August Digital Matters

This month’s Digital Matters—our monthly round-up of news, research, events, and notable uses of tech—takes a look at how new digital public infrastructure (DPI) initiatives and digital policies are reshaping public services and driving environmental sustainability efforts.

From the White House’s pledge to bolster open-source security to the release of a 10-year vision for digital policy from USAID, we also cover the latest strategic shifts in digital transformation efforts. The step to fund open source security research highlights the growing need to ensure that public software is safe and resilient. At DIGI, we think open source software could mark a huge change in how the government procures and thinks about tech as a tool for administering public programs. In 2020, we researched a high-level framework for approaching the development of digital public goods using open source software (OSS) principles and practices to maximize the reuse of existing software. Read more here.

Lastly, we delve into how DPI is making international strides, such as the transformation of mobile payments in Ghana’s start-up ecosystem, the digitization of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) in Costa Rica, and the Transport Stack in Delhi.

New frontiers in digital public infrastructure

As the digital public infrastructure (DPI) ecosystem continues to evolve, emerging DPI initiatives stress the importance of openness, security, and equitable access. These first few pieces showcase key areas of focus: open-source software, the role of DPI in boosting start-up ecosystems, procurement transformation, and the socioeconomic impacts of DPI.

Biden administration pledges $11 million to open source security initiative, by Jonathan Greig, The Record Media (August 13, 2024)

The White House and Department of Homeland Security announced their partnership at the DEF CON cybersecurity conference on an $11 million initiative to understand how to promote a more secure open-source software ecosystem. The funding for the effort–titled the Open-Source Software Prevalence Initiative (OSSPI)–will come from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure act passed by Congress in 2021. National Cyber Director Harry Coker, Jr. spoke at the conference, “We know that open source underlies our digital infrastructure, and it’s vital that, as a government, we contribute back to the community as part of our broader infrastructure efforts.” A link to the White House fact sheet (August 9, 2024) is here.

The Role of Digital Public Infrastructure in Ghana’s Startup Ecosystem, by Duncan O., DPI Africa (July 29, 2024)

DPI continues to gain traction abroad, particularly in its ability to boost tech start-ups. This report takes a look at the progress Ghana has made toward establishing DPI and how DPI projects are transforming its innovation ecosystem. Payment infrastructure for mobile money interoperability is one example of DPI that has proven to be crucial for Ghanaian start-ups and pivotal for fostering financial inclusion among underserved populations. As Ghana continues to expand DPI, its impact on the innovation landscape is expected to grow and pave the way for digital transformation.

Reimagining Procurement for the AI Era, by Jared Wright, Benedict Macon-Cooney, and Kevin Luca Zandermann, Tony Blair Institute (August 15, 2024)

The old way of bringing new technologies into the state is outdated for today’s world, as technological progress greatly surpasses the state’s ability to procure it effectively. This recent publication from the Tony Blair Institute calls for a reimagining of traditional procurement models with the establishment of an Advanced Procurement Agency (APA) in the UK government. The authors find that the UK’s procurement system is built on a set of assumptions that perpetuate risk aversion and inertia. They outline these assumptions and propose recommendations that aim to modernize government procurement and shift the culture of risk aversion to smart risk mitigation.

Socioeconomic Impact of Digital Public Infrastructure, Global Development Network (August 2024)

The Global Development Network launched a new program earlier this month–the Socioeconomic Impact of Digital Public Infrastructure–in partnership with Co-Develop. The goal of the program is to create a robust evidence base for DPI interventions and boost local research capacity by engaging with researchers from Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Benin. This cross-country collaboration will evaluate the impact of DPI rollouts on socioeconomic outcomes such as, healthcare accessibility, social protection, agriculture efficiency, and tax-data quality.

Reimagining the state of digital policy, governance, and data

The rapid pace of innovation today demands new frameworks for policy and governance in order to harness technology for good. These next articles reveal some of the current gaps in AI governance and data systems, and highlight the vision by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to strengthen the digital ecosystem.

Bridging the AI Governance Divide, by Gordon LaForge, Robert Muggah, and Gabriella Seiler, New America (August 28, 2024)

The Global North has dominated AI policy and practice, resulting in the exclusion of the Global South from important conversations on AI governance. As the Global South continues to experience this exclusion, new and pre-existing economic and developmental disparities will worsen. What could a body like the G20 do to proactively address these disparities and narrow the AI governance gap? This new paper from our colleagues in the Planetary Politics program at New America and the Igarapé Institute examines how the G20 can step up to advance global cooperation in AI governance in ways that prioritize the neglected local realities of nations and communities in the Global South.

