The DPGA Community of Practice Model

The DPGA convenes expert Communities of Practice (CoPs) to support the discovery, assessment and advancement of digital public goods with high potential for addressing critical development needs in low- and middle-income countries. Currently, there are ongoing CoPs for climate change adaptation, digital health, and financial inclusion. Within these broad topics, each CoP narrows in on particular focus areas by considering relevance and potential impact. 

Digitalisation, financial inclusion and COVID-19

The last years have seen growing international consensus around the need to accelerate digitalisation of public financing as a driver of financial inclusion and the broader 2030-agenda. The value of digitalising government payments in developing countries is estimated at US$220-$320 billion annually by the IMF.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated this need, as governments with robust systems in place were better equipped to respond to the outbreak not only in their direct health response, but also by targeting vulnerable populations and delivering payments into people’s accounts to mitigate the economic hardships caused by the outbreak.

The Financial Inclusion CoP has therefore spent the last few months working to identify and shortlist technologies that, in a given country, can be used by a range of service providers and innovators. These technologies can be built on across sectors and have features that can allow countries to freely adopt and iterate them to meet local needs. Projects that were at this particular intersection of digital public goods (DPGs) and digital public infrastructures (DPIs) stood out as meeting all of these criteria.

Below, we share a snapshot of our thinking, but encourage you to read the full paper for more detail. 

Defining digital public goods and digital public infrastructures

Digital public goods are defined by the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation as “open-source software, open data, open artificial intelligence models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable international and domestic laws, standards and best practices and do no harm.” Encompassing the UN’s shared goals, DPGs should also be relevant for attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. 

There is no similarly authoritative definition of DPIs, but they are often referred to as the rails that other solutions “run on top of” and their implementation typically enables many other solutions and business models to flourish. It is furthermore meaningful to divide them into foundational and functional categories, referring to the extent to which they are horizontal enablers.

Narrowing in on the DPIs that can drive financial inclusion at scale 

Discussions within the CoP on which technologies could have the most potential impact on financial inclusion and would be most horizontally enabling led to an initial shortlist of technologies for further assessment.

The DPGA Secretariat is now in the final stages of verifying these technologies against the 9-criteria open standard that the Alliance has developed to operationalise the definition of DPGs. Key transformative features of DPGs include their adoptability and adaptability, and their resulting potential to help form new models for international digital cooperation. DPGs can be foundations for multi-stakeholder cooperation and can help transcend geographical, institutional, sectoral and expertise boundaries. Local adaptations and iterations can be shared back with the core project and help ensure long term sustainability. DPGs can also help safeguard human rights through relevant minimum standards and through providing transparency and accountability around how technologies have been designed.

Of particular importance for driving financial inclusion at scale is that, due to their open source licensing, DPGs can offer more control and independence and reduce the risk of vendor lock-in, making it easier for countries to make strategic decisions and have a long-term and holistic perspective when building out their digital foundations.

The shortlist

The table below depicts key features of digital public goods compared to digital public infrastructures and shows the technologies (highlighted section) that have been identified by the CoP as both foundational DPIs and likely DPGs. 

Next steps

Once DPG Standard compliance is verified, the DPGA Secretariat will work with the CoP to conduct a deeper assessment of these technologies in order to compile and highlight information of key relevance to governments, donors and other stakeholders working to accelerate financial inclusion through digitalisation. 

Also, the transformative potential of DPGs can not be fully realized unless we simultaneously transform the systems, structures and practices in which these technologies are embedded. As one important step in this direction, the DPGA Secretariat is therefore working with philanthropic and government donors to align on a common global approach to resource mobilisation and coordination.

To learn more about the relationship between DPIs and DPGs we encourage you to read the full paper. 

If you missed it, check out the rest of the series featuring iSPIRT, Norway and Sierra Leone. And, for more on the DPGA follow us on Twitter or sign up for our newsletter.

UNICEF 

UNICEF is a proud co-lead of the UN Secretary General’s The Age of Digital Interdependence recommendations around universal connectivity (1A) and digital public goods (1B).

UNICEF co-founded the Digital Public Goods Alliance as a result of recommendation 1B’s call for a “broad multi-stakeholder alliance, involving the UN, to create a platform for sharing digital public goods”. This work aims to make open source solutions more accessible to governments and to help them scale. UNICEF and other DPGA partners are working directly with national governments, UN agencies, and others who are looking for open source solutions to deploy in their countries. 

