Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) - Part 1: A Quick Introduction

DPI is gaining momentum as a transformational force accelerating inclusivity, empowerment and economic development.

The term Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is slowly working its way into the public lexicon, most often in the context of national development roadmaps where it’s seen as an accelerator of SDG goals and an enabler of national identity programs, or as part of broader discussions on the future of infrastructure in general.

DPI’s recognition and relevance as a concept were boosted in 2023 when it was included as a key priority on the UN Secretary General’s agenda. In that same year, the G20 reached consensus on its definition as:

‘a set of shared digital systems that should be secure and interoperable, that can be built on open standards and promote access to services for all, with governance and community as core components’.

The G20’s version, of course, is not the only definition of DPI - plenty of other organizations have crafted their own, and I’ve included a few more examples at the end of this article.

I like to think of DPI simply as open standards technology in the service of society and people.

The core components of DPI are generally understood to be digital identification, a payment system, and a data-exchange platform.

If we look at DPI from the vantage of the developing world, DPI is primarily associated with social inclusivity, economic development and sustainability. It is seen as a way to bring entire populations into the digital economy - initially via digital identity - to improve social welfare, streamline the provision of public goods, and enable emerging economies to grow, innovate, and prosper.

In the West the narrative seems to have more to do with privacy and data protection, and the compulsion to wrest control of our personal data from Big Tech, reign in their market power, and ensure a more equitable distribution of the wealth gained through technological innovation.

From a technology perspective DPI prioritizes simplicity, security, interoperability, and scale. It provides the open standards and protocols - the rails - upon which layers of applications and services can be built, via APIs, at population scale.

The governance and administrative aspects of DPI show up in several important areas. The first is the huge amount of political capital and leadership needed to steer DPI through the hurdles it will certainly face as it goes from grand vision to implementation and adoption.

The second relates to the security, access, and controls of the data that travel on the DPI rails. Clarity on issues like consent, privacy, and inclusivity must be enshrined in national legislation, and public input needs to be accounted for as part of the overall governance of technology used as public goods.

The third area where governance and administration shows up is in the mandates and regulations that are necessary to ensure adoption of services built on DPI. For example, making digital signatures legally binding, or mandating digital identity credentials be accepted for authentication purposes helps the DPI network effect gain traction.

Funding sources for DPI typically include multilateral organizations such as the UN or the World Bank, or philanthropic organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, especially for projects in the developing economies. Funding also comes from intergovernmental collaboration, general tax revenue, or public-private partnerships.

An interesting facet of the recent surge in DPI projects is that a lot of the momentum is coming from developing economies, led in large part by India and their experience with designing and implementing various digital public goods - and making them easily accessible to other governments. As these developing economies adopt DPI’s future-facing principles, technologies and approaches, they’re leap-frogging the legacy, proprietary, and costly technological solutions that are entrenched in other parts of the world.

And in doing so, they are providing plenty of examples of success and challenges, which the rest of the world should watch closely, and learn from, as we all work toward a more equitable version of modern digital society.

Be on the look-out for DPI Part 2 coming in a few weeks where we’ll look into a bit more detail.

In the meantime, see below for a smattering of DPI definition from various organizations:

Digital Public Infrastructure Definition and Descriptions:

UNDP: DPI is an evolving concept, but there is growing consensus on it being a combination of (i) networked open technology standards built for public interest, (ii) enabling governance, and (iii) a community of innovative and competitive market players working to drive innovation, especially across public programmes. DPI is a shared means to many ends. It is a critical enabler of digital transformation and is helping to improve public service delivery at scale. Designed and implemented well, it can help countries achieve their national priorities and accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals.

SDG Digital: Rather than taking a siloed approach to designing and implementing digital solutions, DPI emphasizes people-centered and interoperable digital building blocks at a societal scale. This approach allows local digital ecosystem players to innovate on top of these blocks, fostering new services for people. With rights-based and people-centric DPI approaches, countries can advance a range of development objectives and respond better during crises.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: DPI is similar to roads, which form a physical network essential for people to connect with each other and access a huge range of goods and services. The elements of DPI - digital ID, payments, and data exchange - form a cohesive digital network that enables countries to safely and efficiently open economic opportunities and deliver social services to its residents.

CSIS: DPI is the foundation of digitization and the enabling system that allows digital services to be provided to citizens and the private sector. The internet and GPS are some of the earliest examples of DPI. DPI takes on many different definitions, but all share the same core principles of trust, safety, interoperability, inclusion, and accessibility.

G7G20: A set of shared digital systems that should be secure and interoperable, and can be built on open standards and specifications to deliver and provide equitable access to public and or private services at societal scale and are governed by applicable legal frameworks and enabling rules to drive development, inclusion, innovation, trust, and competition and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Harvard Business Review: “Digital Public Infrastructure” (DPI), i.e. rails on which easy-to-use digital products and services can be built to benefit entire populations. At its simplest, DPI can be understood as an intermediate layer in the digital ecosystem. It sits atop a physical layer (including connectivity, devices, servers, data centers, routers, etc.), and supports an apps layer (information solutions to different verticals, e-commerce, cash transfers, remote education, telehealth, etc.). DPI acts as a connective platform layer, offering registries for the unique ID of people, payments infrastructure, data exchange, consent networks, and so forth. Its uses range from offering services — from mobile payments to verifying health records — at massive scale, to deploying “smart” technologies to close the widening gap between national commitments to environmental and development goals and present realities. DPI even plays a key role in au courant applications, like training generative AI algorithms on open access data.

Center for Digital Public Infrastructure: Digital Public Infrastructure is an approach to solving socio-economic problems at scale, by combining minimalist technology interventions, public-private governance, and vibrant market innovation. Common examples include the Internet, mobile networks, GPS, verifiable identity systems, interoperable payments networks, consented data sharing, open loop discovery and fulfillment networks, digital signatures, and beyond.

By Eric Drury , Digital Identity & Trust Advisor