPIRT’s Official Response to Union Budget 2021

Boost for HealthStack, but no gains for Industry

The Pandemic had decided much of the flow of financial planning in a country like India. The emphasis on Atma Nirbhar Bharat right at the outset in PART A of speech is on expected lines in a changed scenario post pandemic. Health being given importance forming the first pillar of six pillars was also expected based on ongoing developments.

For decades, India has underinvested (both in public and private spend) in the overall health of the population, and it took a global pandemic to dedicate a new Pillar of the budget to improving health outcomes and increase funding by 130%. It is heartening to see a substantial budget allocation of 64,000 Crore towards the Aatmanirbhar Swasth Yojana to improve primary, secondary and tertiary care. With the National Health Authority ​getting veteran RS Sharma (former Chairperson of TRAI and UIDAI) as its new CEO, this scheme could be implemented in a digital-first manner taking advantage of the advanced architecture of the National Digital Health Mission.

At iSPIRT we are pleased to see this development, and look forward to a year of accelerated efforts to establish key public digital infrastructure that could improve healthcare.

It was also encouraging to see Innovation and R&D mentioned as one of the pillars; this is a sign the Government is keen on supporting an innovation driven economy and the Indian products eco-system. The National Research Foundation outlay of 50,000 crores over 5 years is applicable across all sectors. Production linked incentive (PLI) schemes were announced for 13 sectors. This is a welcome move to bring in a thinking of promoting Indian Product Champions. However, the details of structure and which sectors and playgrounds the Government is attempting to promote will determine the success in the global landscape.

At iSPIRT we have been advocating development of niche playgrounds in sectors where India has a competitive advantage such as Software products in all sectors including defense, telecom etc. Whether the outlay of 1.97 lakh crores, over 5 years starting FY 2021-22 will be enough is to be tested.

The Continued emphasis on digital payment promotion with a new proposal of 1,500 crores and not losing sight of startups movement is heartening for the Software product industry. Improving norms to formation of a 1 person company will encourage innovation, entrepreneurship and startups. The Government seems to also be inclined to use technology to improve compliance via faceless assessment and a reduced limit on reopening of assessment limits, which are also efforts in a positive direction.

The biggest missed opportunity was around support to MSMEs – which are the key to driving scalable innovation. The MSME sector continues to need life support post the pandemic. While the Government slotted in a 2X budget estimate for MSMEs, it is not clear what this will go towards or that it will help the sector at scale. What remains to be addressed is critical changes that could MSMEs, ease frictions to accelerate growth.

We wanted to see more action on Ease of doing business, especially around removing bottlenecks for tech companies across sectors. In a digital economy, the small business sector is the lifeblood of future growth, and the government will need to think hard about the true means of galvanising this sector.

About iSPIRT Foundation

We are a non-profit think tank that builds public goods for Indian product startup to thrive and grow. iSPIRT aims to do for Indian startups what DARPA or Stanford did in Silicon Valley.

iSPIRT builds four types of public goods – technology building blocks (aka India stack), startup-friendly policies, market access programs like M&A Connect and Playbooks that codify scarce tacit knowledge for product entrepreneurs of India. visit www.ispirt.in

For further queries, reach out to Sudhir Singh​, email: ​[email protected] Or ​Karthik KS​, email: ​[email protected]

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iSPIRT’s Official Response to Non-Personal Data Governance Framework

A Committee of Experts under the Chairmanship of Shri. Kris Gopalakrishnan has been constituted vide OM No. 24(4)2019- CLES on 13.09.2019 to deliberate on Non-Personal Data Governance Framework. Based on the public feedback/suggestions, the Expert Committee has revised its earlier report and a revised draft report (V2) has been prepared for the second round of public feedback/suggestions. iSPIRT had provided a past response to the previous report and in this blog post contains a response to the revised report. 

At the iSPIRT Foundation, our view on data laws stems from the following fundamental beliefs: 

  1. Merits of a data democracy (that is, the user must be in charge)
  2. Competitive effects must be well understood, for creation of a level playing field amongst all Indian companies, and some ring-fencing must exist to protect against global data monopolies
  3. Careful design enables both high compliance and high convenience

It is with these perspectives that we have analyzed the revised Non-Personal Data report in our response.

Key Sources of Ambiguity in the NPD Report 

The key sources of ambiguity in the report are: 

  1. Purpose of techo-legal framework for Non Personal Data: The non personal data framework is meant to provide the right legal and technology foundations for world class artificial intelligence to be created out of India for the betterment of financial, health, and other socio-economically important services. The current version of the report sidesteps this completely by constraining the applicability to only “public good” purposes rather than taking a holistic approach to “business & public good purposes” 
  2. Data Business entities need a harmonised definition (given the interplay with data fiduciaries as proposed in the MeitY Personal Data Protection Bill) and clear incentives for participation. The current report relies excessively on regulation & processes for data businesses to achieve the outcome. 
  3. Institutional structure for Data Trustees: The report restricts Data Trustees to government agencies and non-profit organisations; however, in a domain consisting of fast evolving technology by excluding the private sector in offering the base infrastructure creates a severe limitation on the ecosystem of modellers that can be created. 
  4. Technology Architecture: The illustrated technology architecture is unclear around the public infrastructure (through the form of open standards, public platforms, and others) that need to be created & adopted to bring to life the non-personal data ecosystem in an accelerated manner. 

Conclusion

While we’re aligned with the vision of the committee, it’s critical that the above ambiguities are resolved in order to create a strong non-personal data ecosystem created in India. Till these ambiguities are resolved, the recommendations of the Report should not be operationalized.

For any press or further queries, please drop us an email at [email protected]

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IGP (Innovative Growth Platform): The Capital Enabler

Two Cs are extremely critical for startups: Capital and Customers. In India, with a population of 1.3B, customers for B2C or B2B2C startups is not an issue. For B2B startups, although the market in India is promising, global markets are still very important.  Capital on the other hand is trickier. The total capital raised by startups India from 2010-2020 is around $100B. In the same period, startups in China have raised 4x and startups in the US have raised 10x the capital raised by startups in India. India needs to have a stronger mechanism to enable more Capital. There is a need to increase Capital availability in India.

