DOT 2025 | TOP STORIES OF PARTNERSHIPS & IMPACT
Together, It's possible
What it means to be a journey partner with SELCO Foundation
There’s a primary health center in rural Karnataka where the power went out last monsoon. The health worker pulled out her phone, logged the issue, and had a technician there by the next afternoon. The solar panel was fixed. The clinic stayed open. Nobody had to travel 30 kilometers to the district hospital.
This is what 5,000 stories of resilience look like.
Behind this story is another one: two organizations becoming journey partners to each other. For years, SELCO Foundation has brought sustainable energy to India’s villages and towns, working deep in communities, reaching millions at the last mile. eGov has spent 22 years on digital transformation for public services at scale. When we found each other, we realized we could amplify each other’s strengths.
The partnership began with SELCO’s Energy for Health (E4H) program to power 25,000 public health centers with solar energy. The scale was ambitious. eGov and SELCO Foundation teams worked together to create the digital strategy, design the digital product, build the capabilities and define the routines needed that make such a vast transformation possible, at speed.
Starting with 250 health centers in Karnataka in 2024, E4H in 2025, reaches over 5,000 centers across 10 states.
The digital platform gives real-time visibility into which solar systems are working. What used to take weeks now takes hours. SELCO’s grassroots reach, amplified by digital systems, turned an ambitious goal into measurable impact. Each of us made the other stronger.
Now we’re walking further together into livelihoods for climate-vulnerable communities, using digital to amplify SELCO’s grassroots work in market access, finance, and support.
Odisha: What makes digital transformation stick
In 2025, the Housing & Urban Development Department (HUDD), Government of Odisha, formalized ANKUR, the Atal Network for Knowledge, Urbanisation and Reforms. This was a coalition of six partners, intentionally designed and institutionalized to shape Odisha’s urban future by 2036. eGov Foundation also is part of this coalition as a Knowledge Partner.
Since 2019, we've had the good fortune to work closely with HUDD on establishing SUJOG as an urban governance platform.
ANKUR builds on years of groundwork. Very early on in this journey, Odisha brought an ecosystem into play and this led SUJOG to evolve into spaces like, livelihoods, sanitation, service delivery, and institutional capacity.
SUJOG, which started as a single gateway for municipal services, now enables seamless service delivery across 115 Urban Local Bodies, powers end-to-end digital management of urban wage employment, and puts delivery capability into the hands of women’s Self-Help Groups.
By November 2025, the 60 Decibels Impact Assessment Report told the story in data that revealed how citizen access to services had improved and how the frontlines had been empowered. The early successes of SUJOG have allowed Odisha and its partners to reimagine how SUJOG 2.0 can be the digital backbone driving the state’s urban transformation agenda.
Today, under ANKUR, each partner brings critical expertise. Our role as Knowledge Partner focuses on citizen-centric service delivery, public finance management, data-driven governance, and institutional capacity building. Others bring urban planning, research, community engagement, and implementation strength. What is amazing however, is the level of coordination across diverse streams of work to identify synergies and harness digital to empower humans.
This is what intentional institutionalization looks like: formalizing partnerships, committing to long-term collaboration, and building systems that outlast any individual’s tenure.
For us the joy has been seeing women like Chandrakanti go from being seen as home makers to entrepreneurs in the eyes of their own families.
8 years of a trusted partnership with Punjab
eGov’s journey with Punjab began in 2017, when they went live with urban services (mSeva), powered by DIGIT, across all 110 ULBs in 90 days. It was proof that they had owned up to digital transformation at speed and scale.
That partnership marked the beginning of an eight-year journey with eGov. Through elections, leadership changes, and budget constraints, we kept showing up.
Earlier in 2025, in one of our meetings, they were confronting a different challenge. They were determined to understand their citizen data: who was included, who was excluded, whether benefits were actually being delivered. They had launched BFAIR (Building Fiscal And Institutional Resilience), but the State Data Integration Platform (SDIP) had not taken off the way they had envisioned. Punjab wanted thinking partners.
This is what eight years of showing up means - partnerships that require alignment at the highest levels.
From multiple databases that didn’t talk to each other to schemes actually delivering and citizens receiving benefits – this needed a rethink.
Together, we decided to restart BFAIR differently, rolling it into SDIP for unified data and citizen services. We worked as knowledge and design partners: identifying property tax defaulters for revenue mobilization, redesigning grievance systems, building better self-service apps.
