As the world faces the worst economic recession in eight decades due to COVID-19, countries have expanded social protection, leveraging digital financial services. With that, the need for ensuring that everyone can verify their identity in order to access such services and benefits has never been more urgent. Instead of being built merely for administrative purposes, digital ID systems are increasingly seen as an opportunity to accelerate development by connecting marginalised communities to vital public services and social benefits. Likewise, the ability to share data in a secure and privacy-sensitive manner is important for being able to reliably validate or exclude the eligibility of beneficiaries.

Put simply, the countries that already had in place these foundational digital public infrastructures – digital payments systems, digital ID, and trusted data ecosystems – have been better equipped to mitigate the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic. The same can be said for the delivery of vaccines, for which the same tools have been used by those countries to more efficiently and equitably roll out one of the most critical mass vaccination campaigns for generations.

With this, there are lessons to be learned and optimism for the challenges that lay ahead. The borderlessness of COVID-19 has helped spark global agreement that the world needs to be better prepared for future pandemics. Utilising inclusive digital public infrastructure is one key way to do that.

In our previous blog on how to strengthen the digital public goods ecosystem, we described the need for sustainable core funding for foundational digital public goods as generic state of the art solutions. In this sequel, we want to drive attention to the need for providing comprehensive technical assistance for countries to assess, pilot, deploy, and manage these technologies. 

What technical assistance means in the context of implementing foundational digital public infrastructure

Countries are at different points in their journey to digitising services. Laying a digital foundation is a monumental task, often requiring moving away from antiquated, sometimes paper based systems. In many cases these are greenfield circumstances – where there are no legacy systems to build from. In this scenario, foundational systems can be the most complex given the expertise and time needed to implement them. That’s why support requires a multi-faceted approach that reflects the needs of each country. 

Enabled by sustained funding, support to countries can have the greatest impact when it is holistic and optimised to achieve good principles and practices. Design of these digital public infrastructures to maximise inclusion, trust, and developmental impact requires support of the broader enabling environment including institutional and legal frameworks (especially data protection and cybersecurity), end-user engagement, capacity building, and assessment of appropriate technologies, among others. In the context of digital public goods – often a new approach for many government actors – there is a need for a mindset shift in terms of how systems are conceived: not as vendor-supported products but as country-owned platforms.

International development partners are increasingly more active in supporting the digitisation of services. This, combined with the urgent need for foundational digital public infrastructure, has led to a surge in demand for timely technical assistance that is context-appropriate and based on best practices.

For instance, the World Bank has two multi-sectoral initiatives to help countries realise the transformational potential of digital ID and G2P ecosystems: Identification for Development (ID4D) (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UK Government, French Government, and Omidyar Network) and G2Px (Digitizing Government-to-Person Payments) (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). The cohesive approach of these sister initiatives harnesses the power of combining the foundational digital public infrastructures (or ‘digital stack’) for maximising a variety of development outcomes, from financial inclusion and effective delivery of social assistance to women’s economic empowerment and digital transformation, while mitigating the exclusion, data protection, and technology lock-in risks.

Over the last couple of years, ID4D significantly increased its technical assistance engagement with more than 30 countries. In the midst of the pandemic, G2Px also quickly scaled up to provide technical assistance to 35 countries that were facing the challenge of how to leverage digital technology to deliver social assistance payments effectively and safely in the context of the pandemic. 

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has similarly seen significant increases in country demand for broader digital transformation support, with 20 developing countries requesting such assistance. Guided by an inclusive digital transformation framework, UNDP has supported national governments to conduct digital readiness assessments for identifying gaps and priorities, developing national digital strategies, advising on the design of agencies that would drive the national effort of digital transformation beyond individual ministries, as well as suggesting global solutions (including DPGs) and partners, while strengthening local governments and ecosystems. 

The case for open source solutions and open standards

Countries must be supported in their efforts to rapidly deploy and adapt digital public goods to meet their relevant infrastructure needs. The alternative – pursuing proprietary options – may not be conducive at the speed and scale needed. Additionally they may lack localisable features, and lock countries to singular vendors and particular technologies. Many ID projects have faced vendor lock-in, preventing implementing governments from achieving interoperability or modifying or adding functionalities without significant change request fees. This leads to low country ownership, weak results, and often the need for these projects to start again and thus deal with difficult legacy challenges.

