In an acknowledgement of the pivotal role we have been playing in driving systemic change and building more inclusive and equitable societies, MOSIP received a share of voice in Omidyar Network’s 2020 review video. With the onset of the pandemic, Omidyar Network’s focus turned to urgent needs before them. The video features stories of Omidyar Network’s grantees, who seized the moment in a world turned topsy turvy by the COVID-19 pandemic, and created immense impact. MOSIP is one of them.
2020 was an inflection point for MOSIP. Despite the economic downturn and financial shock, unprecedented health crisis, and adverse impact on humanity in general, MOSIP remained focused on its mission -- to help countries take advantage of its open source platform to stay on course their transformational journeys to build digital functional ID (fID) systems.
With the collective resolve, support and trust of our leadership, funders, partners, contributors, commercial ecosystem and countries, we made marked progress on all fronts. These included advancing country engagements, addressing a steady stream of potential adopter requests, making new releases and platform enhancements, expanding our ecosystem, receiving high-level references in media mentions, and building on our recognition as a DPG, among others.
In the video (MOSIP-specific clip), Prof. S Rajagopalan, Project Lead, MOSIP, highlights the critical role that technology plays in the pandemic. Citing the example of COVID-19 vaccinations, he draws attention to the need for robust identities to link vaccines to people -- a Herculean challenge given nearly 1.1 billion people globally are without any government-recognized form of identity. Against this backdrop, he cites how nearly 200 million people in India below the poverty line received cash transfers during the peak of the pandemic in two hours simply because 900 million of the country’s population have bank accounts.
He elaborates how 140 million of the 1.1 billion people without identity will be covered with just two of several countries engaging with and adopting MOSIP to pilot and roll out digital identities on a national scale. This inspires confidence for more countries to count on MOSIP as a trusted open source platform and digital identity infrastructure framework to set up their digital fID systems. Omidyar Network’s belief and investment in MOSIP can continue to advance our mission to help make identity a reality, without leaving anyone out.
Omidyar Network is a social change venture that reimagines critical systems, and the ideas that govern them, to build more inclusive and equitable societies. Omidyar Network is one of MOSIP’s four global funders. Omidyar Network has been helping turn the COVID-19 tide for grantees and investees with grant extensions, accelerated disbursements, additional funding and other aid. Read more about how this philanthropic funder has been ‘responding to the pandemic and inspiring the work of grantees who have focused on addressing the crisis and in laying the foundation to build a more resilient and inclusive economy and tech sector’.