IGP platform proposed by SEBI is a very refreshing initiative that aims to address the Capital issue. It provides another great avenue for startups looking to raise series B and beyond. This platform can double the available capital over the next 5 years. It addresses a key pain point of Capital availability for startups raising between INR 70 to INR 200 Cr. There is a chasm in this space- there are early-stage VC funds and there are PE funds for growth companies. However, there is not enough growth stage VC funds in India to fill this gap. IGP has the potential to be the platform to bridge this void.

The design of IGP has been very thoughtful with the key focus is on technology startups. The precursor to IGP was ITP (Institutional Trading Platform). Due to various reasons including the maturity of the startup ecosystem, the response to this platform was tepid. IGP addresses a few key pitfalls of ITP.

IGP restricts the listing to technology-focused companies with a proven Product-Market Fit and entering its growth phase. The revenue of the companies listing on this platform is expected to exceed INR 50 Cr. This will greatly help in mitigating the risk of listing by ensuring a good understanding of Product-Market Fit beforehand.

The governance issues are well balanced – protects the investor interests but at the same time provides enough flexibility for the founders to have control over strategy and execution. The companies listing on this platform cannot be burdened with the same rules of the public markets as they need to be very nimble. A balance between taking risks and moving fast with financial discipline as against governance practices such as quarterly reporting and stability is advised.

As in the case of investments in Alternative Investment Fund, the platform is selective about its investors. The companies listing on this platform need to operate as startups and not as mature companies. The risks are much greater with these companies and hence it is very critical to have investors who understand these risks and who can understand these nuances. 

M&As have been a key hurdle for startups in India. This is one of the key reasons for companies opting to flip. The platform is designed to simplify the process of M&As, post-listing. Simplifying the M&A process encourages corporates and PEs to participate on the platform. However, this spirit should be maintained in the implementation of the platform as well.  This is one of the critical success factors for the platform.

For the Indian startup ecosystem to become one of the major contributors to the economy, key policy changes are needed. IGP is one such platform that has the promise to increase capital availability significantly.  IGP has the added advantage of enabling exits for early stage investors. This increases the liquidity in the market that will further spur the startup ecosystem- a much needed virtuous cycle.

NASDAQ encouraged and enabled technology startups to list because of its adaptability and easier listing and governance guidelines. This accelerated technology startups in the US. IGP has the potential to be that platform in India. India can build products for the world and has the potential to be startup capital, but it needs a perfect storm of- Capital, Liquidity, Policy, Customers, and Entrepreneurs. IGP certainly has the promise to address the Capital and Liquidity aspects. Most importantly it enables Indian startups to stay in India!

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PM WANI – Empowering people with Wi-Fi Internet

Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (WANI) that was envisaged by TRAI Consultation papers has become a reality as Government approved it as PM WANI, on 9th December 2020, for exponential proliferation of public Wi-Fi networks.

PM WANI will make it possible millions of Wi-Fi hotspots to emerge across the country, giving easy access to internet to common man. New business models will emerge, making it possible to add another layer of Internet providers with access points being provided by corner shops and stores and others.

The Detailed Document about the Scheme can be downloaded and read at (Click to open) Department of Telecom Site.

The simplicity of the scheme is recognised by the very fact that DOT automatically recognised PDOA after application in 7 days.

PM WANI explained in a snapshot

This PolicyHacks Panel discussion with Dr. RS Sharma, Ex-Chairman TRAI, Pramod Varma, iSPIRT Volunteer, gave conceptual Architecture of WANI, Siddharth Shetty, iSPIRT Volunteer, Shubendu Sharma, Founder of Wifi Dabba and Dr. Ajay Data, Founder & CEO of a Class A ISP and other technology companies.

iSPIRT has been a protagonist of the concept of WANI with Pramod Varma, Siddharth Shetty and other volunteers involved in building the concept to unbundle another layer of broadband level Internet access to masses on the go and in far-flung areas.

Dr. RS Sharma explains,”we came to a conclusion that if we can create a technology architecture for some body to market and provide access by unbundling from ISPs like UPI has done, then it will become seamless and easy to implement and Kirana shops can also provide Wi-Fi without hassle”

“And that is how we came up with the concept of PDO like PCO of Telephone booths and PDOA etc”, he added explaining how PDOA will be a layer above PDO.

The main policy issue here was reselling of the bandwidth, which was addressed and then a consultation papers was evolved and a pilot done to test the concept on ground, he mentioned while explaining how TRAI was involved.

“It is a very asset heavy architecture if a Telco alone has to do all that physical investment till the last wire in your house or each hotspot in country” and “all the fiber in BHARATNET and others that we are laying no body knows at the the end, what we have to do and it requires an ‘entrepreneurial model’ to scale to be putting millions of connection” said Pramod Varma.

In Covid year, we have seen real hardship for people who are not privileged to have broadband access and education of children abruptly stop. “We have to make Connectivity a human right”, says Pramod Varma and explains, that is why, how essentials it is to invest into infrastructure and the last mile becomes people property.

“We had the mental model that, if we can create self sustaining interesting parts of it” Said Pramod, explaining how the concept was evolved. Adding further, that a KYC done ones can give a KYC token that can be used to further to authenticate who the person is on access layer in the Model, without doing KYC again and again. “UPI will further provide the payment model, as we have already solved it”, said Pramod.

“You will have multiple providers come together to unbundle this” Said Siddharth Shetty, adding to the conversation.

Shubendu, from Wi-Fi Dabba who had been thinking this as a ‘business model’, deployed the pilot for testing the concept. Explaining his experience, he said, “we wanted to see if we draw a Internet cable from a router in our office to street side shop, how it is used by people, can people pay for it and use it and in a week we had people instead of buying eclairs asking for a Token to use Wi-Fi”.

“In 2016, we took it as a fulltime project, and this was the time when our problem started as ISPs stopped giving us connection, after knowing we were reselling bandwidth” said Shubendu.

He also explained that, “the kind of paperwork you have to maintain and additional costs you have to incur” does not make it viable for small business to apply for an ISP.

“This policy make life simpler for businesses like us” in entirety, added Shubendu.

Dr. Ajay Data, who founded a Class A ISP in Jaipur, was on panel and said, “I am ‘very positive’ about it and this can revolutionise many many things in this Country”.

He explained, how the product “Vedio Meet” they developed to solve local education problem did not work on HD quality for students in last mile and had to be downgraded to SD quality, because of bandwidth in last mile. “we need to have the internet of the ‘streaming quality’ across country, where HD streams can be delivered on any device and if we can achieve this, rest of the applications will work ” said Ajay Data.