On the other hand, digital public goods provide the ability to establish a digital foundation based on more easily integrated, interoperable and adaptable solutions. They can also enhance country sovereignty and long-term sustainability. By being able to see ‘under the hood’ staff can understand the technology they are using. Growing a country’s internal capacity can ensure software can be built and maintained locally or with less dependence on external suppliers. Beyond that, it can help foster competition in local implementation and customisation, and stimulate the local information technology market.

The way forward for country technical assistance

Together with sustainable core funding for generic technologies, increased technical assistance which enables countries to successfully deploy these solutions is needed to unlock the broad potential of digital public goods to help address today’s most urgent global challenges.

The next blog in our series on financing needs in the DPG ecosystem will expand the conversation from assisting countries to deploy DPGs, to enabling countries to deploy, create, manage, and iterate digital solutions to address future needs.

Globally, significant progress has been made to harness the momentum of digital innovation and translate it to the healthcare sector. We’ve seen this, for example, in the unprecedented global cooperation on vaccine development. While these advancements are considerable, more must be done to support countries in their transition to digital health beyond the pandemic. COVID-19 has underscored the need for innovative solutions that have the ability to not only help countries respond, but also to strengthen digital cooperation and promote equitable access to health solutions. 

In recognition of this need, in 2020 the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) convened a Health Community of Practice (CoP) with UNICEF Health which focused on identifying DPGs for immunization delivery management. 

The DPGA Community of Practice Model

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

Aligning Initiatives for Digital Health

Several organisations within the development sector have been working to identify and support digital health technologies including WHO’s ClearingHouse and Digital Square’s Global Goods Guidebook. Though there are differences in criteria across these initiatives (discussed in the paper), in the health context, global goods can be considered mature digital public goods, and there are considerable opportunities for alignment that have the potential to accelerate the discovery and adoption of global goods.

In the coming weeks, the DPGA will be releasing a list of solutions identified by this CoP that meet all of the criteria to be recognized as both digital public goods and global goods of high relevance for immunization delivery management.

For more information, continue reading the full paper Understanding the Relationship between Digital Public Goods and Global Goods in the Context of Digital Health. 

COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. Globally, there have been devastating effects on healthcare systems and economies. The residual effect on human welfare will be felt for years to come. While vaccines have provided a light at the end of the tunnel for many, vaccine ubiquity is far from worldwide. The tools for effective management of immunization information are not equally available or accessible. 

There is a need to look at opportunities for new digital cooperation and openness.

Ensuring that everyone is able to be vaccinated is in the interest of all. Guaranteeing that the digital solutions necessary for effectively managing immunization delivery are digital public goods will strengthen digital cooperation and promote equitable distribution of vaccines across the globe. 

In order to be a digital public good, projects must be open source, adhere to applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the sustainable development goals.(2) Many of the tools used for managing vaccine delivery meet most of these requirements but are not yet open source, limiting countries ability to freely adopt them.

For this reason, the Digital Public Goods Alliance is calling on all digital solutions that are relevant for immunization delivery management to be open source. 

We consider tools to be relevant for immunization delivery management when they address the following dimensions from the WHO-UNICEF COVAX Vaccine Delivery Innovation Team: infodemic management; micro planning; counterfeit detection; communication for demand generation; health worker training; vaccination status tracking; vaccination monitoring; and safety monitoring within a health context.

We urge relevant technologies to follow the lead of solutions like DIVOC, DHIS2, CommCare, mHero and other health technologies to take the following steps to become open source: use an approved open source license(3), clearly define their ownership, document the source code, use cases, and/or functional requirements of the project, and ensure a mechanism for extracting or importing non-personally identifiable data from the system in a non-proprietary format. 

Open source solutions can accelerate vaccine delivery and set countries up for long-term success. 

In Sri Lanka the first suspected case of the novel coronavirus was registered on 27 January 2020. Within just two days, following a request from the country’s Ministry of Health, a DHIS2 tracker for COVID-19 was created by local developers that focused on the registration and tracking of travellers arriving from regions with a high risk of COVID-19 infection. It was deployed at Sri Lanka’s airports just days later.  

