Designing new-age Government to Citizens (G2C) applications based on the principles of “Technology as a public good’’ and a microservices based architecture

• by Carsten Maple, Venkat Goli, Anshul Pachouri and Suhird Singh
• Feb 8, 2021
• 1 min
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The focus note assesses the mobile applications Indian states developed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, based on established principles of privacy. The note further proposes a paradigm shift to a more interoperable, open, API-based federated microservices architecture to ensure data privacy, predictability, and standardization in future G2C applications.

As India grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, state governments launched various mobile and web applications to deliver social welfare and essential services and disseminate reliable information, among others. These applications differ significantly from each other in terms of their features, development approach, and data privacy. This policy brief proposes a paradigm shift to a more interoperable, open, APIs-based federated microservices architecture. The central and state governments can use this architecture to co-develop government-to-citizen (G2C) applications while ensuring adequate data privacy and standardization.