20 COVER STORY COVER STORY 21 Africa. “The strategy is to invest in payment wallets and “Widespread coopera- Government As a Platform ecommerce companies across the globe and invest on the condition that the investee companies move their tech tion on public goods and In a 2018 article he co-authored, Choudary proposed a to the Alibaba Cloud,” he says. Meanwhile, Ant Financial government-as-a-platform approach that Singapore could is approaching banks in emerging markets to help them use to establish itself as a hub for digital trade. The country as a platform model expand their business and target the unbanked population. standards development “It promises them something they could not do themsel- The approach, which Choudary says could be adopted ves – expand the potential customer base by targeting the can help countries work by other governments, involves first using technologies cash economy and help with the digital transformation of like blockchain to help SMEs to conduct digital business the bank by offering a whole suite of AI capabilities for together to create a more securely, and seek new business partners and distributors, credit scoring of the unbanked population,” he says. while managing a common audit trail. Once the success DIGITAL PUBLIC The end result is that a growing list of clients around the inclusive platform eco- of the SME trade platform is demonstrated, the country GOODS world are sharing the same back-end infrastructure for could open its platform technology, know-how and pro- everything from fraud mitigation to e-commerce and nomy, without becoming cesses to emerging economies that are seeking to boost banking, with payment wallets being built on top of the digital SME trade but don’t want to become over-reliant on Alibaba Cloud, allowing the Chinese Internet giant to overtly dependant on the commercial platforms such as Amazon and Alibaba. When amass better and better datasets, he says. “The big picture multiple countries start using the same platform, they start COUNTRY AS is the top payments wallets and banks are using the same infrastructure offered by subscribing to the same data standards, leading to greater A PLATEFORM credit scoring models and are increasingly dependent on cooperation and interoperability among them. one company at the backend. The end goal is to create a common standard for financial services and trade backed private firms.” AI CAPABILITIES STANDARDS In order to create the right control points and be a hub for (NATIONAL AI DEVELOPMENT AND by the world’s best credit scoring model,” says Choudary, STRATEGY) MULTILATERAL digital trade, countries that want to become digital hubs AGREEMENTS “And as these platforms get bigger we may see control must invest in creating unique intellectural property that points over trade shift from political countries to digital other countries using the SME trade platform find va- platforms.” luable. To gain competitive advantage, a country needs to create and control unique IP that adds value to users of the Creating Digital Public Goods SME trade platform. By creating regulatory sandboxes, countries like Singapore So how can governments regain control? India has deve- and Switzerland are already encouraging innovation in loped one approach. IndiaStack is a set of APIs that allows fintech and could use these as a value-add plug-ins to SME governments, businesses, startups and developers to trade platform. Examples include developing a data-driven utilise a unique open source digital Infrastructure which credit scoring system that could be used to extend trade is treated as a public good. financing to SMEs based on their trade activity data gathe- red on the platform. As more countries use the platform, The Open API team at the Indian Software Product Indus- other IP creators could find it more attractive to create IP try Roundtable (iSPIRT) has been a pro-bono partner in for this platform, owing to the higher demand. the development. As of 2019, the services that IndiaStack offers are proving identity, completing KYC, making digital This growing IP, in turn, is likely to lead to greater usage of payments, signing documents digitally and sharing of data. the platform, amplifying the network effect and positio- Morocco is now working on using the IndiaStack to intro- ning a country that moves to do this as the central and duce the common infrastructure necessary to enable an most powerful point for processing digital trade data from open source financial services ecosystem, says Choudary. participating countries, making it a hub for digital trade. Meanwhile, with the encouragement of UN Secretary-Ge- A country that turns itself into a platform for digital trade, neral Antonio Guterres; Norway, Sierra Leone, UNICEF could also leverage its neutral position to create a free and iSPIRT are collaborating closely with other stakehol- data port that positions it as a neutral country for proces- ders to in a group called the Digital Public Goods Alliance sing global trade data. to implement a UN recommendation that a platform be created for “sharing digital public goods, engaging talent A free data port would allow data from other countries to and pooling data sets, in a manner that respects privacy, be stored and processed in a country like Singapore, but in areas related to attaining the SDGs”, such as financial in accordance with their individual country-specific data inclusion. jurisdictions. The group’s guiding principle is that software, content and Singapore is in the early phases of developing a country- data must be possible to use independently of any particu- as-a-platform model. Choudary is meanwhile also working lar vendor to be considered as digital public goods. with other countries, encouraging governments to consi- der adopting the model. There is an opportunity to counter the power of Internet platforms. Governments just need to seize it, he says. J.L.S