He raised apprehensions, on how it will be regulated on ground without harassment of the PDOs by regulatory bodies, giving examples of how even licensed ISPs are harassed and ISPs are charged AGR even in on sale of Computers and routers. Similar legal issue should not be left unaddressed and should be taken care, in languages (including vernacular medium) for PDOs to be not harassed.

“May be a board (Certificate) can be out in each PDO point to ascertain that local police and enforcement does not harass them”, said Ajay Data.

RS Sharma, addressing concerns raised by Ajay Data, Said, “PM himself has tweeted about this” and leadership knows the exact importance of the policy.

He further explained that, “Retail sale of bandwidth has been made passthrough in the AGR Computation”, either the TSPs or ISP pays for the 8% AGR, retailer has nothing to pay, as it has been already paid for.

Dr. Sharma also explained further, that it can save lot of bandwidth, as content can be maintained locally at local access points and last mile user need not traverse through the upstream network for local content, which is a very useful concept for ISPs and TSPs, to decongest the upstream networks.

The PDOs will not have any problems, as the responsibility of who is accessing what by monitoring SSIDs will lie with PDOA (aggregator), not with PDO.

Shri Sharma added that, “what is important is this is implemented well” sharing the issue with Ajay that many a times polices are misused. And we all hope good intentions will prevail and country will be benefited, he had added further.

The panel discussion ended with note of thanks.

Disclaimer: The discussion and ideas expressed here should not be construed as legal advice. The discussion is conducted with Industry practitioners and experts for purpose of benefiting the Industry members in Software product, IT and Telecom sectors.

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New OSP Guidelines – a major reform (Ease of Doing Business)

The new guidelines on Other Service Provider (OSP) issued by DOT on 5th November is one big step taken by Government of India under leadership of Prime Minister Modi in Ease of Doing business for IT and ITeS sector.

You can find the DOT publication here https://dot.gov.in/sites/default/files/2020_11_05%20OSP%20CS.pdf 

iSPIRT Organised a Panel discussion in PolicyHacks to understand the changes that have been announced and how they impact the Industry.

The panellist included
1. Shri R.S. Sharma, Ex-Chairman TRAI
2. Rahul Matthan, Partner, Trilegal
3. Shanmugam Nagarajan, Founder and Chief People Officer, [24]7.ai
4. Chocko Valliappa, CEO, Vee Technologies
5. Sudhir Singh, Core Volunteer, iSPIRT, Policy Hacks Host

The panel discussion can be watched at below given Youtube video or you can read through the excerpts of the discussion given below in this blog.

Background

IT and ITeS companies looking for seamless cross border communication between the Indian Centers and their foreign counterparts centers use a telecom circuit service (IPLC, MPLS, Sip trunk), obtained from an Indian Telecom Service Provider (TSP). Traditionally, they were supposed to apply and get registered as OSP. The application and approval process were cumbersome and required them to submit detailed network diagrams and satisfy that authority of a legitimate use of the Circuits. The process was cumbersome, more bureaucratic than technical in nature and often subject to undue harassment by TERM cell even when use was fully legitimate.

Industry has been demanding this reform for long, as the Circuits were always subscribed through a licenses TSP in India. The Reform will give way to a new era of opening in telecom services. It is most likely to benefit IT and ITeS industry the most, boost innovation and synergistic alliance in Industry. Most importantly this will make India more attractive for FDI, as this was one major irritant in deploying most important part of the International operations i.e. International Communication.

The move will not only help large offshore IT and BPO Centers but also will empower domestic Software product companies. It will give a huge impetus to work from home and hence will be very instrumental in promotion of SaaS industry, both for their internal operations and also promote SaaS product adoption.

Some of the main highlights of this decision are.

1. No need for a Registration any more to operate as an OSP

2. Interconnection of multiple OSP centers and remote agents

3. Work From Home and Remote locations allowed

4. Centralised Infra and consolidated Traffic between Indian POP and International POP

5. Sharing of EPABX and PSTN lines by domestic and International Center

6. Distributed Architecture with main Infra at central POP and media gateways at other centers

7. CUG allowed for internal Communication

8. CDRs, access log, configurations of EPABX and routing tables to be maintained and aggregated for each media gateway for a period of one year

9. No toll bypass allowed and no telecom services to be provisioned

Excerpts of the Panel Discussions

The panel discussions started with a round of Introduction and inviting Rahul to summarise the new regulations.

Rahul Matthan started the panel discussion with a summary of the guidelines announced. He termed the new guidelines issued as Radically simplified.

Starting the introduction to new Guidelines, he said, “OSP or the Other Service Provider regulation in essence regulates Business Process Outsourcing companies and the definition of the types of entities that are regulated by this is very important. Earlier the definition used to include things like call centers, Business Process Outsourcing and other IT services, but also had very broad language at the end which included all IT enabled Services.

So, the first amendment is that it’s been restricted now to voice based business process outsourcing services.”

“The second very significant amendment that has happened is that the registration requirement has been entirely removed. Earlier you had to register with the TERM cell of DOT and that that requirement has been entirely removed,” Said Rahul.

He further mentioned that work from home (WFH) is allowed without any restriction of site or permissions and submission of network diagrams. He added. “it is work from anywhere” and “also, infrastructure sharing has been permitted there are some significant changes in the interconnectivity regulations have been permitted”.

“Bank guarantees used to run into crores for many large companies. The requirement for submitting performance bank guarantee has now been removed”, mentioned Rahul.

He also informed that the general provisions about penalty provisions with regard to inspection have been removed. “In fact, the entire chapter with regard to penalties and inspection has been removed”, mentioned Rahul.

Shri RS Sharma informed the panel how the consultation papers and discussion at TRAI on the subject progressed at TRAI. He informed that whereas the OSP regulation was very old, TRAI got a reference to start the consultation process in September 2018 and the Consultations were submitted by TRAI to DOT in 2019, which is exactly one year back.

“Essentially thought which we had was OSPs are the ones who are the customers of the TSPs telecom, they are paying money to the main service provider which is the TSP, so why should we really come in between and you know ask for all kinds of you know compliance” said Ex-TRAI chief, recalling developments.

He further informed that, next thing that was taken up is the definition, and as these are the entities which are taking resources from the telecom service providers or ISP and actually doing somebody’s work or providing services to some other entity, they should all be called application service providers (ASPs).