UNICEF brings a track record of sourcing, investing in, and supporting open source solutions to the DPGA. They do so through the UNICEF Venture Fund which provides start-ups in developing and emerging markets with equity-free seed funding. They’ve also done cutting edge work that leverages blockchain technology to provide investments in cryptocurrency, creating innovative financing models that incentivise and encourage the creation of open-source digital public goods. Finally, UNICEF has been a leader within the DPGA in identifying and connecting with Pathfinder countries and leveraging their experience incentivizing positive grassroots impacts through digital tokens.

UNICEF is actively working to address underlying barriers that currently limit access to digital public goods. UNICEF’s Giga project, anchored in recommendation 1A, sets the goal of providing connectivity to every school in the world and every young person with information, opportunity and choice – including through increased access to DPGs. According to the ITU, some 3.6 billion people in the world do not have access to the internet. That lack of access means exclusion, fewer resources to learn and to grow, and limited opportunities for the most vulnerable children and youth to fulfill their potential. 

Read more about the work of UNICEF’s Office of Innovation on their website.

Each member of the current Interim Strategy Group (ISG) — consisting of iSPIRT, Norway, Sierra Leone and UNICEF — brings their own areas of expertise and interest to the DPGA which makes it stronger and more diverse in its reach and potential impact. As the DPGA is built out over time, membership will expand and change to include more stakeholders.

Since its launch, the Digital Public Goods Alliance — an initiative co-founded by iSPIRT, Sierra Leone, The Government of Norway and UNICEF — has been working to identify, support and promote digital public goods to implement recommendation 1B from the June 2019 Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation. 

Get Involved

Only by working together can we make this happen. The Digital Public Goods Alliance is, itself an open project, and we seek engagement and support from any governments, businesses, civil society, technology providers, donors, and experts wishing to help us achieve our aim.

Learn more about the Digital Public Goods Alliance on our website.

Stay on top of DPGA news and updates by joining our newsletter.

Nominate digital public goods through this form.

In our newsletter last week, we kicked off a four part series to introduce the work of the Digital Public Goods Alliance Co-Founders. In each part, we will share exciting work from one of the Co-Founders and in this, our first week we’re featuring iSPIRT.

During the digital public goods roundtable event in mid-September Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond, Special Adviser on the Preparations for the Commemoration of the United Nations’ 75th Anniversary, shared that, “The digital world is a decentralized world and that is one of its virtues.” However, there must be some sense of coordination and access to this decentralized system and a unifying platform for digital public goods is a high priority.

One of the fundamental strengths of the Digital Public Goods (DPG) Alliance is its decentralized, yet coordinated structure. Each member of the current Interim Strategy Group (ISG) – consisting of iSPIRT, Norway, Sierra Leone and UNICEF – brings their own areas of expertise and interest to the DPG Alliance which makes it stronger and more diverse in its reach and potential impact.

As the DPG Alliance is built out over time, membership will expand and change to include more stakeholders. In this four part series, we’re pleased to offer a snapshot of the exciting work being led by each of the current ISG members. This week we focus on iSPIRT. 

iSPIRT

iSPIRT (Indian Software Products Industry Round Table) is a non-profit think tank that builds public goods for Indian product startups to thrive and grow. 

India is fast tracking digital development. In the last 10 years alone, over 400 million bank accounts were opened in India while at the same time it built up and delivered one of the most advanced payment systems in the world. All of this is thanks to accessible digital public goods.

Now, the Indian government is working on data empowerment and protection architecture to enable citizens to share their data to get a loan, apply for a visa etc. all in a seamless way via an open credit system. You can read more about it in this paper, prepared by iSPIRT.

Extensive work has also begun in the healthcare sector with the creation of a public health registry that gives people the right to move their health data from one provider to another. As this process becomes standardized, turnaround times in the health care sector will be greatly reduced. 

As a part of the Digital Public Goods Alliance, iSPIRT is leading by example in the Financial Inclusion Community of Practice and can share learnings and best practices from their work with other governments.

Visit their website or follow iSPIRT on Twitter to learn more.

Since its launch, the Digital Public Goods Alliance — an initiative co-founded by iSPIRT, Sierra Leone, The Government of Norway and UNICEF — has been working to identify, support and promote digital public goods to implement recommendation 1B from the June 2019 Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation.  

Get Involved

Only by working together can we make this happen. The Digital Public Goods Alliance is, itself an open project, and we seek engagement and support from any governments, businesses, civil society, technology providers, donors, and experts wishing to help us achieve our aim.

Learn more about the Digital Public Goods Alliance on our website.

Follow our blog, or join our mailing list.

Want to contribute with funding, technology, or expertise? Sign up here.

Nominate digital public goods through this form.

