The working paper 'Stacking up the Benefits Lessons from India's Digital Journey' said that the government played a catalytic role, acting as an anchor client and establishing institutions to ensure continuity in India Stack's operations.
It said that using this digital infrastructure, India was able to quickly provide support to an impressive share of poor households during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The paper said that using a digital backbone allowed India to scale its vaccine delivery quickly and overcome challenges such as large-scale internal migration. The technology underlying CoWIN, a digital platform developed by India to capture the Covid-19 vaccination program, has been deployed in Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Jamaica to help facilitate their vaccination programs.
"The Government of India estimates that, up to March 2021, about 1.1 percent of GDP in expenditure was saved due to the digital infrastructure and other governance reforms," the paper said.
It said that using this digital infrastructure India was able to quickly provide support to an impressive share of poor households during the pandemic.
DPI refers to a set of shared digital building blocks, such as applications, systems, and platforms, powered by interoperable open standards or specifications. India Stack is the collective name of a set of commonly used DPIs in India; it consists of three different layers--unique identity (Aadhaar), complimentary payments systems (Unified Payments Interface, Aadhaar Payments Bridge, Aadhaar Enabled Payment Service), and data exchange (DigiLocker and Account Aggregator).
"Together they enable online, paperless, cashless, and privacy-respecting digital access to a variety of public and private services. The benefit of this investment is felt across the country and served India well during the pandemic," the paper said.
It said that in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, about 87 percent of poor households received at least one benefit.
The paper said digital payments are now ubiquitous and UPI accounts for 68 percent of all payment transactions by volume.
"The use of digital payments has expanded the customer base of smaller merchants, documenting their cash flow and improving access to finance. Roughly 4.5 million individuals and companies have benefited from easier access to financial services through the Account Aggregator, since it was first launched in August 2021, and adoption is increasing rapidly," the paper said.
In Vietnam, the impacts of COVID-19 and the complexity of the global situation have boosted Vietnamese enterprises in many industries, and they will continue to pursue digital transformation in 2022.
Orientation and strategy, people and organization, and customer experience and omnichannel are the three aspects with the best digital transformation readiness, according to the Annual Report on Enterprise Digital Transformation 2022: "The readiness of Vietnamese enterprises for digital transformation."
The report also showed that there are eight key technologies – mobile internet, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, fintech, IoT, advanced robotics, and additive manufacturing – that are likely to help Vietnamese businesses transform.
In 2022, the number of surveyed businesses that are conducting digital transformation showed signs of increasing, and many businesses have also spent more or less on this activity after learning, researching, and consulting information in 2021. This change is mainly due to rising awareness, skills, and experience related to the community of leaders and human resources of the enterprise, the report stated.
According to the report, businesses have made a breakthrough in applying digital technologies in marketing, distribution, and omnichannel to enhance customer experience and care.
The readiness of businesses is also positive, with 12 out of the 16 surveyed industries scoring above the average rate of 2.5.
This means that most of the surveyed industries have been developing digitalisation goals in strategic planning, and creating management positions or separating digital transformation projects.