“Unfortunately, the OSPs also included those people who were actually providing services internally. We said any entity which provides service to itself after taking resources from the telecom service providers will not be coming within the definition of logical OSPs”, Said Shri Sharma.

He also recalled that it was recommended that everyone need not register, and only voice based OSPs need to be registered, Data based OSP need not be Registered.

The new definition given at chapter 1 point 7 states these recommendations. As said by Rahul earlier, the new guidelines limit OSP to voice-based processes only.

Shri Sharma further recalled that the TRAI recommended the removal of the requirement to submit network diagrams in OSP registration. He also further mentioned that TRAI also took a stand not to include hosted contact center service infrastructure or cloud hosted infrastructure, in OSP application scrutiny.

Shri Sharma said,” Interestingly in the last 10 years not even a single bank guarantee has been encashed.” He said bank guarantee was the most ridiculous part of the provision, as Govt. was not earning any revenue from OSP,

Similarly, he recounts the recommendations made on interconnectivity among the various OSPs, that also we said should be allowed. “I feel really satisfied”. Said shri Sharma, citing that most recommendations have been accepted.

In further discussion, Sudhir added that we were not having regulation at par with the developed world and called Rahul to give his perspective on regulatory aspects of OSP provisions.

Rahul emphasised in past Data was scarce and a licenced kind of regime was brought in with some sort of a performance guarantee to ensure compliance. Data today is not scarce and with the advent of smartphones and choices one has to make calls, the OSP regime was just giving comfort to the Inspector raj of the TERM cell.

“Country ran out of static IP Addresses”, said Rahul, when it tried to tackle the work from home during the Pandemic. Although DOT cooperated in providing relaxation, the actual need was to remove regulations relating to logical separation between Voice and Data and the need for physical EPABX.

S. Nagarajan, joined the discussion and said, “antiquated rules only hurt the industry by not letting us expand freely within the country. We are in other countries like Colombia, Philippines, Guatemala and none of these countries have these regulations”.

“So this has many benefits for us in all the dimensions, one leading to the other.. ease of doing business, geo competitiveness, location diversity, workforce diversity, talent pool expansion and increased quality of delivery through reduced attrition, (taking it back to geo competitiveness) and there by increasing our business potential for the country, creating millions more direct and indirect jobs for the nation. Thus, it is a better stimulus to the economy than just a monetary stimulus.”

Extending the panel discussions further,

Chocko Valliappa, recalled how the Government brought in Texas Instrument to Bangalore and facilitated them with a Red Carpet but in due course with such regulations the Red Carpet became Red Tape.

He mentioned that, “We employ 6000 employees between US, India and Philippines and in US for example 95% of our work is done work from home and that’s how we always operated and but in India, we are operating in just 3 cities, Bangalore Chennai and Salem and I’m sure this (the new OSP guidelines) would give us a big footprint across India and set up offices across other places.”

“In the next 35-40 years India will be capable of handling 15% of the global economy. By 2050, India will be poised to become the manufacturing hub of the world replacing China by harnessing 3D design and printing capabilities.  I think India engineering talent would be sought after much more, so I think its a step in the right direction”, he further added.

Shri RS Sharma spoke further in response to a question by Rahul on whether the OSP regulation will fully go away in future. He recalled his experiences and how and why bureaucracy could not implement the ease of doing business issues easily.

Shri Sharma said, “TRAI had given two sets of recommendations, one to Ministry of Information and broadcasting another to the Department of Telecom, where we actually targeted ease of doing business.”

He also said that he has seen that the honourable Prime Minister is passionate towards ease of doing business and ease of living. He wants it, but I think we all need to come together, and we all need to sort of continuously work towards it.

“It’s a great thing which has been done actually and I was so happy, and I complimented each one of the people who are involved including the Department of Telecom”, mentioned Shri R.S Sharma at the end.

Discussion ended thanking all participants.

Disclaimer: The discussion and ideas expressed here should not be construed as legal advice. The discussion is conducted with Industry practitioners and experts for purpose of benefiting the Industry members in Software product, IT or ITeS Industry.

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Open House Session #1 on iSPIRT’s Balloon Volunteering

We held an impromptu Open Session on Balloon Volunteering on 20th September 2020. Watch the recorded video and presentation below to learn if iSPIRT volunteering is right for you.

This session will cover some of the available volunteer opportunities and tell you how to engage with us.

Open House on iSPIRT Balloon Volunteering from ProductNation/iSPIRT

In case you want to explore Balloon Volunteering with iSPIRT, we request you to fill out the form here: bit.ly/iSPIRTForm

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iSPIRT Foundation’s Official Response to Non-Personal Data Report

Last month, an expert committee chaired by Kris Gopalakrishnan submitted a report on a framework for regulating Non-Personal Data in India. The rest of this blogpost contains iSPIRT’s response to this report.

At iSPIRT Foundation, our view on data laws stems from three fundamental beliefs: 

  1. Merits of a data democracy (that is, the user must be in charge),
  2. Competitive effects must be well understood, for creation of a level playing field amongst all Indian companies, and some ring-fencing must exist to protect against global data monopolies
  3. Careful design enables both high compliance and high convenience

It is with these three perspectives that we have analyzed the Non-Personal Data report in our response. 

The report makes a well-cited and articulate case for regulating data in India, such that “[data’s] benefits accrue to India, and Indians”. It defines and outlines the roles of various entities relating to the capture, processing and governance of Non-Personal Data. Whereas we are wholeheartedly aligned with the vision of the committee and its members in creating an Aatmanirbhar Bharat and the importance of facilitating a robust AI-industry in the country, we find that the report is sound in premise but murky in detail. Where an overarching legal framework surrounding NPD is proposed, on closer inspection it falls short of achieving the aforementioned goals of protection for Indians and prosperity for Indian businesses. Therefore, more work must be done before a final version of this report can be released. 

In what follows, we take the example of one industry that will be affected by the new Non-Personal Data framework and attempt to understand the report in relation to it. 

Case Study: X-ray Data

Consider the case of a (fictional) health-tech startup called rad.ai that seeks to generate radiology summaries from lung X-rays. These summaries will help pulmonologists (lung-specialist doctors) identify various pulmonary diseases or early signs of cancer. Such a company requires two things to succeed – data about X-rays and technology to build models. 

