DPG Dialogues 2024: Over 64% of Developers Cite ‘Lack of Awareness’ as Key Barrier to DPG Contribution

New Delhi, 09th October 2024: The second edition of ‘DPG Dialogues’, a flagship event by Samagra, a mission-driven governance consulting firm, is currently underway in New Delhi.

The event, themed ‘Thinking, Building & Sustaining Digital Public Goods and Digital Public Infrastructure’, is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Omidyar Network India and conducted in partnership with the global DPG Alliance (knowledge partner) and GitHub (community partner). This year it is bringing together a host of distinguished government and industry leaders and stakeholders from the Digital Public Goods (DPG) & Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) ecosystem for an engaging series of panels and talks.

Sharing his reflections on DPG Dialogues – via video, Sh. Nandan Nilekani said that “This gathering is very important because it brings together practitioners, different points of view—how to create supply, how to create demand, how to make a difference, and how to do things at population scale. Together, we aim to design solutions that are low-cost, frugal in innovation, interoperable, and built for global impact.”

Notable panellists & speakers include Sh. Amitabh Kant (India’s G20 Sherpa), Dr. R.S. Sharma (Chairperson of ONDC and former CEO of NHA and UIDAI), Sh. Abhishek Singh (Additional Secretary MeitY), Sh. Samuel Praveen (Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare), Sh. Saurabh Gaur (Principal Secretary, IT, Andhra Pradesh), Smt. Kavita Bhatia (Senior Scientist, MeitY), Sh. Nand Kumarum (CEO, NeGD), Venkatesh Hariharan (India Representative at Open Innovation Network), Prof. Ramesh Loganathan (IIIT Hyderabad and State Innovation Cell, Telangana), Steve Haley (Partnerships Director, Mojaloop), Tanuj Bhojwani (Head, People+AI), Hemant Adarkar (Tech Advisor, Artha Global), Supriya Sankaran (Co-founder, Agami), among others.

Given that long-term sustainability of DPGs is heavily reliant on the presence of healthy, vibrant, and engaged developer communities, this year the event is also seeing the release of the first DPG SCoRe 2024 – Annual DPG State of the Community Report, which provides a holistic overview of the current state of community-building efforts across India’s DPG landscape, based on surveys with 25 organizations and 300 developers. The report lays out a framework, based on which the participating organizations were benchmarked across various parameters of inputs, outputs and outcomes and can serve as a point-in-time snapshot of the community on which the ecosystem and DPG builders can track the evolution of communities annually.

Among its key findings, the report reveals 64% non-contributors cite lack of awareness as the biggest obstacle to participation. The report also points to the critical need for mentoring support, with 56% of contributors requiring regular guidance. Only 16% of the surveyed organizations meet the criteria for “Community Champions” criteria, i.e. they meet the benchmarks on community size, active contributors, community growth and community contributions to codebase. This reiterates the need for stronger community-building efforts within the ecosystem.

Finally, the event is also showcasing the work of 100+ contributors – both college students and working professionals – selected from 3,000+ applicants from across the breadth and width of the country, who participated over the last 3 months in the one of it’s kind ‘Dedicated Mentoring Programme’ for GovTech and DPG projects sourced from 42 organisations, spanning both coding and design problem statements with population-scale impact.

The event will conclude with an insightful fireside chat featuring Dr. R.S. Sharma (Chairperson of ONDC and former CEO of NHA and UIDAI), who will be sharing insights on the value propositions and motivations of the DPG/DPI ecosystem and the role of the developer communities in addressing global challenges and creating impact at scale.

Gaurav Goel, Founder and CEO of Samagra, emphasised the transformative role of Digital Public Goods in India’s digital revolution, saying, “India has made significant strides in developing DPGs and DPIs. While setting new benchmarks, it is equally important to ensure wide-scale adoption and sustainability. DPG Dialogues is our humble contribution to advancing this movement.”