Sri Lanka is using DHIS2, an open source health information management system and a digital public good.(4) Globally, DHIS2 is used in 73 countries which account for 30% of the world’s population.

After developing the DHIS2 tracker Sri Lanka shared their user guides with the global DHIS2 COVID-19 response team. The tracker is now integrated into openly licensed training material publically available for worldwide use. An application version of the tracker has since been released for global adoption allowing other countries using DHIS2 to more adequately track the virus.(5) It is now operational in 38 countries and under development in 14 more.(6)  

In the case of immunization delivery management, this is just one example of why open source is preferable to proprietary systems. When the code is open source, systems and platforms can be adapted for new circumstances by creating tools that can aptly respond to diverse challenges beyond just pandemics. As in Sri Lanka, these adaptations can then be shared widely, allowing for other countries to benefit from innovative solutions while strengthening global cooperation between and amongst countries. 

Outside of increasing accessibility and cooperation, open source technologies provide short- and long-term benefits, not only in regards to vaccinations, by assisting countries to build their digital infrastructure.

In the short term, open source solutions: 

• Can be easily adopted by national governments without fear of vendor lock-in, which can bind countries to rigid technologies at a high cost;
• Can be adapted to meet unique local needs and contexts specific to their country or region; and
• Allow countries to leverage multiple partners and vendors to quickly deploy solutions at the speed which pandemic response requires.

In the long term, open source solutions: 

• Help foster robust digital governance, by providing countries with sustainable tools that can be adapted for other use cases, even across sectors;(7)
• Build country capacity by increasing the skills of government staff who learn to manage, and adapt open source solutions. This opportunity to learn from, and build off of, existing open source code can aid efforts to create sustainable, local digital capacity;
• Allow researchers and academics to more easily find and review non-personally identifiable data and extract lessons learned for future scenarios;(8) and
• By virtue of their transparency, foster public trust which helps strengthen government institutions.(9) 

The global community must make strong commitments to support quick, equal and open access to digital public goods that enable governments to fight COVID-19. 

The Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) is committed to increasing the discoverability, investment and use of these digital public goods. In the coming weeks, the DPGA will be releasing a list of solutions that are digital public goods and global goods of high relevance for immunization delivery management as part of the Community of Practice (CoP) for Health convened by the DPGA and co-chaired by UNICEF Health.

Open source immunization delivery management solutions can save tens of thousands of lives while giving a chance for already fragile states to return to normalcy. That is why digital public goods for immunization delivery management should be prioritized and tools for immunization delivery management that are currently proprietary should become open source.(10)

1. UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ opening remarks to the Africa Dialogue Series on COVID-19 and Silencing the Guns in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities, United Nations
2. Digital Public Goods Standard, Digital Public Goods Alliance
3. Licenses & Standards, Open Source Initiative
4. DHIS2 – Digital Public Goods Case Study, Digital Public Goods Alliance
5. Innovating DHIS2 Tracker and Apps for COVID-19 Surveillance in Sri Lanka, DHIS2
6. COVID-19 Surveillance, Response & Vaccine Delivery Toolkit, DHIS2 
7. DHIS2 – Digital Public Goods Case Study, Digital Public Goods Alliance
8. Digital Solutions for COVID-19, Johns Hopkins
9. Building and Reusing Open Source Tools for Government, New America 
10. How to Become an Open Source Enterprise, GitHub

We would like to share our deepest gratitude with the advocates, owners, and maintainers who have made this possible by submitting nominations to the registry. These nominations account for an incredibly diverse set of open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content tackling real world issues – everything from sustainable farming to healthcare, from digital identity to vaccine coordination. 

People submit nominations to the registry for a variety of reasons including discoverability, recognition, and support. But, don’t take our word for it. Take it from the nominators themselves: 

Tor-Einar Skog, Senior Adviser at NIBIO shared that, “I’m proud to contribute software to help reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals”. NIBIO are creators of the open, online, free of charge forecast and information software for integrated management of pests, diseases and weeds, VIPS (now a digital public good).

Or, Pedro Reynolds-Cuellar, an educator and nominator who shared that, “[a]s with several other tools I used, I always thought about them as something people should have free access to. In the era of software, the idea of commons and communal benefit from the tools at our disposal takes a new meaning. In my mind, these nominations are an effort to bring forward tools that can benefit us all to a space where they can be found and highlighted.”

