Reimagining Public Service Delivery in the Phygital World

Draft for review The primary goal of most organizations is to add value by providing a service. However, few things are more frustrating for a user than experiencing a service failure—only to find that complaining about it leads to even greater disappointment. Unfortunately, this is a common scenario. As a user, your ideal experience is to avoid problems altogether, and most of the time, you might. But if an issue arises, your hope is for a quick, straightforward resolution. In reality, the process of formally raising or escalating a grievance is often needlessly complex. “Ninety percent of complaints should be handled in face-to-face meetings.” - Regional Director for Environment and Social Responsibility of a multinational corporation In many systems, the user interface focuses primarily on delivering the service, while grievance management is an afterthought. Resolutions are typically limited to financial compensation or refunds, which may not apply in every situation. For instanc...

Wikipedia defines money as “any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are: medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value, and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment.” When availing services, one often requires proof of age, address, caste, gender, economic status, or financial capability rather than rupees. These proofs function like money in these contexts. In the digital world, mechanisms like UPI facilitate the exchange of money, and similar mechanisms could serve to store and exchange credentials. Digilocker has already emerged as a store of credentials and defines methods to exchange them. However, there is much to be desired in the ease of digital credential sharing. In the past month, for purposes such as opening an account, buying financial products, staying at hotels, or my daughter...

When you enter a bus in Bangalore, you’ll notice two QR codes: one for paying for the ticket via UPI and another for validating a bus pass. Both essentially identify the bus. A fellow passenger showed me that the UPI ID or VPA is always in the format bus number@cnrb , such as ka01f9092@cnrb for a metro feeder I recently boarded. The bus pass validation also needs to identify the bus, so the UPI ID could serve both purposes. This concept can be expanded further. What if the VPA is linked to a shop front on ONDC, allowing passengers to buy tickets directly? This could simplify the ticketing process, eliminating the need to wait for the conductor to navigate through the crowd. Buses wouldn’t need to wait at key points just for ticketing, enabling self-service ticket booking for most passengers. The National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) aims to provide a single card for multiple mobility systems. However, a typical daily commute often involves mixed modes of transport—metro, bus, and maybe...