Punjab didn’t want to reinvent the wheel – they wanted to move quickly and scale what worked. We facilitated learning exchanges with our partners from other states. Punjab traveled with World Bank officials to Andhra Pradesh and Chennai. They asked hard questions, saw what worked elsewhere, and adapted ideas to their context.
What is driving this partnership is mutual trust. Punjab invited us into strategy conversations with the Chief Minister’s office and Punjab Development Commission. As partners solving the same problems.
From rapid deployment in 2017 to state-level interoperability and citizen centric service delivery in 2025, Punjab taught us that when states diagnose honestly, learn from peers, and iterate – ultimately citizens are the ones who will benefit.
India Public Finance Collaborative: The Room We've Been Waiting For
Sometimes digital transformation requires creating spaces that don't yet exist.
In September 2025, the India Public Finance Collaborative (IPFC) launched with a simple but ambitious goal: bring policy institutions and reform partners into sustained conversation about public financial management.
These are stakeholders who rarely sit at the same table. Policy institutions think about long-term reform, Implementation partners navigate the messy middle, adapting policy to ground realities across diverse state contexts.
The need for IPFC became clear – harmonise these various efforts, enable convergence of work and ideas, create a forum where learning compounds.
As a founding member and Steering Committee participant alongside CEGIS and Janaagraha, we’re helping shape three Working Groups focused on policy, practice, and digital transformation. But what excites us isn’t the structure – it’s the culture we’re trying to build.
IPFC operates on a premise that sounds obvious but is revolutionary in practice – sustainable reform requires ongoing dialogue, shared learning, and collective problem-solving. It’s real collaboration that compounds over time.
Enablement that scales & creates local champions - eGov Academy
A developer from Karnataka’s Centre for Smart Governance (CSG) is trying to work on the Trade License module at an enablement session. Instead of a trainer fixing it for her, the room goes quiet. “What do you think happened?” the facilitator asks. She debugs it herself. There’s belief. The breakthrough was in realizing she can solve this on her own.
Such moments capture what eGov Academy is really about.
We’ve been building capacity for years. In 2025, we codified it into eGov Academy – a formal knowledge offering across all aspects of digital transformation in public service delivery. Backed by a simple recognition – that capacity in people and institutions sustains digital transformation long after we’re gone.
eGov Academy isn’t just training. It’s a systematic approach to building capability across all partners – government teams, implementation partners & SI partners, through structured, hands-on learning and online courses.
eGov Academy enables what actually works on the ground. Moving beyond presentation-heavy workshops to outcome-oriented training that focuses on doing, not just knowing.
At a CPGRAMS training with Accenture, participants didn’t just learn about Complaints Management. They committed to contributing back to features, workflows and code.
Ultimately, this is how impact scales: partners configure products & platforms independently, Implementation partners apply their programmatic context to solutions. SI partners enhance solutions. Each local champion multiplies the capacity to solve.
With over 1000 learners touched in 2025, online and offline, this is more than capacity-building – it’s belief building.
Critical care where it's needed most - The 10 Bed ICU Program
The 10BedICU project brings ICUs to rural government hospitals using the CARE platform. Since May 2021, over 200 ICUs have been set up across 10 states in India.
At Churachandpur District Hospital in Manipur, one of these ICUs has been saving lives since May 2022.
On December 15, 2025 an 11-month-old girl came in with uncontrollable seizures. The team tried everything. The seizures wouldn’t stop. The child’s breathing failed. Her heart rate dropped. Doctors at JNIMS, 60 kilometers away, guided the local team through TeleICU. Together, they made the call to intubate. The child stabilized. Two days later, she left the ICU breathing on her own.
This happens regularly. The Churachandpur ICU has treated over 1,550 critically ill patients. Many arrive in conditions doctors thought impossible to save. The nursing team, led by Sister Lian, works closely with specialists at JNIMS. Patients recover. For Churachandpur, facing geographic isolation, language barriers, and conflict, 10BedICU means families don’t need the dangerous journey to Imphal for critical care.
What makes this extraordinary: Churachandpur and JNIMS are in a conflict zone. Meitei specialists at the Hub and Kuki doctors and nurses at the Spoke belong to two communities in conflict. Yet they’ve continued working together, quietly, to save lives.