And, Martin Bedouret a developer from Cboard, a free web application for children and adults with speech and language impairments that facilitates communication with pictures and text-to-speech, who saw nominating their work as an opportunity to reach their goal by increasing the possibility for it to be found. “We want to reach many countries, and especially developing countries. The nomination will help us with this goal, as the platform is open and well prepared for international collaboration, we need visibility in order to reach out to collaborators and people who need a voice to communicate!”

Nominees, their creators, advocates and maintainers are at the core of everything we do. So, thank you for helping us reach this milestone! 

While we’re thrilled to have gotten this far together, this is not the final destination. In fact, we are just getting started. Our ambition is for the DPG Registry to include hundreds, even thousands, more open nominees that advance the sustainable development goals. 

Why nominate to the DPG Registry

Nomination is the first step towards being recognised as a digital public good. Once a nomination is submitted, it is reviewed against the DPG Standard, a baseline of 9-indicators that serve as a minimum standard that all digital public goods must meet.

So, what is the value in submitting a nomination to the DPG Registry? 

1) Discoverability 

Nominations and DPGs alike can be found on the DPG Registry. As an added bonus, the DPG Registry is partially compiled from, and feeds back into, partner systems like the Catalog of Digital Solutions maintained by the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL). This method of cross-pollination enhances discoverability and accelerates the likelihood of a nominee being found and adopted by organizations and governments looking for innovative solutions.

2) Support for adoptability 

Digital public goods have clear documentation, open licenses, and follow standards and best practices that make them easy to adopt. We support nominees working to meet these standards. When nominating to the DPG Registry, projects can utilize DPG Resources, a set of curated tools that assist them in becoming a digital public good. Additionally, our technical team helps nominees navigate which documentation or requirements are needed to ensure they not only meet the standard, but even surpass it. 

3) Development impact

It has been said that open source will be at the core of future international development efforts. We couldn’t agree more. As part of the digital transformation unfolding globally, governments and development agencies are reframing approaches to international development with a focus on creating and adapting open source projects. Submitting a nomination to become a digital public good signals alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and a commitment to making an impact. DPGs are a part of a growing network committed to open source principles that also respect privacy, strive to “do no harm”, and help attain the SDGs. 

4) Becoming a Digital Public Good

And finally, becoming a nominee is the first step toward being reviewed against the DPG Standard, and – if found to meet that standard – confirmed as a digital public good. Becoming a DPG provides exposure to development organizations including UNICEF and members of our communities of practice who review projects with high-impact potential so they can receive the support needed to be adopted by governments globally. 

Our ambition is to fill important gaps, ensure interoperability and avoid vendor lock-in to foster a flourishing ecosystem of digital public goods. Submitting a nomination is the first step to achieving this goal. Please consider submitting a nomination, and be part of even larger milestones yet to come! 

Even digital public goods that are in wide demand, and have proven their potential to address development needs in multiple countries, struggle to attract the contributions and financial support required to maintain and evolve over time. This blog considers how to change that through coordinated, sustainable grant funding. This is the first in a series of blogs exploring how to finance the digital public goods ecosystem.

In the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) we believe that digital public goods (DPGs)* are essential to unlocking the full potential of digital technologies to enhance human welfare at scale. Their relevance to one or multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs), combined with their adoptability and adaptability, allows DPGs to strengthen international digital cooperation. Stakeholders can join forces to support solutions that address many of today’s greatest global challenges in critical areas such as health, education and climate change. DPGs are of particular importance for resource constrained countries looking to accelerate development through improving access to digital services.

Still, precisely due to their nature as “public goods” – which ensures that no one can prevent others from benefiting from them – DPGs can be difficult to fund through market mechanisms, and some of them should not have to prioritise generating profit.

Sustainable funding for the public good 

The DPGA believes that DPGs with the highest potential to accelerate attainment of the SDGs in multiple countries should be sustainably funded in order to maximise the global public good. 

