It is vital for countries to develop resilient futures by implementing secure, trusted, and inclusive digital public infrastructure supported by strong governance frameworks.
Government officials, international development organizations, and charitable financiers gathered on June 1st to vow large-scale technology exchange, finance, and their commitment to this international cooperation agenda.
At a high-level event this week, global leaders jointly committed to advancing the use of digital public goods (DPGs) – the open-source solutions needed to build digital public infrastructure (DPI) that can enable countries to provide better services and foster inclusive economic growth.
The event was convened by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), Government of Norway, Government of Sierra Leone, and United Nations Development Programme.
Digital public infrastructure – the digital technologies that enable the successful supply of vital society-wide tasks such as cash transfers, digital identity, and data interchange – can play a critical role in developing resilience, including pandemic and disaster recovery.
Global leaders pledged to construct and fund digital public infrastructure at the event, as part of a newly established Digital Public Goods Charter that would serve as a platform for increased international cooperation on this subject.
The DPG Charter, which is co-led by the DPGA and the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL), lays out a clear vision for a global approach to employing DPGs to develop safe, trusted, and inclusive digital public infrastructure.
As a result, governments of all income levels will be able to transform services and service delivery for people and communities worldwide.
Given the terrible socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 epidemic and rising climate disruption, the DPG Charter and the promises made by global leaders are extremely important.
These issues, combined with the enormous food, energy, and financial crises brought on by the war in Ukraine, necessitate immediate action.
Investing in digital public infrastructure that prioritizes human rights and encourages gender-sensitive, whole-of-society methods can help mitigate short-term economic shocks while also laying the groundwork for future resilience.
The benefits have been demonstrated: countries with well-managed digital public infrastructure fared better throughout the pandemic than those without.
By leveraging the usage of pre-existing, high-quality, welfare-enhancing digital infrastructure, these countries were able to respond to difficulties faster.
Because DPGs are based on open standards, they allow for increased interoperability. This can decrease redundancy, save time and money during deployment, and open the door to worldwide digital collaboration.
The DPG Charter encourages the use of DPGs for digital public infrastructure, which can help countries and local digital ecosystems around the world create a fairer and more inclusive playing field by increasing participation of micro-merchants, including women, in e-commerce, improving children’s access to education, ensuring last-mile digitization of payments and cash transfers, and strengthening crisis preparedness and resilience.
This event, as well as the pledges made, serve as a springboard for worldwide cooperation on DPGs for DPI –and money to support them– among governments, multilateral organizations, funders, and the corporate sector.
These efforts are in keeping with the United Nations Secretary-Roadmap General’s for Digital Cooperation, as well as the Global Digital Compact and the Future Summit in 2023.
Some of the leaders that have offered their support for this endeavor are listed below:
Alkesh Kumar Sharma, Secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India: “By joining the DPGA, we commit to making available India’s digital public infrastructure such as Universal Payments Interface (UPI) as global digital public goods, and will offer technical assistance to implementing countries to advance global welfare for all.”
Eva-Maria Liimets, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Estonia: “Estonia remains committed to support the development of the X-road solution and to advocate it as a digital public good which can boost digitalization, and also plans to invest a minimum of EUR20 million in open-source AI solutions in 2022-2023.”
Niels Annen, State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany: “Germany has invested EUR20 million in the GovStack Initiative to accelerate digital government services development by sharing interoperable and reusable digital building blocks and has earmarked additional funding for the initiative.”
Zunaid Ahmed Palak, State Minister, ICT Division, Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Bangladesh: “In order to respond to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s call of building an equitable, high-income Smart Bangladesh by 2041, this requires an uncompromising and relentless focus on ensuring digital equity enabled by DPGs and digital public infrastructure at scale.
Which is precisely why today I am proud to announce that the Government of Bangladesh will be joining the Digital Public Goods Alliance and wholeheartedly endorsing the vision of the Digital Public Goods Charter.”
Paula Ingabire, Minister of ICT and Innovation, Rwanda: “Rwanda fully endorses the vision laid out in the Digital Public Goods Charter. We are committed to advancing the DPG agenda.
As we join the Digital Public Goods Alliance today, we commit to bringing our expertise and sharing lessons learned as well as learning from the successes of the different partners.”
Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation, Ukraine: “It’s the digital public infrastructure that makes it possible for us to continue to deliver services to our citizens.
It also became the bedrock for data-driven decision-making processes […] Jointly with UNDP under very difficult conditions we have provided digital public services for receiving IDP [internally displaced people] status.
We are working on a platform for payment and deduplication from international humanitarian agencies through Diia services.”
Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited, both spoke in support of the DPG Charter and reaffirmed their firm commitment to advancing investments in digital public infrastructure made possible by DPGs for financial inclusion, social protection, and inclusive development.
In addition to USAID, UNDP, and UNICEF, Norway, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Sweden, and Uganda also made promises and pledges of support during the event.
The United Nations Development Programme had APO Group spread the word (UNDP).