Abstract
Background: DPGs are openly accessible tools and technologies designed for public welfare. India’s DPG-based approach for digital social transformation is globally recognized for its scale and inclusivity and has the potential to offer pivotal insights for state-led digital transformations. While conventional analyses attribute the approach’s effectiveness largely to technological factors, this paper adopts a novel perspective from the entrepreneurship domain: the Effectuation Approach. Effectuation offers a way to facilitate business creation in the face of uncertainty by leveraging available means, embracing affordable losses, and co-creating with stakeholders.
Method: Using an interpretive case study of publicly available data, we present a macro-level description of India’s DPG-driven expedition, which is anchored in three broad phases: Inception, Proliferation, and Globalization. This description is complemented by a micro-level case study of a specific DPG-based solution. Furthermore, we reinterpret the expedition through the lens of effectuation principles and process, and assimilate its lessons.
Results: Key learnings include: determining contextual acumen, adopting the digital building block approach, fostering a collaborative ecosystem, and prioritizing citizen welfare. These learnings are salient because they guide public institutions in navigating the uncertainties of large-scale digital transformation through our proposed effectual logics, adapted to state-led DPG-driven transformation.
Conclusion: The study offers a novel perspective on the emerging literature on DPGs. By demonstrating the usefulness of the entrepreneurial effectuation approach for generating valuable IS insights applicable to governance, it adds to the literature at the intersection of IS, entrepreneurship, and public administration. The determined learnings and logics are useful for cost-effective social developments through future DPG-driven implementations, particularly in less developed contexts.
Recommended Citation
Rathi, Manisha and Banerjee, Shankhadeep, "Traversing India’s Expedition of Digital Public Goods: Entrepreneurial Learnings for State-led Transformation" (2026). PAJAIS Preprints (Forthcoming). 67.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais_preprints/67