Draft:Digital Public Infrastructure

Digital public infrastructure (often abbreviated to DPI) refers to the solutions and systems that work together to enable the effective provision of public and private sector services, for example, digital identification systems, data exchange, interoperable payments, verifiable credentials, digital signatures, and beyond. The concept may also include other digital platforms of a foundational nature for service delivery and public administration, such as open protocols and networks, civil registration, and spatial mapping.

The development of digital public infrastructure can help to increase inclusion, reduce costs , and increase trust through greater transparency. Digital identification systems can for example enable relevant service providers to more easily and quickly verify the identity of intended recipients of government welfare schemes or conduct a KYC to open financial accounts, increasing efficiency, inclusion, and transparency, and reducing fraud.

The DPI movement is inspired by the open standards & specifications that created the Internet (TCP-IP, HTTP, HTML, SMTP, etc.) and mobile networks (GSM, SMS, LTE, etc.) - which operated as the original digital infrastructure of the late 20th century, triggering a burst of public and private innovation that broke barriers and drove inclusion. It is a distinct from digital government solutions or conventional digitisation efforts in its ability to unlock the ability of other actors to innovate and solve societal problems at lower cost.

Although many countries have successfully implemented DPI starting from the early 2000s, the global framing of the terminology of DPI grew exponentially during India’s presidency of the G20. The G20 Delhi Declaration asserted that safe, secure, trusted, accountable and inclusive DPI, respectful of human rights, personal data, privacy and intellectual property rights can foster resilience and enable service delivery and innovation.

Digital Public Infrastructure can be seen as a public good that fosters innovation, governance, and social welfare. It can help countries deliver essential services to their people, empowering citizens and improving lives.

Definition
The concept of DPI calls attention to the opportunities of integrating different types of DPI, such as the use of an ID system to promote interoperability of payments or to allow people to exercise consent over their personal data. However, it goes beyond the categories of ID, payments and data to also include trust infrastructures (such as digital signatures and consent) as well as discovery and fulfilment networks. For any infrastructure to be called as Digital Public Infrastructure, it must follow the DPI design principles of 1) interoperability; 2) minimalist, reusable building blocks; 3) Diverse, inclusive innovation by the ecosystem; 4) a preference for remaining federated and decentralised; and 5) security & privacy by design.

The design and implementation of digital public infrastructure must also consider and mitigate the risks of exclusion of those without digital access and skills, cybersecurity threats, and personal data protection vulnerabilities

The use of “public” also does not mean that DPI must be publicly developed or funded. Rather, it highlights that DPI is for public benefit and wide access and usage. This could mean that the government has a primary role in deciding on whether and how the DPI is provided in the interests of the wider society, including through regulations and standards.

In many cases, infrastructure of this nature already exists in many societies. For example, in health systems where analogue records are kept as physical copies. Digital public infrastructure aims to go beyond recreating analogue systems in the digital space, and represents a fundamental shift in how public infrastructure is provided in the digital age.

Digital public infrastructure is distinct from physical public infrastructure that delivers digital services, such as cell phone towers or fibre-optic cables.

Usage
Digital public infrastructure is used to implement foundational, cross-sectoral and horizontal systems such as digital ID, payments, and data exchange services and therefore plays a critical role in supporting the delivery of essential sector-specific services and use cases, such as healthcare, education, and social protection. For example, a digital identity system can enable more targeted and efficient vaccine delivery and certification of vaccination, while digital payments platforms can enable the government to pay public sector staff such as teachers and health workers directly, rather than via intermediaries. Often the government therefore seeks to build their digital public infrastructure up as part of larger digital transformation efforts.

According to the Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure (CDPI), DPI's approach is to move from platforms to open, protocol-based networks. There are five fundamental categories that make up the digital public infrastructure of the 21st century: identifiers and registries; data sharing and AI/ML models; signatures and consent; discovery and development; and payments. In a thriving digital economy, these features must be easily accessible and affordable. These intellectual properties require even less complementary hardware infrastructure (wires, cables, cell towers, etc.) to achieve scalable impact.

In terms of technology, digital public infrastructure can be built with either proprietary or open source solutions (including digital public goods, below). Digital public infrastructure requires an enabling environment consisting of institutions, policies, laws, regulations and standards.

Digital public goods for digital public infrastructure
Digital public infrastructure can be built by adopting and adapting digital public goods. Examples of digital public goods that are being implemented by countries as part of their digital public infrastructure include MOSIP OpenG2P and X-Road.

The Digital Public Goods Alliance, founded in 2019 in response to the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation’s report “The Age of Digital Interdependence”, advocates strongly for the use of digital public goods for digital public infrastructure (DPGs for DPI).

World leaders at the UN General Assembly in September 2022 discussed the advancement and use of open source technologies, including digital public goods, for digital public infrastructure.

Examples of digital public infrastructure

 * Pix (Brazil)
 * Singpass, APEX and PayNow (Singapore)
 * X-Road (Estonia, Finland, Iceland)
 * Aadhaar and UPI (India)