Under the tenets of the NPD report, it would seem that (given the right technology foundations) such a startup would be well placed to succeed. In particular, the report suggests that the X-ray data as described above will be classified as community data and outlines mechanisms for collecting and sharing it. It suggests that the dual goal of enabling rad.ai while protecting the subjects of the data can be accomplished in the following framework – 

  1. rad.ai will first be able to identify that appropriately anonymized lung X-rays, termed community data, are available for access through meta-data that is published by radiology labs engaging in collecting such data. 
  2. rad.ai will then be able to access this data for free through a data trust (presumably a virtual API on the cloud) which is created by the radiology labs. 
  3. This will all happen with the consent and oversight of a data trustee, an entity that is a representative of the persons from whom this data is collected. 

While this sets a broad-strokes framework with the right intentions, there are a few key problems that arise when we dive deeper into the proposed solution. We have outlined some areas where clarifications are needed and details must be made available. These include the definition & value of community data, obligations of the data custodian, access for data users and rights of the data principal. Towards the end, we also discuss the question of NPD’s interplay with personal data and the definition and use of public data. 

Definition and Value of Community Data 

While the case of X-ray data seems straightforward, the scope of community data in the report appears to be vast. However, it also seems to suggest that while data explicitly extracted from users is classified as community data, data generated in the course of a business’s activities may be considered private business data – and this may not be mandated to be shared. In that case, it would appear that e-commerce, delivery and employee data fall under private business data – although an argument could be made for classifying this as community data. 

Further, the report makes a distinction between raw and processed data. In particular, raw data must be shared free of cost, whereas the price of processed data could be determined based on market or FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) principles. In the case of lung X-ray data, labs obtain such data from anonymizing raw personal data, so presumably it is now processed and need not be shared without remuneration. In the general case, however, we recommend that the lines between raw and (various levels of) processed data should be clearly demarcated. 

Data Custodian Perspective

Consider next, the situation from the perspective of the diagnostic labs. There are about 70,000 labs and hospitals offering radiology services in the country [ref]. Each of these has its own technology implementations or third-party TSPs (technical service providers) for collecting and storing any patient data. How can all of these labs and hospitals be mandated to provide control of this data to the data trustee in order to share the X-ray information with companies like rad.ai? Who is/are the data trustee in this case anyway – the MoHWF, the NHA, an NGO serving the interests of cancer patients? If there are multiple data trustees that have an interest in the same underlying data, how is it ensured that every decision that each of them takes is in the best interests of the user? How are labs supposed to even publish the meta-data (meta-information about what data they have collected) in a standard, machine-readable format, so that companies like rad.ai can discover it seamlessly? Finally, considering that such compliance comes with associated costs, what are the concrete benefits for making this data available?

Data User Perspective

Then there is the case of rad.ai itself. Let us assume, for now, the provisions of the previous paragraph and overlook the contentions raised. Say that because of access to this X-ray data, the startup rad.ai has been able to create excellent ML models to predict the early risks of major diseases and help pulmonologists. It has done well and begins to expand across the country. A few years later, a foreign health-tech giant (again, fictional) called Hooli enters the fray by investing in rad.ai. Backed by foreign investment, rad is now stronger than ever. However, the report identifies “to promote and encourage the development of domestic industry and startups that can scale” as one of its key objectives. While rad.ai was originally a fully Indian company, it was allowed access to the community data from radiology labs to develop its models. Now that rad.ai has foreign investment, should it still be allowed to benefit from Indian community data? What if Hooli owns a majority stake? What if Hooli acquires rad.ai outright? 

Data Principal Perspective

Finally, consider this from the perspective of the patient herself – the “data principal”. How is she guaranteed that her interests are protected and the aforementioned data is impervious to de-anonymization? As discussed above health data is considered sensitive data and the patient has every right to ensure that it is handled with extreme care. The report also recommends that consent must be taken from the actors in the community before the anonymization and use of their data – but what form will this consent take? How will its purpose be determined and collection be enforced before any data is anonymized and utilized? How can anonymisation be assured when multiple anonymised datasets are capable of being combined together? Finally, the report acknowledges that all sharing of community data should be based on the concept of “beneficial ownership” where the benefits of this data sharing also accrue to the data principal. How is the patient directly benefiting from such a data-sharing mechanism? What mechanisms are in place to enable such benefits?  

Interplay With PDP Bill

Consider next, the case of the health-tech giant Hooli and assume that it also operates a search engine. As per the suggestions of the Srikrishna PDP Bill [Clause 14], Hooli could be allowed to collect personal user data and use it directly since its operation of search engines falls under “other reasonable uses of personal data”. When combined with the fact that under the provisions of the Non-Personal Data report sharing of all raw NPD becomes mandatory, Hooli is actually disincentivized from anonymizing its personal search data. By keeping this data personally identifiable, it is prevented from having to share it with competing search engines and startups. Can misaligned incentives such as these hinder progress towards the report’s stated goals? 

On Public Data

Consider finally that some of the labs and hospitals conducting X-rays will be government-owned. The report recommends that all data generated through government and government-funded activities are classified as Public data, which is in turn classified as a national resource. There is no guidance on the compliance requirements of the government controlling this public data under such a scenario. Will government hospitals still be required to make it available? More importantly, does the community (i.e. patients) have no claim to their data in this case merely because it was collected by the government instead of a private entity? 

Concluding Remarks

In summary, the report importantly conceives a legal notion of community, private and public non-personal data and outlines a framework in which such data might be shared for the advancement of economic, sovereign and core public interests. However, more work must be done to detail compliance requirements and standardize the mechanisms of sharing such data before the final version of the report is released. In its current state, the report only touches upon the rights of the data principal, the obligations of the data trustee and the compliance requirements of the data custodian. In a State with limited regulatory capacity for creating standards and enforcing bodies, these rights, obligations and compliance requirements should be comprehensively and clearly defined before a law ordaining them can come to pass. Custodians must be incentivized to share, industry startups must be enabled to access and the community must be empowered to self-preserve before the vision of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat with a booming AI industry can be realized. 

For further queries, drop us a note at [email protected]

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Need to Remove SOFTEX form and TDS on Software products immediately

Subsequent to announcement of the Software product policy there was an expectation in Software product industry that Government of India will make sweeping reforms to promote this Industry. In this regard we bring to your attention two below regulations that create hurdle in ease of doing business very specifically for Software product trade.