We believe that sustainable grant funding is most critical for “infrastructural” DPGs that can be deployed as relevant parts of a country’s foundational or functional digital public infrastructures (DPIs). DPIs tend to be cross-sectorally enabling, serving as the rails that public and private service delivery can run on. They can therefore have a disproportionately positive impact on achieving the SDGs. Conversely, when DPIs are not well-designed and well-implemented, they can do harm to the economy and society. It is in the global public interest that they are built to serve society’s poor and marginalised groups, safeguard human rights, and enable a diverse and flourishing economic ecosystem. Stable grant funding for state-of-the-art infrastructural DPGs can help ensure this.

Building out ecosystems with infrastructural DPGs at the core

Sustainably funded infrastructural DPGs can become a reliable core for broader ecosystems through community building:

• For the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) core code management and evolution is fully funded by grants from a group of philanthropic and bilateral donors.** This enables the team responsible for managing and evolving the generic platform to focus exclusively on maximising utility for those the platform is designed to serve – in this case, countries in need of foundational digital identity systems.
• Similarly backed by grant funding for core code development and maintenance, the team behind District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) has prioritised community building within and between the 70+ countries that have adopted the software, enabling countries to share improvements and related innovations. This is best exemplified by Sri Lanka, the first country in the world to use DHIS2 for COVID-19 surveillance, who shared this groundbreaking innovation with the global DHIS2 community. Today, this system is operational in 38 countries and is under development in fourteen more.
• The data exchange layer X-Road, which is publicly funded by NIIS members (currently Estonia and Finland), demonstrates how infrastructural DPGs can use community building to advance both the core technology and the  quality of downstream deployments. The X-Road Community connects a diverse group of individuals and allows anyone to contribute to the open-source technology. This community-based support and knowledge-sharing helps local vendors around the world build the expertise needed to provide quality services to stakeholders adopting the technology.

More and better coordinated funding needed

Since the creation of the DPGA in 2019, we have learned that while many stakeholders are individually doing great work that can help create a comprehensive and vibrant ecosystem built around infrastructural DPGs, it remains too limited and fragmented to usher in a paradigm shift. For that to happen, we must mobilise more resources both to strengthen existing financing instruments and to create new ones, while ensuring cross-coordination throughout different ecosystem-parts. The magnitude of this task is simply too large and complex in nature for any single entity to address all the challenges by itself.

As a multi-stakeholder alliance dedicated to the advancement of digital public goods, the DPGA is well placed to help build a partnership-oriented and coordinated funding model with infrastructural digital public goods at the core. We look forward to working with other stakeholders to shape this in the coming months. 

The next part in this blog series

Funding infrastructural DPGs so that they can be built and maintained over time as generic “state-of-the art”, dependable and trustworthy technologies, is a critical first step to realising their full impact-potential. However, a sustainable funding model must also support countries to assess, implement and maintain DPGs. We will write about funding needs for country technical assistance in the next part of this blog series.

*Endorsed by the UN Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, the DPGA defines digital public goods as: “open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the SDGs.”

**Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network, Tata Trusts and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).

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Cover Image: Photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash

Pathfinding pilots must adhere to three criteria: 1) include local capacity building for creation of new DPGs, and/or adaptation and implementation of existing DPGs; 2) outcomes of the pilots must adhere to the DPG Standard; and, 3) pilots must be conducted either in direct cooperation with and/or with the endorsement of a relevant government entity.

Some of these pilots are already underway. Below, we showcase the work of digital public goods DHIS2 and DHIS2 for Education as they, with support from Norway, launch pathfinding pilots in The Gambia and Uganda.

DHIS2 – A Digital Public Goods Case Study 

Digital Public Goods Introduction 

Endorsed by the UN Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, the Digital Public Goods Alliance defines digital public goods (DPGs) as: “open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the SDGs.”

When operationalised, DPGs have proven to be much more. They have the ability to connect individuals and communities to vital services, improve data-based decision making capabilities, and build the infrastructure that societies rely on to respond to crises. 

The Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA)’s mission is to aid the discovery, development, use of, and investment in DPGs. Amplifying success stories of DPGs to show their value, and highlighting implementation strategies from around the world is key to accelerating our mission. Strengthening understanding and awareness of DPGs is critical to fostering trust and interest in open source projects, and can help propel adoption. 

One success story is the free and open source platform DHIS2, which is helping to attain the SDG’s in 73 low- and middle-income countries by supporting the management of education and health programs.

