AA Community Guidelines - AA Client Integration

• An application that enables citizens to interact with the AA for the purposes of registration, account discovery and linking and consent management – thus implying that the “interface” (e.g. a screen) used by the citizen during the interaction is considered part of the AA Client.

• Available as either a web application or a mobile application or a library that can be embedded in other web or mobile applications (subject to constraints imposed by security concerns)

• Owned by an AA

The term “library” is interchangeable with the term “SDK”.

Further, as mentioned in the first characteristic, the “library” (or “SDK”) includes the customer-facing interface (such as a “Screen”).

A “set of APIs” or a “headless library” (i.e. without screens) does not qualify to be called an AA Client. These are internal engineering assets of an AA, which may be provided to their partner FIUs on the basis of bilateral agreements, for the purpose of co-development of an AA client.

• User interface redesign
• User experience (i.e. workflow or sequence of steps that a user experiences) redesign
• Development assistance, supporting the redesign efforts

As long as the interaction is bound by common guidelines derived from Master Directions and/or technical specifications, FIUs and AAs are free to redesign AA Client interfaces as per their requirements.

Such common guidelines are codified in a community-driven “Customer Experience Guidelines Checklist”.

Further, any redesigned interface screens are also “owned” by the AA, with respect to all aspects of development and devops. As part of a joint design and development effort with respect to the interface screens, AAs may provide access to internal APIs as they deem fit, while retaining complete control over all aspects of development, testing and distribution.

FIUs and AAs are, however, free to enter into any bilateral legal agreements to restrict usage of such co-designed interfaces to named parties mutually agreed to.

• Ownership of the application code and its underlying infrastructure (including the environment the application is hosted on) has to reside with the AA

For AA clients of type = mobile application OR mobile library:

• Ownership of the application code, distribution of the applications, ownership of the distributed app packages has to reside with the AA

The accountability of all aspects pertaining to the AA client rests solely with the AA.

This is useful for the FIU to provide appropriate support for repeat tries / grievance redressal to the citizen.

In addition to such information pertinent to an individual citizen’s AA journey, it would also be useful for the FIU to get anonymized, aggregated metadata about its customers’ AA journey. Such metadata may include all information necessary for the FIU and the AA to jointly construct a “drop-off funnel” and use the same to improve user experience.

The parameters that constitute such “metadata” are as defined here:

https://sahamati.gitbook.io/aa-redirection-guidelines/v/1.2.1/specification/response-specification

The FIU name and logo may also be optionally added to such co-designed screens, to ensure there is contextual continuity to users while switching between the FIU and the AA interfaces.

This is to enable contextual continuity to users while switching between the FIU and AA interfaces.