  1. SOFTEX forms filing for international trade
  2. TDS on domestic Software product sales

We have been representing through iSPIRT time and again to removal of both these provisions to no avail. Given below is a very short representation on why they are totally unrequired regulation in today’s time.

Given below is the explanation on why these two provisions should be removed. A video recording of same is embedded below.

SOFTEX form

This form was brought in place to regulate remittances received on foreign exchange on exports, especially in early times of Indian Software industry with advent of Software Technology Park Scheme. The form governs two major aspects given below, with reasoning why this form is an obsolete a redundant mechanism.

  1. The foreign exchange remittances due against the exports invoiced has been duly received. RBI systems manage this in synch with Authorized dealers (Banks).
  2. The valuation of exports was to be certified by STPI/SEZ.

Both these provisions can be regulated through GSTN digitally in case of Software product exports and does not require an extra interference by STPI.

GSTN system should be used by RBI to govern quantum of exports: After GST has come into place, all exports are Invoiced as “Export Invoices” and can be well regulated through GST system. All exports of a Indian company can be well regulated through GSTN and Remittances matched with banking systems. Why should there be one more redundant filing for this purpose. The regular Software exporters also file a LUT with GST online.

Products do not require valuation: There in no valuation of Software product required as these are standard products with a List price / MRP based mechanism unlike Software services where there is case to case variation. Software products are traded just like any other products /goods based on MRP or volume-based discounts.

Most Software products are downloaded or used on cloud (SaaS/PaaS mode). These procurements happen online in majority of cases.

SOFTEX form puts a very unnecessary burden on Software product companies for compliance and an extra cost both on internal Administration and fees paid to STPI.

TDS on Software

In 2012 budget a provision to deduct tax at source (TDS of 10%) was brought in, mainly to check the loss of tax income when Software was procured from foreign entities. However, this was also imposed on purchases of Software from domestic Companies.

The provision is a heavy burden specially for Small and Mid-Size Software product companies as in order to effectively deal with this provisions the Software product companies are now forced to float one more entity to avoid burdening their trading channels from TDS by end buyers.

This is totally unjustified provision as no other product is subjected to TDS.

A Software product is like any other product which is produced and sold unlimited number of times.

The TDS provisions

  1. A huge friction of Digital India concept as it hinders trade of Software products Digitally
  2. Does not bring any extra tax revenue to Government

This reform is highly desired and Removal of these two provisions will greatly benefit and boost the moral of Indian Software product industry and strengthen Indian Software product eco-system, which is much desired in present global economic conditions.

We sincerely request Government of India to expeditiously act on removal and reform of these provisions. Ministry of Electronics and IT should take up leadership on this and get these bottlenecks removed.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not in nature of legal advice but a consensus opinion in iSPIRT internally and Software product Industry at large.

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Technical Standards of the Personal Health Records (PHR) component of the National Health Stack

We have an exciting announcement for you all today!

We are publishing a draft of the technical standards of the Personal Health Records (PHR) component of the National Health Stack (NHS)!

As a refresher, these standards govern the consented sharing of health information between Health Information Providers (HIPs) – like hospitals, pathology labs, and clinics –  and Health Information Users (HIUs) like pharmacies, medical consultants, doctors, and so on. The user’s consent to share their health data is issued via a new entity called a Health Data Consent Manager (HDCM). 

This is a big deal. The problem today is that the electronic health records listed in one app or ecosystem are not easily portable to other systems. There is no common standard that can be used to discover, share, and authenticate data between different networks or ecosystems. This means that the electronic medical records generated by users end up being confined to many different isolated silos, which can result in frustrating and complex experiences for patients wishing to manage data lying across different providers. 

With the PHR system, a user is able to generate a longitudinal view of their health data across providers. The interoperability and security of the PHR architecture allows users to securely discover, share, and manage their health data in a safe, convenient, and universally acceptable manner. For instance, a user could use a HDCM to discover their account at one hospital or diagnostic lab, and then select certain electronic reports to share with a doctor from another hospital or clinic. The flow of data would be safe, and the user would have granular control over who can access their data and for how long. Here is a small demo of the PHR system in action. 

The standards document released today offers a high level description of the architecture and flows that make this possible. You can find version 0.5 of the document embedded below.

Health Information Flows Technical Standards – V 0.5 from ProductNation/iSPIRT.

All the exciting progress we are making on this new digital public infrastructure for healthcare is all thanks to you, the community. We are grateful for your support and look forward to engaging with you further!

The blogpost is co-authored by our volunteers Aaryaman Vir, Saurabh Panjwani and Graphics by Dharmesh BA.

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Bending India’s COVID-19 Curve Through Science & Data-Led Models

Powered by data-led scientific rigor, the India COVID-19 SEIR Model delivers early infection trends for every district in India. The model is geared to help Indians from all walks of life plan life and work decisions around their region’s projected trends over the next 15-30 days. Hospitals can use the model to plan for a surge in demand for resources (beds, ICUs, ventilators); local and national level leaders across private and public sectors can use the model to decide how best to contain the spread of the disease and re-open safely. Epidemiologists can use the model to define how different behavioural and environmental factors affect disease transmission. We introduce 3 use cases in this blog post—the first in a series aimed at promoting scientific and modelling capability. 

Wherever the Coronavirus curve has bent to our will, it has happened on the back of behaviour changes based on data-led insights. Everywhere, simple shifts in behavior—staying at home, wearing masks, sanitizing hands—have been informed by predictive models that showed us the mirror to a dystopian future if we didn’t edit our lifestyles. As a digital public good for a billion Indians, the value of the India COVID-19 SEIR Model lies in its reach and widespread use. 

Until a vaccine is developed, we have to make sense of today’s numbers in the context of all our tomorrows. Individuals, policymakers—and everyone in between—can make smarter decisions if they know the evolving shape of the outbreak, and the India COVID-19 SEIR Model aims to do just that by enabling identification of potential trends and patterns in the next 15-30 days. 

The approach taken by the model provides flexibility and utilisation from both a view of trends as core model adoption/enhancement.

We can all use it to bend India’s curve. That’s the ultimate use case, really — where the model tells us where it’s going and we, in turn, steer it in an entirely other direction. Models will change and that’s a good thing. It means we are responding. The power of models and data science in this particular moment is the ability to assist a very scientific approach to scenario planning during an ongoing pandemic.

