MOSIP stands for Modular Open-Source Identity Platform. It is open source software which governments or international organisations can use as a core, to build foundational digital identity systems. A foundational ID system is one in which individuals receive a unique identifier from the government. The unique identifier can be used by individuals for identity assertion, and for verification to avail of various services, including social security, financial services, etc.
Countries when building their national foundational ID system face some common challenges. These include:
MOSIP is being built to address these challenges.
MOSIP is a technology platform which helps Governments and other user organizations implement a digital, foundational identity system in a cost-effective way. Nations can use MOSIP freely to build their own identity systems. Being modular in its architecture, MOSIP provides flexibility to countries in how they implement and configure their systems, and helps avoid vendor lock-in.
MOSIP is building the key core functional modules which are common to any foundational identity system. Some of these modules are - Registration, ID Issuance, ID Lifecycle management, Authentication etc.
MOSIP is being anchored at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) - an academic institute, with philanthropic donations from Indian and International donors, as a global public good. Our donors are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network and the Tata Trusts. MOSIP is steered by an Executive Committee and a Technology Committee actively advising on the project. There is also an International Advisory Group giving strategic guidance on the project.
The vision is for MOSIP to become a thriving open-source project, supported by an active open source community of developers and system integrators to contribute to the long term support and growth of MOSIP. IIIT-B will facilitate this through open source community engagement, building training and certification programs, etc.
MOSIP has many functional modules required in any foundational ID system (eg. Registration, ID Issuance, Authentication etc). Individuals and organisations working with digital identity systems, including developers, software companies, countries, startups, etc., are all invited to explore, use and contribute to any module of MOSIP that is relevant to them. MOSIP as a whole is meant to be implemented on a national scale, and thus is mostly applicable to governments of sovereign nations.
In addition, developers or system integrators can use the code in following ways:
MOSIP is an open source project. All code, documentation and white papers will become available in 2019 under an open source license on a platform like Github. Countries who want to use MOSIP modules for their foundational ID system will hire a System Integrator (software company) to work locally to download the MOSIP code and configure the MOSIP modules to suit the countries’ requirements. IIIT-Bangalore is creating an ecosystem of developers and software companies who will contribute to MOSIP development and provide support services to countries.
MOSIP architects have reviewed ID systems in countries like India, Pakistan, Peru & Estonia. The architecture principles and functionality which enhance the privacy, security, configurability etc have inspired MOSIP design. MOSIP undertook a study to understand the digital ID systems prevalent currently. However, we could not look inside these ID system and thus MOSIP is developed completely from scratch. The experience of the last decade of how digital & foundational IDs have evolved contributed to MOSIP’s evolution. The new challenge for MOSIP was how to build it such that it can be easily configured and customised for different implementations.
MOSIP has all the features available to make it fully GDPR compliant. Since it is available as a customisable kernel, it would also depend on the implementing agency to ensure that an end-to-end system built using MOSIP remains fully compliant with GDPR.
MOSIP is a philanthropic, funder-driven project and thus we do not charge for MOSIP support. However, we do charge interested businesses for training and workshops to keep the Knowledge Transfer activities cost neutral.
MOSIP is currently building a hostable sandbox solution with a few partners. Soon a public version of the Sandbox will be made available. We will announce the same through our website and mailers.
MOSIP has been written in Java and can be deployed on an Operating System supporting Java. Thus MOSIP is operating system agnostic.
Yes. Biometrics is not an essential requirement for the working of MOSIP.
MOSIP has published its Principles of Engagement. In engagement where MOSIP is directly involved, we work towards adherence to these principles. Having said that, because MOSIP will comply with the principles of being an open source project, it will not put additional restrictions on the usage of the code beyond what our license of choice, the Mozilla Public License 2.0 imposes.
While MOSIP has been envisaged for creating foundational IDs, the configurability of MOSIP enables use of MOSIP for functional ID purpose also. MOSIP can also be customised to be used by a large organisation, for managing its people operations.