Reimagining Our Digital Future

Digital transformation will be high on the global agenda at prominent multinational convenings in September, providing essential openings to ensure people and the public interest remain at the center of national digital strategies. Discussions and agreements forged at the Tallinn Digital Summit, the Open Government Partnership Global Summit, the G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi, and the United Nations General Assembly could help alter the trajectory towards a more inclusive digital future.

Struggling to balance the opportunities and perils of our growing reliance on digital systems and data, global leaders are seeking ways to pursue more inclusive digital transformation and a shared vision for the future of the internet. Exactly how to operationalize and sync these complex objectives remains challenging and costly. Discussions are often fragmented by geography or questions of sovereignty, siloed by sector, and hampered by the inherent tensions between economic efficiency, privacy, security, and transparency.

Ultimately, the decisions we make about our digital systems today will have long-term implications for the health, prosperity, and vibrancy of our societies. Increasingly, an approach often referred to as digital public infrastructure (DPI) is emerging as a promising pillar of overall digital strategies – not only to increase access to economic opportunities and inclusion, but also because stable democracies require trustworthy infrastructure. Specifically, DPI could provide the trustworthy middle architecture layer on which digital products and services can be built to benefit entire populations.

In this first piece launching a short research series exploring DPI, the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative (DIGI) at New America advocates for keeping infrastructure at the forefront of global discussions in September and beyond and introduces three actionable recommendation areas for consideration. To maximize the benefits and manage the risks of DPI, leaders across multiple sectors will need to work together on everything from access to financing to good governance mechanisms and open data standards.

At its core, DPI harnesses the internet and certain digital solutions as interconnected public goods. By facilitating essential functions such as identity verification, financial transactions, and data exchange, DPI systems can serve as an intermediate platform layer that connects the physical layer on which it sits (including connectivity, devices, servers, data centers, routers, etc.) to the application layer, powering solutions to different verticals. This includes solutions for real-time payments, e-commerce, communication, remote education, telehealth, resource management, and government services, ranging from paying taxes to voting and registering for various licenses, among innumerable others.

If developed, deployed, and governed responsibly, DPI can reestablish the foundation for society-wide public administration, economic activity, and innovation–hardwired with accountability, effectiveness, equity, and security. Put simply–just as roads, bridges, electricity lines, and other physical public infrastructure must be effective, safe, and universally accessible, so, too, should DPI.

A growing number of countries are building or procuring their DPI, whether on their own or in partnership with other governments, multilateral institutions, private sector, philanthropies and civil society. Often cited examples include Estonia (X-Road), India (Aadhar), Brazil (Pix), Ukraine (Diia), Togo (Novissi), and South Korea (Digital Government portal), as well as the Mojaloop, MOSIP, and District Health Information Software 2 solutions in use across multiple countries. While each differs in its approach to governance and implementation, they are all platforms designed to ease access to other publicly available services and solutions.

While many of these DPI adopters are primarily seeking the benefits of economic efficiency and inclusion, some decisions also carry geopolitical implications. DPI could provide a certain level of security and sovereignty to buffer the potential impact of global political dynamics on core services. For example, Ukraine’s Diia portal and mobile application provides a critical level of resilience despite ongoing Russian attacks, connecting over 19 million Ukrainians to more than 120 government services ranging from e-passports and evacuation documents to banking services and tax payments.

Further, competition is on the rise between countries seeking to export their digital infrastructure and the values encoded within. Concerns range from the autocratic overtones of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, to the sociopolitical and data privacy risks from potential government overreach elsewhere, particularly towards activists, minorities, and marginalized communities.

Given the stakes, there are a number of recommendations that should be pursued to unlock DPI’s potential through cross-sector collaboration, increased engagement and oversight, and culture change around public interest technology. These focal points for action will require commitments from governments, the mobilization of resources, and a broad group of stakeholders.

1. Ensure people-centric principles are embedded in DPI solutions

• Uphold and protect human rights in all aspects of technology development and governance.
• Safeguard users with robust security and privacy measures vetted through rigorous testing.
• Advance inclusivity, affordability, and accessibility.
• Recognize environmental impact, social well being, and economic viability of solutions.
• Operationalize accommodations for limited digital access and literacy.
• Establish robust accountability measures and clear governance frameworks to ensure transparency and responsible decision-making.

2. Envision and sustain a DPI enabling digital ecosystem

• Develop whole-of-government plans that identify priority investments and advance national approaches to data protections and standards.
• Strengthen public-private partnerships to leverage the private sector’s innovation expertise with the public sector's decision-making (and buying) power.
• Consider unified funding mechanisms to coordinate long-term financing opportunities and clear pathways for sustainable digital development.
• Identify social and financial returns on investment for different stakeholders at different stages of development and seek to align incentives.
• Build global capacity in technical skills, as well as knowledge of policy development, procurement, and governance processes.
• Fortify the ecosystem with civil society’s advocacy networks and independent auditing capabilities, philanthropic funding and convening influence, and academia’s capacity to strengthen workforce development.

3. Strengthen human-centered design and technical solutions

• Empower international technical governance standards forums and institutions, ensuring their access to the resources needed to engage in effective cross-sector collaboration.
• Reinforce privacy- and human rights-by-design practices.
• Embrace open data policies and standards.
• Advance interoperability through open application programming interfaces (API) and collaborative arrangements to ease use and integration across services.
• Improve discoverability of trusted solutions, code, and learnings.
• Design and deploy tools for responsible testing, replicability, and scale.

DIGI looks forward to producing a series of short research pieces delving deeper into these recommendations for DPI. Progress will require concerted action among the many ecosystem players–including governments, tech companies and providers, multilateral organizations, private sector capital, philanthropies, academia and civil society.

There is clearly momentum, in the wake of a recent UN open session weighing the related concepts of DPI, digital public goods, and digital commons; DPI discussions in the G20 working groups; and a focus on technology as one of the cornerstones of Summit for Democracy initiatives. Moving forward, global convenings in September and beyond–including G7, OECD and U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council processes–are natural platforms to lay the essential foundations for a more secure, inclusive, and participatory digital ecosystem.

There are always unknowns, but one thing is certain: digital systems will continue to transform societies. Ultimately, how these systems transform our countries and communities will depend on how the technologies and the structures that support them are designed, governed, and protected. DPI may well be one of the keys to reimagining a more global, inclusive, and resilient approach to digital transformation.