We can turn the course of this pandemic and transform what this model tells us, every 24 hours. We are already watching the shape-shifting in real-time. It’s in your hands. Go on, try it. 

Use Cases

User — Individuals & Businesses (PDF format)

User — Scientists (PDF format)

User — Policy-Makers (PDF format)

About the contributors: The blog post is co-authored by our volunteers Yashvi Jaju, Nikhila Natarajan and Srikar V Cintalagiri

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NHS Open House Discussion #4: Doctor Registry, Enrollment APIs And PHR

On 13th June, iSPIRT hosted the fourth open house discussion on the National Health Stack (NHS). For anybody unfamiliar with the NHS, here are some introductory blog posts and videos.

In the session, our volunteer Vikram Srinivasan deep dived into the Enrollment APIs of the electronic doctor registry. These APIs are called when a new doctor is being added to the registry, or when a doctor’s information is being uploaded. 

Vikram also spoke about the attestation APIs, which come into play when an attesting institution (such as a state medical council, medical college, or hospital) confirms some data about a doctor. This is crucially important for building trust in the registry and preventing the proliferation of false profiles. With the release of these enrolment and attestation APIs, all the APIs pertaining to the electronic doctor registry are now available here.

After Vikram’s presentation, he and our other volunteer Siddharth Shetty answered some technical questions submitted by the community. Here are some of the questions they fielded:

  • Doctors have multiple identities (from different medical councils), how are these unique IDs handled by the electronic registry?
  • Can anybody access the doctor information in the registry, including phone numbers and photographs of doctors?
  • Who can healthcare companies partner with in the Health Stack Ecosystem?
  • How does the federated network architecture of the PHR system deal with downtimes, incorrect data, and other failure? Is this architecture scalable for a system with 1000s of participants?

As always, these were great questions. You can watch Sid and Vikram answer these questions and walk through their presentations below. Please keep the questions coming by sending them in through this form: https://bit.ly/NHS-QAForm.

If you would like to get involved with Health Stack, we encourage you to watch the recordings of the previous Health Stack open house discussions before reaching out.

Furthermore, if you are interested in the Health Stack and wish to build on top of it or contribute to the working groups being formed, you should reach out to [email protected]

Please note: The fifth open house on PHR Implementation was previously planned for 27th June. This has been postponed to 11:30 am on 4th July due to unavoidable circumstances.

To confirm your participation, continue to register on this form.

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NHS Open House on PHR & Doctor Registry #3: Summary And Next Steps

On 6th June, we marked the third open house discussion of the National Health Stack (NHS). At the beginning of the session, iSPIRT volunteer Sharad Sharma offered a brief recap of the NHS and painted a roadmap for future developments in this initiative (including timelines, agendas, and future open house sessions). Sharad also discussed the content of the most recent open house session, in which Kiran Anandampillai explained the concept of the electronic registry system. After reiterating the vision for the NHS and the registry system, Sharad passed the floor to iSPIRT volunteer Vikram Srinivasan to dive into the registry APIs.

As a refresher, the electronic registry system is a mechanism for managing master data about different entities in the healthcare ecosystem. In today’ session, Vikram focused on the doctor registry. As the name suggests, the doctor registry will contain information about the doctors licensed to practice in India.

The doctor registry has the following design principles:

  1. Self maintainability: Doctors should be able to enrol themselves and update their own data
  1. Non-repudiable: The data in the registry should be digitally signed by a relevant attester (such as a State Medical Council) so that it can independently be verified by anybody
  1. Layered access: There should be a clear demarcation between public and private data in the registry, with only consent-based access to private data (eg. a doctor’s name and registration status should be public, but mobile number and photo should be private)
  1. Extensible schema: The data in the public registries should be as minimal as possible, allowing private players to build their own extensions around the core schema
  1. Open APIs: The data in the registries should be available via open APIs 
  1. Incentive aligned: The registry must enable convenient use cases so that doctors have an incentive to keep it up to date (eg. doctors can use their registry profile to electronically sign prescriptions, insurance claims etc. or doctors can use their registry profile to streamline and digitize the process of renewing their medical licenses)

After discussing the design principles behind the registry, Vikram dived straight into the details of the doctor registry APIs, which can be broken into the following categories:

  1. Enrollment APIs: These APIs allow doctors to enrol in the registry and update their data
  1. Consented APIs: These APIs allow a doctor to authenticate themselves, share their data/profile, and electronically sign documents
  1. Search APIs: These APIs are used to access the registry to query a doctor’s public data or search for any other publicly available information 

After covering these topics at a high level, Vikram released the API specifications for the Consented APIs and the Search APIs. The Swagger documentation for the same can be found here. The enrollment APIs will be released during next week’s open house session.

Upon completing his walkthrough of the doctor registry APIs, Vikram handed the floor over to our volunteer Siddharth Shetty. In the beginning of his segment, Siddharth answered the community’s technical questions around the NHS. Here are the questions he answered:

  • Is it mandatory to use the Open Source Project Eka codebase that has been published for the Consent Manager, API Bridge, and Gateway? 
  • In case of the Schema Standardization, during the 1st schema-less phase, are HIPs allowed to share data formats like JPEG, PDFs etc? 
  • Can the consent manager give the health locker (as an HIU) a standing consent to keep pulling the user’s information from various HIPs on an ongoing basis i.e. bypass the consent manager for future requests
  • Can the API bridges be configured such that instead of just sending the links to the information based on a request from an HIU (health locker in this case), the information can be sent such that it can be copied into the health locker?
  • Will the consent artifacts be encrypted between parties using any asymmetric key mechanism which will be valid between the services?
  • Is there any defined/recommended timeout for the data transmission from HIU – Bridge – CM- HIP and then HIU – HIP?

These were all great questions, and hopefully Siddharth’s answers helped clarify any doubts. If anybody wishes to ask any other questions around the NHS, please send them in to [email protected] with the subject line “NHS Questions”. Siddharth will continue answering the community’s technical questions during next week’s session (business-related questions will be answered in subsequent sessions).