Background

From climate change to education, healthcare to transportation, digital public goods have the opportunity to solve some of society’s greatest challenges. This can be exemplified by District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2), an open-source software project first created to identify and address gaps in health data collection. The software has recently expanded to show value not just in the health sector, but in the education sector as well. DHIS2 was developed by the Health Information Systems Programme (HISP) at the University of Oslo (UiO) in collaboration with partners in the Global South. It is shared for download at no cost and its open source software and source code is hosted on Github.

The first version of this software, DHIS, began in 1998-99 fueled by the belief that collecting and layering granular data can help facilitate governments to make informed decisions. Initially, DHIS was developed to track routine monthly data from Primary Health Centers in Cape Town, South Africa.(1) Today, DHIS2 is the world’s largest health management information system (HMIS) platform, used in 73 low- and middle-income countries.(2) An astonishing 2.4 billion people, or 30% of the world’s population, live in countries where DHIS2 is used. 

Over the last decade, DHIS2 has expanded beyond traditional HMIS reporting to include the collection of individual-level data feeding into shared health records including: lab results; disease surveillance; contact tracing and more. Seventy-seven countries and Indian states utilise the DHIS2 Tracker for case-based data entry, and 33 are using the DHIS2 Android app for data capture on mobile devices.(3)(4)

Proving its versatility beyond government ministries, DHIS2 is also used for data management by leading health organizations including Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization (WHO). As a Collaborating Center with WHO, the HISP team at the University of Oslo works with global and country experts to create downloadable standards-based configurations of the software for specific health domains, lowering the barrier to entry for many countries, and improving data quality within and across countries.(5)(6)

Building on the same theory of change developed for expansion in the health sector, DHIS2 is two years into piloting “DHIS2 for Education”. Crucially, DHIS2 for Education builds on the existing DHIS software platform in countries where it is already deployed in the health sector to support the collection, analysis, visualization, and use of individual and aggregate data from institutions of learning.(7) This includes not just health and education data, but socioeconomic indicators as well that can help contextualize the health and education data. 

Through these work streams, DHIS2 is directly addressing UN Sustainable Development Goals 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and 4 (Quality Education) which call for the use of data to guide improvement in both health and learning outcomes as well as equitable access to education. It also touches on a number of other SDGs including reducing inequality and eliminating poverty. 

By the Numbers 

• 73 countries use DHIS2 
• 5 countries use DHIS2 for Education
• 2.4 billion people live in places where DHIS2 is used
• 38 countries are using the software to combat COVID-19 

 Innovations 

DHIS2 by the numbers alone is impressive, but that only tells part of the story. DHIS2 is a widely trusted platform that promotes holistic growth and impact by providing innovative solutions, including:

Accessibility

DHIS2 is both physically and financially accessible. It can capture data on computers, tablets and smartphones and most solutions work offline, enabling improved reach in locations with poor connectivity. The platform integrates easily with other software platforms bringing logistics, human resources, grading systems and payroll onto a single dashboard. DHIS2 is free to use aside from the cost of servers and internet connectivity and, because it is open source, it can be accessed and adapted to scenarios in any country. 

Capacity Building 

To ensure holistic, sustainable growth, and to combat brain drain, the Health Information Systems Programme (HISP) has built a community of users and experts in regions where DHIS2 is used through initiatives including the DHIS2 Academy and DHIS2 Community of Practice. As DHIS2 implementation varies based on local context, this also facilitates shared learnings and implementation strategies.

Versatility

“DHIS2 has a modular, layered architecture with a strong and open application programming interface (API).”(8) In practice, this means that native applications can run off of it. Currently, approximately 60 native applications do just that to perform different functions, and software developers can easily build their own external applications on top of DHIS2 making it more adaptable. DHIS2’s API also allows it to exchange data with other software, facilitating interoperability between systems. This agility means that DHIS2 teams can work closely with users or government representatives to explore different needs and scenarios that arise and adapt accordingly.

COVID-19 Response 

DHIS2 has led projects that assist countries and regions responding to COVID-19. It has been evaluated as a leading digital solution for COVID-19 response by Johns Hopkins University, the United State’s Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and Digital Square. Understanding their ability to quickly respond and adapt to growing health concerns, DHIS2 released a digital data package to accelerate case detection, reporting, surveillance and response. 

