Dr Pramod Varma, former chief architect of Aadhaar, UPI and India Stack and now co-founder of Networks for Humanity, delivered a powerful Hui keynote. His argument was structural rather than technical.
AI is unbundling value chains and pushing agency to the edges of the network. Platform-centric systems (low-volume, static, paper-driven and centralised) are giving way to systems that are high-volume, dynamic, programmable, cryptographic and decentralised. This shift needs a foundation beneath it: digital identity, legal entity identity, e-signatures, real-time payments, verifiable credentials and consented data access. These should be built as public infrastructure, not as someone’s platform.
The economic case matters most for policymakers:
– openness expands access
– reuse creates compounding value
– interoperability induces competition
– policy, infrastructure and market innovation reinforce one another.
This is a growth model, not a cost line. For Aotearoa, the question is uncomfortable. There is no cross-party settlement on which digital layers are national infrastructure, or who is accountable for the layers New Zealand does not yet have. These decisions are currently being made by default.