India Enterprise Architecture (IndEA) 2.0.

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The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has proposed a new model of “Federated Digital Identities” under the India Enterprise Architecture (IndEA) 2.0.

India Enterprise Architecture (IndEA)

It was first proposed and designed in 2017 “with a view to enabling alignment of the IT developments with the business vision of government organisations.
IndEA provides a generic framework, (based on The Open Group Architecture Framework -TOGAF) consisting of a set of architectural reference models, which can be converted into a Whole-of-Government Architecture for India, Ministries, States, Govt. Agencies etc.
The IndEA framework is based on a federated architecture approach and recognizes the need to accommodate both greenfield (new) and brownfield (existing / legacy) eGovernance initiatives.
Aims:
- Documenting and sharing explicit and implicit architecture best practices
- Providing guidance in the development of enterprise architectures
- Capturing key elements of architecture and inter-relationships between them
- Providing the means for architecture governance by enabling an audit process
- Enabling adoption of standards-based on common understanding

Objectives and need of InDEA 2.0

The boundaries between functions, jurisdictions and public-private organizations are getting blurred due to increasing interdependencies and the need was felt for citizen-centric approaches to designing digital services, as opposed to organization-centric approaches.
More rational planning of IT investments, cost savings due to reusable and interoperable systems, and better architectures designed faster.
To the citizens, it means a more holistic and seamless experience across organizations. And to the industry, it holds out the immense promise of innovation.
The InDEA 2.0 framework is useful to the policymakers in the government, and architects and system designers in the public and private sector.

About InDEA 2.0

InDEA 2.0 proposes a model of Federated Digital Identities that seeks to optimize the number of digital identities that a citizen needs to have.
- Under the new model,a citizen’s multiple digital IDs — from PAN and Aadhaar to driving licence and passport numbers — can be interlinked, stored, and accessed via one unique ID.
  - Citizens can use the digital ID “for availing other third-party services through authentication and consented eKYC”.
- It would also serve as a key to a registry where all different state and Central identities could be stored.

It enables Governments and private sector enterprises to design IT architectures that can span beyond their organizational boundaries and enable the delivery of holistic and integrated services to the customers.

It consists of a set of principles and architectural patterns that inform, guide, and enable the development of large digital systems, with a focus on the public sector
It promotes the evolution of digital ecosystems.

Significance

It would eliminate the need for a repeated verification process.The model empowers the citizen by putting her in control of these identities and providing her with the option of choosing which one to use for what purpose.

It enables establishing such a right balance in all the ongoing architectural initiatives and accelerates the realization of the vision of Digital India.

Criticisms

Critics may raise issues with digital security, and an umbrella identity could pose more risks towards exposing critical data.

Source: IE

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