The package was inspired by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health’s pioneering design of a DHIS2 tracker for COVID-19 which draws on years of DHIS2 collaboration with the WHO on designing standardized packages for key health programs. The tracker is operational in 38 countries and in development in 14 more.(9) In Uganda, for example, local health authorities are transmitting infection results digitally. In Rwanda, the health care system is fully digitalised, allowing data to arrive instantaneously.(10) 

This innovation extends to the education sector as well. DHIS2 for Education uses an educational management information system (EMIS) that layers in health data and will provide long-term and sustainable responses to COVID-19 and other health challenges. One example is school-level vaccination campaigns which can synergize health and education data.

DHIS2 and Digital Public Goods Alliance Pathfinding 

DHIS2 has been reviewed against the Digital Public Goods Standard, qualifying it as a digital public good which can be found on the DPG Registry. 

DHIS2 software is developed in line with the Principles for Digital Development, and it advances the SDGs in a number of ways. DHIS2 for Education is currently being deployed as an EMIS in several countries, facilitating effective communication between health and education programs (for example, vaccination campaigns targeting school-aged children), as well as supporting purely education-related goals like student enrollment and attendance, resource allocation, and infrastructure management. DHIS2 has identified opportunities to address and overcome similar challenges in both the health and education sectors such as data collection, where there is often no common approach to collecting valuable educational system data, such as human resource data for teachers or student’s tests results, that link with district or national systems. You can read more about this initiative here: https://www.dhis2.org/education.

Over the next three years the DHIS2 in Education pilot will be expanded. The pilot will focus on integration and scalable solutions in specific country contexts. It will draw from different regions with varying languages, norms, and traditions which will help shape its ability to respond to different countries with different needs.

Norway, a founding member of the DPGA, has been a funder of DHIS2 since 1994 and will partner with them to use this extended pilot as one of the key pathfinding cases for the DPGA. Pathfinding pilots help inform the development and roll out of DPGs for future use cases. Supporting this effort is of strategic importance to Norway’s efforts to highlight how DPGs developed for one sector can be relevant for other sectors, and hence help break down silos in international development cooperation.

Conclusion 

DHIS2 exemplifies the power and potential of digital public goods. Not only has it successfully scaled in market, it has done so in a way that brings us closer to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Additionally, its development has been holistic and localisable, allowing countries to leverage their existing capacity and expertise. And, DHIS2 has adapted to various sectors and challenges including scaling for COVID-19 response and addressing challenges in education.

From its beginnings in Cape Town, DHIS2 has grown to significantly cover health data and information, and now education. It is this opportunity to break the silos of development, and address challenges holistically, that is particularly interesting to us at the DPGA. Digital public goods like DHIS2 present an opportunity to innovatively address longstanding societal issues. 

Resources

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHIS
(2) https://www.dhis2.org/
(3) https://dhis2.org/tracker/
(4) https://dhis2.org/android-in-action/
(5) https://www.who.int/healthinfo/tools_data_analysis_routine_facility/en/
(6) https://dhis2.org/who/
(7) https://www.dhis2.org/education
(8) https://www.dhis2.org/about
(9) https://www.dhis2.org/in-action
(10) https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/qARnOz/fra-husokkupasjon-til-smittejakt-naa-hjelper-et-norsk-verktoey-tre-av-t

Aiding the discovery and development of digital public goods is at the core of everything we do. Which is why we are excited to announce that this week we launched a beta version of DPG Resources, a collection of resources that will support projects on their journey to becoming a digital public good. This is a beta version of the project, so we are actively seeking additional resources to include. If you are aware of any additional resources, please share them via this form. 

In order to become a digital public good, a project must meet the DPG Standard. The DPG Standard is a set of 9 indicators that were developed by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) to operationalise the definition of digital public goods set by the UN Secretary-General in the 2020 Roadmap for Digital Cooperation. Indicators range from open source licensing to relevance to the Sustainable Development Goals. You can read more about the creation of the DPG Standard here. 

