At SamagraX, we build & shape open-source population-scale products, platforms & protocols, in the form of Building Blocks (BBs) and Digital Public Goods (DPGs) that empower governments to leverage technology and data to transform lives of millions.

GovStack defines Building Blocks (BBs) as software code and applications that are interoperable, provide a basic digital service at scale, and can be reused for multiple use cases and contexts. Similarly, it defines Digital Public Goods (DPGs) as open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards, and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm by design, and help attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We work across both these categories by either (a) building ourselves from scratch or (b) building on top of existing BBs and DPGs.

So far, we’ve shaped 10+ BBs and 3 DPGs to deliver on 20+ products across domains and states.

Outlined below are some of the key contributions that we’ve made at SamagraX so far:

1.1. Built ourselves from scratch

• User Service : An OIDC compliant extensible user authentication and authorization service that includes key features such as passwordless authentication and attribute based access control (ABAC). Key Adopters - Himachal Pradesh’s eSamwad App (1+ lac teachers), Uttar Pradesh’s Nipun Lakshya App (2+ lac teachers, 4K mentors)

• Template Manager : A REST API service to render, store, and manage templates with multiple features such as data transformation, lambda API, templater playground and support for multiple templating engines. Key Adopters - Being leveraged in existing DPGs (Shiksha and UCI)

• Doc Generator : A plugin based service to generate and store templatized documents in various extendable formats (pdf, docx, png) and across multiple CDN providers with a short URL generated by any URL shortener service (bit.ly, tinyurl, etc.). Key Adopters - Haryana’s Saksham Samiksha App for mentor reports (3K users), Himachal Pradesh’s eSamwad App to generate school leaving certificates and learning record reports (67K teachers)

• Yet Another URL Shortener (YAUS) : A URL shortener service to create, manage and track shortened links at scale. Key Adopters - Haryana’s Dual System of Training (DST) App to generate personalized call to action (CTA) links for industry trainers and trainees (30K users)

• Workflow Builder : An extensible tool to build configurable workflows with logic-driven chaining of multiple web-forms and user level personalization, currently leveraging enketo rendered web-forms. Key Adopters - Haryana’s Dual System of Training (DST) App for ITI trainee and trainer flows (30K users)

• Confidence Algorithm : An algorithm to estimate the reliability of data points in a database when there are multiple conflicting data sources and no source of truth. Key Adopters - Odisha’s Krushak Odisha farmer registry (60 lac farmers)

1.2. Built on top of existing BBs

• Registries & Verifiable Credentials : Sunbird Registries & Credentials is a framework that enables easy setup of electronic registries and verifiable credentials including attestation and verification flows. Our primary contribution has been to allow for implementation in brownfield scenarios through a proxy that allows for external auth providers to be used instead of existing ones. Key Adopters - Himachal Pradesh’s student registry (8 lac students), Uttar Pradesh Human Resources in Health (HRH) institution, faculty and student registries

• Data Collection : ODK and Enketo are tools to build powerful offline forms to collect and manage data across mobile and web applications. Key contributions include form embedding, form personalization at a user level, integration of external data ingestion services and performance improvements. Key Adopters - Odisha’s Agriculture Development Associates App for farmer surveys (1+ lac surveys), Haryana’s Dual System of Training (DST) App for ITI trainee and trainer use cases (30K users)

• Telemetry : PostHog is a product analytics suite for automatic tracking of every event on a website or application to understand user behavior. Key contributions include Sunbird telemetry spec enforcement. Key Adopters - Uttar Pradesh’s Nipun Lakshya App (2+ lac teachers, 4K mentors), Himachal Pradesh’s eSamwad App (1+ lac teachers)

• Data Visualization : Metabase is a business intelligence platform for configurable data visualizations. Key contributions include addition of PDF downloads and RYGB map visualizations. Key Adopters - Integrated Command and Control Center (ICCC) in Himachal and Uttar Pradesh

• X-Admin : Built on ReactAdmin, this is a low-code framework to create internal admin tools for governance use cases such as user management, master data management, forms management, communication management, dashboarding, etc. Key Adopters - Himachal Pradesh’s state admin console to manage teacher - parent engagement, facilitate device donations

• Open Network Protocol : Beckn is an open protocol that connects consumers and providers on an interoperable network. Key contribution includes contextualisation of the protocol to be used in the agriculture domain for farmer-facing services. Key Adopters - Odisha’s KONNECT Platform to enable credit, market linkage for farmers (65+ lac farmers)

• Lakehouse : Delta.io is an open platform to unify data warehousing and advanced analytics. Key contribution includes packaging for successful winning implementation setup on large scale government systems. Key Adopters - Integrated Command and Control Center (ICCC) in Himachal Pradesh

• Recommendation Engine : Metarank is being leveraged to push content recommendation for farmers (about farming practices, fertilizers, pesticides etc) in the form of audio content through IVRS calls based on farmer characteristics, content consumption history and similar farmer preferences. Key adopters - Odisha’s farmer agro-advisory IVRS setup (65+ lac farmers)

• Unified Communications Interface (UCI) : A configurable platform to enable multi-channel, personalized chatbot conversations and nudges across various channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, email, etc. for governance use cases across sectors such as education, employment, agriculture and so on. UCI has been contributed as a core Sunbird building block and is recognised as a certified DPG by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) and Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL). Key Adopters - UCI is powering MoE DIKSHA’s Tara WhatsApp Bot

• Shiksha : A Digital Public Good that offers a suite of 20 modular, configurable, user-centric and NDEAR compliant modules for actors in the education system including teachers, mentors and monitors, invigilators, administrators and parents / students. Shiksha is based on module federation, which means anyone can create and add modules to an existing app without needing to recompile or relaunch the app. This construct can be used to create experiences across domains - from fintech to agriculture and so on. Key Adopters - Shiksha’s Spot Assessment module is being integrated in Himachal Pradesh’s Shiksha Saathi App

• Prashnavali : An NEP-compliant solution built using Sunbird building blocks (cokreat, InQuiry and Knowlg) for the creation of crowdsourced competency-based questions, question bank and question papers to be consumed by users for practice and assessments phygitally. Prashnavali as a solution can be extended beyond education for any assessment or administrative surveying needs. Key Adopters - Prashnavali is being used by teachers in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh for creating practise worksheets and assessments

• Code for GovTech (C4GT) - C4GT was launched in May 2022 as an annual summer coding program for engineering students across the country, offering them the opportunity to work on live open-source projects aimed at solving governance challenges, with 1:1 mentorship from experienced practitioners in leading GovTech organizations. The year was the first edition of C4GT and was brought to life as a pilot to gather learnings & lay a solid foundation. 9 open-source GovTech projects were identified to give the cohort an opportunity to work on live Digital Public Goods such as Sunbird QuML, UCI, Shiksha, among others. A total of 346 applications were received this year from students across 57 engineering colleges, and 13 students were selected as contributors for C4GT 2022.

• Work From Campus (WFC) Program - WFC is a year-long internship opportunity for 3rd/4th year engineering students to get paid hands-on experience & exposure to the GovTech space. The program entails 1:1 personalized & structured coaching, exposure to DPG ecosystem through expert interactions and online forums, a 3-month product management course, rigorous field immersion visits for exposure to on-ground governance machinery and assured full-time opportunity with SamagraX as an owner of multiple GovTech building blocks and products. So far, 8 WFC interns have been onboarded in the current year.