Case studies
How specific countries built identity, payments, data exchange and sector platforms, and what others can learn.
- Digital land registries and open property data: Estonia, Dubai Land Department, HM Land Registry, and what AI does with them
A dated comparison of three digital property registries and their open price data: Estonia's e-land register and transaction database, the Dubai Land Department's open data and Dubai REST, and HM Land Registry's Price Paid Data under the Open Government Licence, with how valuation models use them and the safeguards that apply.
- Estonia's X-Road: how a data exchange layer became public infrastructure
A case study of X-Road, the data exchange layer Estonia launched in 2001: how it works, why it is federated rather than centralised, how it became open source and cross-border with Finland, and what other countries can and cannot copy.
- GSTN: the digital backbone of India's Goods and Services Tax
A case study of the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), the company created in 2013 to run the IT system behind India's GST: its ownership, its open API model for third-party providers, e-invoicing, and the lessons on governance and reliability.
- MOSIP: an open-source platform for national digital identity
A case study of MOSIP, the Modular Open Source Identity Platform started at IIIT-Bangalore in 2018: its modular architecture, vendor-neutral biometrics, licence, adoption in countries such as the Philippines, Ethiopia and Morocco, and the governance questions it leaves to each state.
- Singapore's digital public infrastructure: Singpass, Myinfo and PayNow
A case study of Singapore's national digital identity (Singpass, since 2003), the consent-based Myinfo data service (2016), the PayNow instant payments overlay and its cross-border links, and the lessons and limits for other countries.
- UPI and the rise of instant payment systems: what India, Brazil and Europe built
How India's Unified Payments Interface works, why it grew so quickly, how it compares with Brazil's Pix and the EU's instant payments regulation, and the open questions on market concentration, fees, fraud and cross-border links.
