Digital Governance Innovation and Transformation (DGIT)

Legal identity systems that are interoperable with other functional registries such as voter registration or passports

Past and Current Partners

UNDP CDO Sprint Programme

Active Countries
Deployed to Malawi and Honduras
Thematic area(s)
Other
Technology
It is open source: beneficiary governments receive the full source code of their customized version and are totally free to do anything they’d like with it. It can be easily whitelabeled: The solution is customized for each government as if developed internally.
Organisation Name
UNDP BPPS
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The Problem

  • 1) More than 1 billion population globally still lacks legal identity. One of the biggest causes of such global identity gap is inaccessibility of civil registration services.
  • 2) Member States have different foundational and functional registries of its population which does not interoperate and causes duplication of effort.
  • 3) Member States spend millions of dollars every year to maintain its civil registration services by paying maintenance fee for the proprietary software.

The Solution

  • 1) DGIT solution can significantly improve the quality, efficiency and accessibility of civil registration services by creating a ‘computerized legal identity system’  for the UN Member States in a cost-efficient manner.
  • 2) The strength of DGIT solution is its comprehensiveness. It ensures interoperability with other functional registries such as voter registration or passport. With its 10+ years deployment experience, it is proven that the solution can address many of their complex workflows.
  • 3) Since DGIT provides a comprehensive package of support (i.e., UNDP-developed software with experts who tailor the solutions to align with legal framework of a country, local capacity building support to maintain the deployed solutions), Member States’ financial burden to maintain civil registration service will significantly decrease.

How it works?

  • Step 1: We work with governments who are coming out of a crisis related to elections or identity registries to define a strategy to reform said strategies.
  • Step 2: We help the governments fundraise with international donors or multilateral banks.
  • Step 3: We hire a team of international experts in various areas to support the government and procure equipment required to improve and deploy identity management (and other governance) solutions.
  • Step 4: We roll out identity management services. From the ICT perspective, people interact with e-gov services or with booth software managed by a government operator (e.g. submitting an application for a biometric ID).
  • Step 5: The application is validated, in compliance with regulatory and operational requirements at the backoffice (can be partially or totally automated depending on regulatory requirements). Step 6: Documents are issued to the requesting individuals, or rights and obligations as defined in the solution are assigned as per legislation.
Digital X Solution Digital Governance Innovation and Transformation (DGIT)

Bridging the digital divide

The solution supports the capacity of the government directly and therefore the targeted populations will get benefits indirectly. When registering people, the DGIT solutions ensure that people with disabilities or manual labor workers whose biometrics cannot be captured have alternative means to be included in the registry. Also, for those living in remote areas can be registered offline and when the network is back, the computerized data will be synchronized with the system in a manner to ensure data protection and cyber security.

Impact and highlights

Malawi: 10 million ID cards issued with access to various government services Hondurs: 6 million ID cards issued which built trust for a successful election In the next year, same results are to be achieved in Vanuatu and Guinea-Bissau at least.

Plans for expansion

We are getting requests for support from different countries including Belize, Trinidad Tobago, Dominica and more in the pipeline. Also, function wise, in Malawi, the core registration function has been deployed and the CO and MS further requested to expand its function to digital wallet, legal case management system, and health data management system. In Vanuatu, a function on anti-money laundering is also requested.