India to open up COWIN for the world: PM
Platform being made open source; software can be customised according to the needs of a country
India is making its digital platform for Covid-19 vaccination drive, COWIN, open source for all countries to access, adapt and use. This is perhaps the first time that any country is making a software platform developed by its public sector open for the world.
Speaking at the Cowin Global Conclave on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Soon, COWIN will be available to any and all countries.” The software can be customised according to the local requirements of any country.
India has administered over 350 million doses of vaccine through this platform so far.
Highlighting the importance of technology in fight against the pandemic, Modi said India had made its Covid tracking and tracing app Aarogya Setu open source as soon as it was technically feasible. He pointed out that with nearly 200 million users, the Aarogya Setu app was a readily available package for developers, and had been tested in the real world for speed scale. “This pandemic has made many people realise the fundamental truth of this philosophy…. That's why Cowin is being prepared to be made open source.’’ The conclave was attended by representatives of 142 countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Guyana, Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis and Zambia amongst others. These countries are keen to adopt Cowin for digitising their Covid-19 vaccination drive.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said, “In my humble opinion, CO-WIN is the crown jewel of our Digital India initiative. This platform shall go down in history for facilitating inoculation of a large percentage of the world’s population with ease, while simultaneously ensuring complete transparency.”
NARENDRA MODI PRIME MINISTER
"INDIA HAS BEEN COMMITTED TO SHARING ALL OUR EXPERIENCES, EXPERTISE AND RESOURCES WITH THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY IN THIS (COVID) BATTLE"
According to National Health Authority CEO R S Sharma, COWIN is one of the fastest growing tech platforms in the world. Sharma was appointed to head COWIN earlier this year.
Cowin is an extension of the electronic vaccine intelligence network EVIN that is used to collect real-time data on the vaccination programmes. COWIN is a Cloudbased IT solution for planning, implementing, monitoring, and also evaluating Covid vaccination in India. This platform not only tracks vaccinations on a real-time basis, but also the wastage of doses.
“Given how precious each dose of the vaccines is, governments are also concerned about making sure that each dose is tracked and wastage is minimised. All of this is not possible without an end-to-end digital approach,” Modi added. People do not need to carry around fragile pieces of paper to prove anything, the PM said. Sharma said COWIN recorded
over 200 million registrations in four months, and 300 million registrations in just five months.
Under the Digital India initiative, the country has been focusing on increasing the reach of technology. One such initiative is Unified Payments Interface (UPI) launched in 2016. The interoperable payments system has registered more than 2.7 billion monthly digital transactions worth over $67 billion. On a monthly basis, it accounts for more transactions than debit and credit cards at POS terminals combined. Nandan Nilekani, architect of Aadhaar and non-executive chairman Infosys, earlier this year at a Redseer event said that NPCI was rolling out a complete open source-based UPI for international markets.