A digital public good digitizing large scale cash transfers with open source building blocks

What is OpenG2P

OpenG2P is a set of building blocks that reuses & augments existing systems in countries to reduce exclusion and address grievances in real-time.

The building blocks approach means programs deploy only components addressing gaps without discarding what works or start from scratch.

Where OpenG2P Can Help

Mobile Tools

Mobile-based solutions to enrolling, complaint handling, & beneficiary management in resource-challenged rural & perimeters

Deduplication Engine

Extensible entity resolution & biometric framework for deduplicating & finding/matching beneficiaries usually lacking unique identities

Verification Service

Abstraction layer and tools for connecting to identity sources, e.g. civil registry, & verifying beneficiary identity against

Disbursement Engine

Abstraction layer and tooling for integrating with the financial system through existing payment rails and payment initiators

E-Voucher Engine

Solution for serving beneficiaries outside the reach of the formal financial sector or running conditional cash transfers

Proof of Receipt Service

Solutions to irrefutable proof of receipt, asserting recipient’s uniqueness, & running “non-preassembled list” transfers

OpenG2P ERP

A ERP, built on the Odoo ERP, for managing programs, enrollment, beneficiary data, disbursements, complaints, and more

Discovery Specification

Open specification for information sharing among independent programs serving similar demographic

Eligibility Rules Engine

Being iterated off continued Inputs from Mifos, DIAL, the Government of Sierra Leone, & other thought leaders

Code & Documentation

OpenG2P is built on excellent existing opensource software with large developer and user communities e.g. Mifos at the payment layer and for voucher wallets, Odoo for the ERP layer, Elasticsearch for the deduplication & search service, ODK at the perimeters contribute to code and solving issues on GitHub.

Help build excellent documentation and guides for programs wanting to adopt OpenG2P.

Guiding Ideals

It’s a work in progress, but these principles guide us

Identification – implement solutions consistent with ID4D principles but provide options for functional identification as long as protective of consumer privacy, user rights and provide sufficient functionality for deduplication and verifying people as unique recipients

Open Source First – always include an open source version of the components.

Agnostic – provide the “glue” between different core components and remain agnostic and “vendor neutral”.

Sustainability – be low cost, open source for reference, and additive to existing efforts.

Gender Intentional – promote women’s financial empowerment in the development of the solutions and in execution.

Community Engagement – enable a toolkit or lab approach such that others can evaluate the solutions and to encourage agile and iterative software development, and take on feedback and ideas

Prioritize Urgent Needs – design with the urgency of this moment for both COVID-19 physical distancing and economic crisis in many countries,

Open G2P Design – Privacy & Security DRAFT for Comments August 10, 2020

Partners

Founding Volunteers

When the Covid-19 pandemic started, Salton, David, and Keyzom realized that Governments worldwide were struggling with the same challenges as we had witnessed and solved for during the Ebola crisis. In 2014, when Keyzom landed in Sierra Leone to lead the UNDP Payments Program, Salton was already working with UNDP to build the digitization system for health workers for the Government of Sierra Leone. Together, and with international support, they built and deployed a modern open-source system that led to US$ 10 million in savings, removal of thousands of ghost workers, and a successful payments program that paid the right amount, on time, to the right frontline workers. (They also ended up getting married a year later).

OpenG2P leverages the open-source building blocks originally defined in 2014 to create a reference framework for Governments worldwide to use/re-use depending on their systems’ gaps. As the COVID pandemic took hold in early 2020, Salton reached out to colleagues at the open-source Mifos Initiative, who were writing about the need for financial inclusive systems to be prioritized by governments to send payments to the informal sector during the pandemic. The evolving OpenG2P effort, supported by hundreds of unpaid hours by the founding volunteers, has come alive due to a desire to contribute to an open and inclusive approach to payments, privacy, gender equality, and getting assistance to the last mile. OpenG2P seeks to fulfill the UN Secretary’s Goals of creating digital public goods. In 2021, additional building blocks and on the ground coordination are being led by DSTI, the Government of Sierra Leonne, and with technical project support from the Mifos Initiative. In keeping with the intentions of the group, the founding volunteers and ongoing governance committee serve without compensation.

David Sengeh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsengeh/
Salton Massally (*Please note Salton is no longer an active volunteer since January 2021): https://www.linkedin.com/in/saltonmassally/
Keyzom Ngodup Massally (*Please note Keyzom is no longer an active volunteer since April 18 2021): https://www.linkedin.com/in/keyzom/
James Dailey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespdailey/
Ed Cable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edcable/