What keeps it going isn’t technology. It’s trust, skill, and commitment across communities, focused only on saving lives. Together with health workers and the 10BedICU network, when the stakes are lives, divisions dissolve. What remains is the commitment to care.
Private innovation on public rails
When platforms become open and knowledge is shared, something shifts. Partners see what’s possible and start solving problems.
For us, these partnerships mean something specific: open platforms and shared infrastructure distributes the ability to solve societal challenges at speed and population scale.
System integrators like Deloitte, BeeHyv, PwC, and Agami built on DIGIT, eGov’s open source platform because the rails are already there. Academic institutions contribute research that makes the ecosystem stronger. In Bihar, MSC built Bihar Krishi – Integrated Farmers Digital Services on DIGIT, now reaching over 7 Lakh+ farmers. MSC also layered on innovation: AI chatbots for PM-KISAN queries, voice-based soil health recommendations through Bhashini, market price predictions, pest surveillance through image recognition.
Deloitte built a Rapid Response system for the Ministry of External Affairs on the same rails, managing evacuations and emergencies. In Jharkhand, they developed an education portal handling mid-day meals, teacher leaves, and library management across nine custom applications. For West Bengal’s Inland Water Transport Department, they created fleet and contract management systems.
Logicsoft built many such use cases. They’ve enabled Food Safety Compliance System (FoSCoS), which serves over 7.5 million food businesses across India. They’ve built a Quality Management System for the Food Corporation of India and the Department of Food & Public Distribution. that covers 2,580 depots and has analysed more than 3.74 million samples, including 2.85 million rice samples and 880,000 wheat samples and more.
Agami, through PUCAR collective and in partnership with Kerala built DRISTI, a 24×7 online court case management solution, enabling citizen-centric dispute resolution. Same rails, a different train.
Each partner solves at a scale we couldn’t reach alone. Each brings context we don’t have. Each moves at speed that matters for citizens.
A partnership for Indian cities
India has nearly 5,000 cities and towns, home to more than 500 million people. Ensuring that this population can reliably access everyday public services, including licenses, payments, certificates, and grievance redressal, is one of the most complex governance challenges in the country.
Today, citizens across 19 states access urban government services digitally through the UPYOG platform under the National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM). This scale of adoption was not inevitable. As recently as six years ago, digital governance existed only in scattered pockets. A few cities performed well, while most struggled with fragmented systems, limited institutional capacity, and the constant pressure of daily service delivery.
What had to change was the model.
In 2017, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and eGov began a series of discussions grounded in a simple insight. Urban digital transformation could not succeed city by city, and it could not be driven through top down mandates.
Cities were already operating at their limits, managing water supply, sanitation, roads, and revenue collection. Expecting them to independently design, procure, and sustain complex digital systems was impractical. However, early partner states working with eGov demonstrated that a statewide approach, anchored in shared infrastructure and common standards, allowed cities to move together without losing autonomy.
These learnings shaped the National Urban Innovation Stack strategy published in 2019, following extensive consultations with states, cities, and urban institutions. The strategy articulated a national digital backbone for urban governance that placed states and cities firmly in control of their transformation journeys. In 2021, this vision received a formal policy mandate through the launch of the NUDM.
Six years on, 2000+ urban local bodies across 19 states serve millions of citizens daily on UPYOG. This progress has been achieved through collaboration, where MoHUA enables, National Institute of Urban Affairs convenes, states lead implementation, cities adapt systems locally, and citizens experience better services.
A core principle of the mission was respect for India’s constitutional framework for urban local governance. Instead of enforcing uniform adoption, the mission relied on partnership.
States voluntarily adopted UPYOG and customized it to their administrative and citizen needs. Cities of varying sizes and capacities were deliberately included, ensuring that large metropolitan regions, small towns, and geographically remote areas were all represented.
This approach created a powerful flywheel built on open digital infrastructure, shared knowledge assets, expert support, and a curated ecosystem of implementers. As a result, cities that once lagged behind began to leapfrog. Jharsuguda and Imphal narrowed the digital gap with Bangalore and Chennai by building systems suited to their own contexts. States exemplified different strengths, from inclusion in Odisha, to speed at scale in Punjab, to comprehensive transformation in Kerala.
In 2024, UPYOG was certified as a Digital Public Good. In 2025, Ladakh and Uttarakhand went live with multiple services, extending digital governance to some of India’s most challenging terrains.