The Digital Public Goods Alliance was thrilled to see energy and thoughtful discussion around the vital role digital public goods play in strengthening institutions as well as the importance of joint commitments and innovative partnerships in this field. These changes must leverage open source software, open standards, shared funding models, and new multilateral architecture to help governments deploy next-generation technologies to power their institutions. 

All four DPG Alliance co-founders participated in the event, represented by Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway, Minister David Sengeh of Sierra Leone, Sunita Grote from UNICEF, and Tanuj Bhojwani from iSPIRT. Several other stakeholders who are working closely with the Alliance also participated. Collectively, they represent years of expertise in funding open source technologies for the public sector including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Omidyar Network.

A recording of the event is available here.

Event Highlights

The event was very well-organized with highly relevant speakers and fresh insights on many topics related to the importance and promotion of digital public goods. We would like to highlight some of the remarks that we found particularly relevant for the Alliance’s work: 

• New America called for using digital public goods to help build the next generation of digital government platforms and for more public sector technologies being released as open source. Representatives of platforms MOSIP and Mojaloop echoed this commitment to open source.
• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation observed that donors have a critical role to play in ensuring the deployment of DPGs protects human rights, and that now is the time to marshall our collective resources. The Rockefeller Foundation supported this, emphasizing how philanthropic capital can be particularly relevant for bridging gaps between public and private funding.
• Taiwanese Minister Audrey Tang recommended building the public’s trust by being fast, fair and fun and letting humour win over rumour.
• Stakeholders like the Omidyar Network who have already taken action as thought leaders and early investors in open source digital public infrastructure, highlighted the need for arriving at a shared understanding of what digital public infrastructure means.
• The Linux Foundation pointed out that the majority of code that the private sector and governments build on is open source, and that what is needed is for governments to understand what the right type of open source software is. 
• Rohini Nilekani emphasized societal platform thinking, and the need to design technologies for the inclusion of all.
• Ried Hoffmann of LinkedIn made recommendations for how to collaborate better with the private sector, and in particular how governments can take the lead by pushing for more open source in public procurement. 
• Finally, the importance of countries being in the driver’s seat to ensure technologies are locally relevant was highlighted by DPG Alliance co-founders Sierra Leone, iSPIRT and UNICEF. This was also reflected in the Open Government Partnership’s reference to co-creation as a method.   

Key Take-Aways 

A key take-away is the timeliness and relevance of the DPG Alliance’s work over the last year to establish a minimum open standard for digital public goods. Through the formulation of a set of precise criteria  – widely consulted on and already endorsed by expert stakeholders across sectors including research, advocacy and technology – this minimum standard will ensure a focus on key safeguards, better coordination and less fragmentation as more stakeholders are looking to source, invest in, and implement digital public goods. We encourage you to assess and endorse the standard, or provide any suggestions for improvements through this GitHub repository.

Second, is the value add that the DPG Alliance’s convening of communities of practice (CoPs) can bring. The CoP for financial inclusion stands out as particularly relevant following Friday’s discussion, as it seeks to identify digital public goods with the potential for implementation as part of a country’s digital public infrastructure (DPI). Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg highlighted the importance of systems for digital identity, civil registration and digital payments in her speech on Norway’s strong support for digital public goods as a co-founder of the DPG Alliance. 

Next Steps: Digital Public Infrastructure  

DPI are technologies that tend to be “horizontals” – they are the rails that other solutions run on top of – and their implementation enables many other solutions and business models to flourish. In its Financial Inclusion CoP, the Digital Public Goods Alliance is seeking to identify the relatively few technologies that both comply with DPG Standard 1.0 and have the characteristics of Digital Public Infrastructure. The resulting shortlisted technologies will thereafter be assessed in more depth on indicators related to their relevance and adoptability for governments in low- and middle-income countries.

We firmly agree with Anne-Marie Slaughter of New America’s final statement to round off the event; “The efficacy has little to do with what was said here today and more to do with how we act in the months and years to come”.

From the Digital Public Goods Alliance’s end we promise to do our part to facilitate the discovery, development, use of and investment in digital public goods by uniting stakeholders around comprehensive standards, engaging experts through communities of practices, and increasing government, developer and public access through a platform of vetted digital public goods. 

Get Involved

Only by working together can we make this happen. The Digital Public Goods Alliance is, itself an open project, and we seek engagement and support from any governments, businesses, civil society, technology providers, donors, and experts wishing to help us achieve our aim.

Learn more about the Digital Public Goods Alliance on our website.

Follow our blog, or join our mailing list.

Want to contribute with funding, technology, or expertise? Sign up here.

Nominate digital public goods through this form or endorse the standard.