Examine the institutional architecture required for inter-agency digital service delivery, with reference to NHAI, IHMCL and NPCI.

Digital public services increasingly cut across ministries, corporate entities and payment utilities. The recently launched OneTag FASTag portability service — a joint IHMCL–NPCI initiative hosted on NHAI's Rajmargyatra app [1][2] — illustrates both the layered institutional architecture such delivery demands and the gaps that persist.

Layer 1 — Policy and statutory authority (NHAI)

• Provides the legal mandate: user fee is fixed and collected under the National Highways Fee Rules, 2008, with NHAI accountable to MoRTH and Parliament [3].
• Owns the citizen interface — Rajmargyatra, now a single window for complaints, Local Pass, MargMitra and tag portability [4].

Layer 2 — Executive SPV (IHMCL)

• An NHAI-promoted company that operationalises electronic tolling, giving the state corporate agility in contracting and technology adoption outside departmental procedure.

Layer 3 — Technology utility (NPCI)

• Runs NETC, the interoperable RFID backbone; for OneTag it supplies the central framework and updates issuer records so the Tag ID and vehicle number stay unchanged [1][2].
• Interoperability at the core means no change is needed at the plaza end — the architectural feature that makes portability possible.

Enabling conditions and residual gaps

• Standardisation is a prerequisite: "One Vehicle, One FASTag" and RBI-mandated KYC discipline the data layer; tags with valid balance but incomplete KYC face blacklisting [5].
• Consumer exit rights discipline service quality, but ground-level fee collection remains the weak link — CAG flagged excess fee collection at Hebbalu and Chalageri plazas [3], and NHAI debarred 14 agencies, forfeiting securities over ₹100 crore, for irregularities [6].
• Grievance redressal must scale with digitisation; the 1033 helpline was reinforced when the ₹3,000 FASTag Annual Pass rolled out across ~1,150 plazas [7].

Effective inter-agency delivery thus rests on a mandate-holder, an executing SPV and a neutral technology utility bound by common standards. Going forward, portable KYC records, plaza-wise publication of complaint data and integration of grievance reporting into the same app would convert this architecture from a back-end success into visible citizen benefit — the essence of technology-enabled, accountable governance.