Original Research Article
An open platform centric approach for scalable government service delivery to the poor: The Aadhaar case

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.05.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • In developing countries, e-government initiatives face challenges of serving a large poor and marginalised BOP (Bottom of Pyramid) population.

  • We use the lens of platform ecosystem theory to investigate how government service delivery to the BOP can be scaled.

  • A single in-depth case study on the World’s largest and advanced biometric identity platform was conducted.

  • Modular architecture coupled with limited core, open standards coupled with controlled access are positive factors.

  • Ecosystem governance and keystone behaviour positively impact scalability of the platform enabled service delivery.

  • The research provides insights for policy makers particularly for nations struggling to provide basic services to poor.

  • This research is also one of the few studies extending platform theory empirically to the e-government domain.

Abstract

The efficient delivery of government services to the poor, or Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP), faces many challenges. While a core problem is the lack of scalability, that could be solved by the rapid proliferation of platforms and associated ecosystems. Existing research involving platforms focus on modularity, openness, ecosystem leadership and governance, as well as on their impact on innovation, scale and agility. However, existing studies fail to explore the role of platform in scalable e-government services delivery on an empirical level. Based on an in-depth case study of the world's largest biometric identity platform, used by millions of the poor in India, we develop a set of propositions connecting the attributes of a digital platform ecosystem to different indicators for the scalability of government service delivery. We found that modular architecture, combined with limited functionality in core modules, and open standards combined with controlled access and ecosystem governance enabled by keystone behaviour, have a positive impact on scalability. The research provides insights to policy-makers and government officials alike, particularly those in nations struggling to provide basic services to poor and marginalised. This is also one of the few studies to apply platform theory empirically to the e-government domain.

Introduction

E-government has been defined as “the use of information technology to enable and improve the efficiency with which government services are provided to citizens, employees, businesses and agencies” (Carter & Bélanger, 2005, p5). Like the use of IT in the private sector, e-government is evolutionary in nature (Layne & Lee, 2001), which means that, while the initiatives start with online cataloguing and information sharing, the governments involved then move to delivering multiple government services online (Belanger, Carter, & Schaupp, 2005). In developing countries, e-government initiatives face the additional challenge of having to serve a large poor and marginalised BOP (Bottom of Pyramid) population, which severely affects the scalability aspect of the service delivery infrastructure. For four billion people in a number of countries, their station in life allows them very limited access to physical, social and economic infrastructures (Hammond, Kramer, Katz, Tran, & Walker, 2007). The government service delivery challenges in this context are three-fold: i) providing easy access to traditional government-to-citizen services like passports, resident identity documents or driving licenses, ii) effective targeting and channelization of government welfare initiatives and assistances, and iii) enabling and involving private sectors entrepreneurs in serving the unmet needs of the population for basic services like banking and telecommunication.

Government agencies in developing countries spend a significant portion of their resources for the welfare of their poorer citizens. In the case of India, government spending on subsidy and direct assistance for its BOP citizens is estimated to be US$ 50 billion annually (Reserve Bank of India, 2012), and it is still growing. Government assistance and welfare services to this segment are associated with high overhead costs, a lack of transparency and leakage, which means they require urgent attention. Similarly, private sector involvement in developing and selling products and services to this segment is at best localised in nature and limited in scope (Lyytinen, 2010), leaving them at the mercy of an expensive but inefficient informal economy (Hammond et al., 2007). Data from the World Bank (World Bank, 2013) shows that, while banking penetration in the wealthiest 20% of India's population is 56%, it is a mere 21% for the poorest 20%. The main difficulty facing the private sector when it comes to provide telecommunication, banking, financial and other services to the poor can be attributed to the government's inability to provide the poor with reliable official identity documents (Gelb & Clark, 2013; Yadav, 2014).

In addition, even the popular government initiatives aimed at the poor lose their effectiveness when the size of their operations expand (Milat, King, Bauman, & Redman, 2012). As such, governments in multiple developing countries are actively searching for cost-effective, transparent and scalable service delivery models for their citizens (Layne & Lee, 2001; Reddick, 2004), models that can also address the unique requirements of the poorer section of the population. To achieve this, governments need to be innovative, as government budgets are under threat (Janssen & Estevez, 2013) and traditional methods of scaling up government service delivery, particularly to the poor citizens have not delivered impressive results.