To close off the open house discussion, Siddharth laid out the different working groups in the NHS ecosystem. Since the NHS is an open, public ecosystem, it is crucial for industry players and interested citizens to contribute to its development and pitch in with their feedback, knowledge, and engagement. Here are the working groups that are currently being formed:

  1. Technical Architecture Group: Responsible for working on open technical problems such as circuit breaker flows and time-out mechanisms. Also responsible for extensions and changes to the tech architecture
  1. Data Dictionary Group: This working group deals with moving away from the current schema-less architecture towards a standardized data vocabulary (leveraging existing medical schema projects and also coming up with new ideas relevant to the Indian context)
  1. Pilot Group: This group is comprised of people who have already started building on the NHS components (or would like to start building on the components). 
  1. Ecosystem Incentives Group: This group is looking at the incentive structures that power the NHS ecosystem (monetary and otherwise)

Any readers who are interested in learning more or joining these working groups are invited to reach out to [email protected]. A complete recording of the 6th June’s open house discussion can be found below

During next week’s session, we will be covering the Personal Health Records system (PHR), particularly as it relates to hospitals, and we will also be diving deeper into the Doctor Registry Enrollment APIs.

Readers are advised that next week’s NHS open house discussion will take place from 11:30 am – 12:30 pm on Saturday, June 13th.

The registration form for next week’s session can be found here. 

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iSPIRT Open House Sessions on NHS: Summary & Next Steps

Yesterday afternoon, we hosted our first Open House Session in partnership with Swasth Alliance on the National Health Stack (NHS). For those unfamiliar with this infrastructure, it is helpful to picture the NHS as a multi-layer cake designed to elevate the capacity of the Indian healthcare ecosystem.

At the base layer is a set of generic building blocks. These building blocks, which include bank accounts, digital identities, and mobile numbers, form the basic rails needed to identify, transact with, and communicate with individuals and businesses. Many components of IndiaStack – such as eSign and DigiLocker – leverage and augment these building blocks. 

The next layer of the NHS is the ‘plumbing layer’. This layer contains fundamental pillars needed to enable simple, intelligent, and secure healthcare solutions. The three main pillars of the NHS plumbing layer are electronic registries, a personal health record framework, and a claims engine. A brief summary of these pillars is provided below:

  1. Electronic Registries: these registries  allow for efficient discovery and authentication of doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers
  2. Personal Health Records System (PHR): a system that allows individuals to enjoy a longitudinal view of all their healthcare data and exercise granular control over how this data is stored and accessed
  3. Claims Engine: a software engine that reduces the cost of processing insurance claims, enabling insurers to cover more kinds of healthcare procedures, such as preventive checkups, walk-in consultations, and other low-cost but high-value procedures that are currently excluded from Indian insurance policies

The third layer of the NHS is an augmentation layer which is intended to utilize the three pillars of the NHS to bring greater efficiency to the Indian healthcare ecosystem. The doctor: patient ratio in this country is relatively low, and cannot be changed overnight.

Having said that, increasing the efficiency of each doctor would have a similar effect to increasing this doctor: patient ratio. The augmentation layer of the NHS is designed to drive up doctor efficiency through the use of technology. Examples of this kind of technology could include a matching engine to pair patients with the most relevant doctor, or a system to help doctors securely and remotely monitor the bio-markers of their patients. Unlike the plumbing layer, the augmentation layer of the NHS is not close to completion, but we do envisage the augmentation layer playing an important role in the ascent of Indian healthcare quality. Both the plumbing layer and the augmentation layer are designed as open, standardized interfaces. These layers serve as digital public infrastructure accessible to public and private entities wishing to build atop them.

That brings us to the fourth and final layer of the NHS: the application layer. This layer comprises all the government and private sector applications that aim to serve the diverse needs of Indian patients. The first three layers of the NHS exist so that the innovators and change-makers of the fourth layer are optimally empowered to organize, access, and process the data that they need to deliver the best service to their users.

National Health Stack Overview

The first session on the NHS followed this schedule and published the entire webinar on our official Youtube channel:

  •  An introduction to iSPIRT and our values
  • An overview of the NHS
  • A deep-dive into and demonstration of the PHR pillar of the plumbing layer
  • A question-answer session with the audience

The objective of the session was to drive awareness of the NHS components, objectives, timelines, and design philosophies. We want participants from all walks of healthcare to be engaged with the NHS and take part in building it.

In keeping with this objective, we will be hosting weekly open house sessions to keep diving deeper into the National Health Stack. The next such event will take place on Saturday (30th May) at 11:30 am. The focus of this second session will be on another pillar of the plumbing layer – the electronic registry system. More specifically, the session will focus upon the doctor registry. 

Readers who wish to learn more about the NHS are encouraged to share this post and sign up now for the session below or click here.

Readers may also submit questions about the NHS to [email protected] We shall do our best to answer these questions during next Saturday’s open house discussion. 

About the Author: The post is co-authored by our volunteers Aaryaman Vir, Siddharth Shetty and Karthik K S.

Further Reading

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iSPIRT Open House Discussion on National Health Stack [Virtual]

The National Health Stack is a set of foundational building blocks that will be built as shared digital infrastructure, usable by both public sector and private sector players. 

Healthcare delivery in India faces multiple challenges today. The doctor-patient ratio in the country is extremely poor, a problem that is exacerbated by the uneven distribution of doctors in certain states and districts. Insurance penetration in India remains low, leading to out-of-pocket expenses of over 80% (something that is being addressed by the Ayushman Bharat program). Additionally, the current view on healthcare amongst citizens as well as policymakers is largely around curative care.

Preventive care, which is equally important for the health of individuals, is generally overlooked. The leapfrog we envision is that of public, precision healthcare. This means that not only would every citizen have access to affordable healthcare, but the care delivered would be holistic (as opposed to symptomatic) and preventive (and not just curative) in nature. This will require a complete redesign of operations, regulations, and incentives – a transformation that, we believe, can be enabled by the Health Stack.

iSPIRT Foundation in partnership with Swasth Alliance is hosting an Open House Discussion on the following building blocks of the Health Stack

  • Doctor Registry
    • The ability for doctors to digitally authenticate themselves and share their electronic credentials with a third-party application such as a telehealth provider
  • Personal Health Record (PHR) System
    • The ability for every Indian to be empowered with control over their health data such that they can share it with trustworthy clinical providers to access a digital service
  • Open Health Services Network 
    • A unified health services network that comprises of a common set of protocols and APIs to allow health services to be delivered seamlessly across any set of health applications, doctors, and providers. 

The virtual session will be from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM on Saturday 23rd May.

To confirm your participation and receive the virtual link, please click here.

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