News Excerpt:

Alphabet's Google, Meta Platforms, Qualcomm and seven other tech companies have teamed up to push for open digital ecosystems.

About the importance of the Coalition For Open Digital Ecosystem (CODE):

• CODE has emerged with a mission to champion more transparent and open platforms and systems, envisioning these changes as catalysts for growth and innovation within Europe’s tech landscape.
• The coalition expressed its intent to collaborate with academics, policymakers, and corporations to promote digital openness, specifically addressing the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and potential future EU regulatory frameworks. 
• Under the DMA, gatekeepers in the tech domain, are mandated to facilitate third-party interoperability with their services.
• It aims to open up digital ecosystems through cross-industry collaboration and promote seamless connectivity and interoperable systems, among other strategic endeavors.

About Open Digital Ecosystem:

• ODEs are open and secure Digital Platforms that enable a community of actors to unlock transformative solutions for society, based on a robust governance framework.
• Several public and private institutions have started to build ODEs in various sectors such as health, urban governance, e-commerce, mobility and education. 
• A few examples of digital public infrastructure that exhibit a large number of ODE characteristics, and are gradually evolving into full-fledged ODEs, include:
• India Stack: Enables governments and businesses to deliver presenceless (Aadhaar Authentication), paperless (eKYC, eSign, DigiLocker) and cashless (UPI) services.
• National Digital Education Architecture (NDEAR): A set of principles, standards, specifications, building blocks and guidelines that enable multiple entities to create parts of the digital education ecosystem - independently but interoperably.
• National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM): Foundational digital building blocks, ready-to-use platforms, standards, specifications, and frameworks aimed at building a shared digital infrastructure for the urban ecosystem to solve complex problems at scale and speed.
• Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission: A modular and interoperable stack aimed at the seamless and safe exchange of health information among various stakeholders and across the ecosystem, to provide personalized and citizen-centric health services and improve outcomes. 
• A platform to standardize data across multiple government sources, provide flexible analytics, and make it easily accessible in formats conducive to research, innovation, policy-making and public consumption.