From a more theoretical perspective, we propose using platform and ecosystem theory to see how government service delivery to the BOP can be improved. Digital platforms are identified as being one of the most important sources of innovation and value co-creation (Eaton, Elaluf-Calderwood, Sorensen, & Yoo, 2015) and are often used by businesses to scale the number and reach of their services rapidly with limited upfront investment. Platforms are associated with multiple attributes that can be leveraged to achieve scale, even for services to the poor, for instance modularity (Baldwin & Clark, 2000; Gawer, 2014), reusability for different purposes (Baldwin & Woodard, 2009; Gawer, 2014), openness for integration with external systems (Eisenmann, Parker, & Van Alstyne, 2006; Ondrus, Gannamaneni, & Lyytinen, 2015; O'Reilly, 2010), keystone leadership and lightweight governance (Huber, Kude, & Dibbern, 2017; Iansiti and Levien, 2004a, Iansiti and Levien, 2004b; Zhang & Liang, 2011). Although there is a generic acceptance of the profound transformational impact of platforms when it comes to improving government services, to our knowledge, that impact has yet to be empirically examined (Brown, Fishenden, Thompson, & Venters, 2017; Janssen & Estevez, 2013).

Although existing academic research is limited, the concept of platform in government service delivery has been attracting the attention of governments from a number of countries (Brown et al., 2017), including India. Researchers have used the term Government as a Platform or GaaP (Brown et al., 2017; Linders, 2012) to describe this new approach. The concept of i-government, or lean government (Janssen & Estevez, 2013), also views platforms as the primary artefact for achieving the objective of ‘more with less’. Based on the concept of GaaP, government divests its role as sole executor and instead works together with a complex ecosystem of individuals, and public and private organizations. Platforms allow governments to orchestrate the interaction within such an extended network or ecosystem at lower risk and with a higher degree of innovativeness (O′ Reilley O'Reilly, 2010; Brown et al., 2017; Janssen & Estevez, 2013). Although platforms can be used for many objectives, in this study, we focus on its use to deliver scalable government services to the poor and marginalised sections of the society. As mentioned before, due to the sheer size of India's population, service delivery to this section of the population needs to be scalable (Madon, Reinhard, Roode, & Walsham, 2009; Walsham & Sahay, 2006).

Our specific research objectives are:

  • To examine whether platforms can play a role in solving the scalability problem associated with government service delivery to marginalised sections of society (BOP).

  • To determine how the various architectural and business model attributes of platforms help achieve scalability.

To do so, we analyse an in-depth case involving the Indian Government-owned identity platform called Aadhaar and the associated ecosystems of government and private organizations.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. First, we summarise existing literature on a) e-government, focusing on the use of ICT for efficient service delivery and b) platform and ecosystem theory, with the aim of creating the required theoretical framework. We also provide a number of propositions linking key platform ecosystem attributes to scalable government service delivery within the BOP context. In section 3, we describe our research approach, including the reason why we chose a single case study, case selection and field procedure. In section 4, we test the propositions and the conceptual model. Finally, in section 5, we discuss the results and limitations of this study and outline future avenues for research.

Section snippets

Literature and theoretical grounding

We begin with a brief discussion of relevant e-government literature, to provide the context of our research, before focusing on more generic platform research from a technical perspective. Although the number of studies involving platforms is growing rapidly, we focus only on studies that are relevant from a technology management and information technology perspective. Although we are aware of the interrelation with more strategic and economic literature on platforms focusing on network effect

Research methodology

When it comes to answering how and why questions and when dealing with contemporary phenomena in a real-life context, case studies are a preferred method in social science research (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2009). In terms of the suitability of case studies as a method, they are considered to be the most appropriate tool in the critical and early exploratory phase of any management theory (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2009). Consequently, we chose a case study approach to provide in-depth insights into

Results

The nationwide unique identification project of UIDAI or Aadhaar program was initiated in early 2009 by the Government of India with the aim of providing identification to all residents of India. Compared to other –off-line – identification documents, Aadhaar identity can be verified and authenticated in an online, cost-effective way. Because it operates online, Aadhaar was expected to deal with duplicate and fake identities and should ideally be accepted as proof of identity and address for

Discussions on results

As explained earlier before, multiple researchers have associated digital platforms with innovation, cost-effectiveness, scalability as well as agility (Eaton et al., 2015; Lusch & Nambisan, 2015; Sedera, Lokuge, Grover, Sarker, & Sarker, 2016). Empirical research into platform ecosystems has long focused on commercial businesses, but, to our knowledge, it has rarely involved government organizations (Brown et al., 2017), let alone those in developing economies. Most existing studies mention

Limitations and future research opportunities

This study has a few limitations, some of which can be turned into research opportunities. The main limitation is that the study is based on a single case within a specific regulatory, cultural and institutional environment, i.e. India, which means that further testing of the propositions, with multiple alternative cases in developing and developed economies, and large-scale samples and within a more international setting, is likely to yield interesting results. This study only establishes the

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Biswanath Sen Gupta for his extensive support during data collection phase of the research.

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