In Keynote Speech, Administrator Samantha Power Announces Agency’s New Digital Policy, United States Agency for International Development (July 25, 2024)

USAID set out a vision to harness technology’s potential for a better world with their new Digital Policy. This policy framework is USAID’s 10-year outlook on digital development, which includes a call to bolster DPI. Instead of developing software that addresses singular issues, USAID will take an infrastructural approach to digital investments. This approach will be prioritized in order to move beyond sectoral silos and support multiple solutions and competition. USAID’s investments will also prioritize investments that use open standards, enable interoperability, and encourage scale and reuse. Other key aspects of the policy include strengthening local capacity to govern, manage, and use digital technologies and data systems, as well as fostering partnerships and building guardrails for principled private-sector engagement.

Re-imagining data as critical public infrastructure, by Stuart Coleman and Elena Simperl, Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (July 31, 2024)

This article calls attention to new forms of monopolies that have emerged in the digital era, namely data monopolies. The authors argue that a small enclave of companies have been able to amass economic capture and market control through data hoarding, threatening the foundations of fair competition and innovation. In light of this, they propose a shift in people's current relationship with data, and would like to see data treated as a type of public infrastructure.

How is digital public infrastructure driving environmental sustainability efforts?

DPI can be a powerful tool in strengthening environmental sustainability efforts. The following DPI interventions in agriculture and transportation settings highlight how public sector digitalization is a key driver of public participation in sustainable decision-making processes.

Designing digital systems for scale: Payments for Environmental Services, United Nations Development Programme (August 19, 2024)

Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes are a results-based financing mechanism that incentivize and enable local communities, farmers, and Indigenous Peoples to engage in sustainable farming practices and environmental restoration activities. Digitizing these payments could allow environmental caretakers to be more efficiently and effectively compensated for their critical roles, including direct cash transfer. Paying for the benefits of natural ecosystems through PES can ensure that environmental services continue to be provided.

One notable example of a PES scheme was developed in Costa Rica, where landowners receive direct payments for the environmental services that their lands produce when adopting sustainable land-use and forest-management techniques. The funding is driven by the country’s fuel tax and water charge, as well as other initiatives geared toward conservation and restoration. Countries with established digital public infrastructure–national digital ID system or digital payment platform–hold a significant advantage in being able to facilitate opportunity-filled PES mechanisms like those in Costa Rica.

Transport Stack–Powering Innovation and Impact with Digital Public Infrastructure & Goods, by Abhik Chatterjee, Takeshi Oikawa and Yushi Nagano, Boston Consulting Group (August 20, 2024)

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is collaborating with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to create Transport Stack, a unified transport ecosystem through the creation of secure data highways in the form of Open APIs. BCG and JICA released a report highlighting their first pilot in Delhi, a city that boasts an extensive public transport infrastructure yet grapples with worsening traffic congestion. Numerous initiatives with the goal of promoting multimodal mobility have been implemented in Delhi in the past, but the focus has primarily been on physical infrastructure and connectivity. According to the report, the digital initiatives that do exist often operate in silos, which result in a fragmented system. For instance, there is a lack of comprehensive data for Delhi for seamless journey planning and there is no defined mechanism to exchange real-time information between transport modes to optimize operations. Transport Stack addresses this gap by harnessing the power of data exchange through digital public infrastructure.

Assessing the impact of public digitalization on sustainability: the mediating role of technological innovation in the context of the EU, by Mohammed Ibrahim Gariba, Emmanuel Ebo Arthur and Samuel Amponsah Odei, Discover Sustainability (August 20, 2024)

A new study reveals the transformative force of public sector digitalization as a driver for environmental sustainable development. The authors find that the process of remodeling public services and infrastructure into digital platforms has a positive and direct relationship with sustainability. These findings have significant practical implications for policymakers. The authors call on policymakers to consider strengthening digital infrastructure, as digitalization could play a critical role in greater public participation in sustainable decision-making processes.

Just around the corner

79th Session of the UN General Assembly (September 10-24, 2024)

The 79th Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA79) will open on September 10, 2024 at the International Peace Institute in New York City. The Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology (OSET) will host an event on September 24, 2024 on how digital public infrastructure is accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how stakeholders can utilize the DPI Safeguards Framework.

Global DPI Summit 2024 (October 1-3, 2024)

The Global DPI Summit is taking place in Cairo, Egypt on October 1-3, 2024. The Summit brings together DPI stakeholders from around the world. It will spotlight the progress countries are marking toward DPI as well as technologies, policy frameworks, and implementation models that are reshaping public infrastructure.

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