DPG Resources aims to become a curated collection of publicly available tools that can help projects meet and surpass the minimum standard. Meeting this minimum standard will increase the discoverability of a project and consequently its ability to make sustainable impact through reuse and adaptation. Going beyond the minimum standard enables projects to embrace the full potential of open source. For this reason, the DPG Resources collection includes resources to help projects go even deeper on areas such as documentation, community development, and child online protection. 

DPG Resources draws on efforts by other prominent open-source stakeholders including GitHub, Linux Foundation, Open Source Initiative (OSI), and many more. By bringing together resources from across the open source community, we seek to highlight the important work that has already been documented, and to provide relevant resources that can help a project maximise their impact. 

Throughout the nomination process, projects are asked to demonstrate their compliance to the indicators in the DPG Standard. Therefore, the navigation of the DPG Resources site includes categorisation based on these indicators and will be built upon over time. DPG Resources also includes an FAQ section that helps individuals navigate the nomination process. 

Feedback on the beta version 

We want to make sure we are providing the tools and resources that are the most useful to projects during the nomination phase. In the spirit of open source, the DPG Resources platform is launching in beta, and asking you to help provide feedback through observation, conversation, and co-creation. Receiving feedback from users as we build, test, and adjust our beta version will help make sure we are supporting projects with the most relevant resources. All feedback or questions regarding this platform are warmly welcomed and much appreciated. Your thoughts on how we can improve can easily be provided through this form.

This is just the beginning

The resources currently available on the DPG Resources site are just the beginning. We want to be constantly evolving by providing new content and links as frequently as possible. If you know of resources that could be relevant to projects working to become digital public goods, you can suggest them by using this submission form.

If you know a project that could qualify as a digital public good, please consider nominating them. 

Have a question about a nominated project? Please reach out to nominations@digitalpublicgoods.net.

To learn more about the Digital Public Goods Alliance:
Join our mailing list.
Follow us on Twitter @DPGAlliance.

One of the first actions we embarked on was to build a registry of digital public goods to aid their discovery. Doing so was partly as a landscaping effort to know what projects already exist that are working towards a more just world, and partly a community-building effort, welcoming input by a broad set of interested parties and contributors.

Architecturally, the industry-standard would have been to create a database, build a well-polished front-end website, and offer an open API that welcomed others to contribute. However, that approach was neither quite right, nor good enough. This is in part because whoever runs the database would ultimately own the data, as it would inevitably be hosted on closed infrastructure (insert here any cloud hosting provider or in-premises computing). This approach is simply not transparent enough. As a technical co-lead for the DPGA, I knew we could do better.

Enter the beauty and simplicity of a collection of text files hosted on a version control system. The format of text files was JSON, a lightweight data-interchange format. This makes it easy for humans to read and write. It is also easy for machines to parse and generate. You have the best of both worlds.

Due to its popularity and common use throughout the global developer community, the version control system of choice was git with hosting on GitHub. While we didn’t invest much initially on the “well-polished website” aspect of our infrastructure, we reaped the benefits from using GitHub early on. On GitHub, any code repository comes by default with the functionality of issues and pull requests, providing a transparent communication channel to discuss potential changes with collaborators. Plus, all the data is easily accessible to read, inspect and modify. That was indeed embracing the open source way.

If you wonder about data consistency, conformance, and integrity, you may be concerned at the thought of managing a large dataset with plain text files. So was I. That’s where having a data schema in the form of a JSON schema ensures data validation and checks all of the above dimensions of data quality. Pair such a JSON schema with a continuous integration (CI) pipeline to automate the data workflow, and the result is a very strong and fully transparent backend. 

As all this data is hosted on a public code repository, we postponed the offering of a dedicated API, since the data is already publicly available on the DPG repository. Also, GitHub already offers their own API, providing endpoints to access the raw contents of what is available through the website. Yet, we have been longing to complement our offerings with a data API that could enhance our collaborative efforts and make it easier for others to build on this growing dataset. The beauty of storing all our data in JSON is that it is the same format that REST APIs use. Thus, little work was required to repackage this data and serve it through an API. In a clever twist of repurposing the infrastructure that GitHub provides for free through their GitHub Pages (initially conceived as a hosting for static websites—primarily documentation sites), one can pre-generate all possible API endpoints, create the underlying folder structure to host the content for all these endpoints as JSON files, and have a very robust hosting for an API that leverages GitHub’s massive Content Delivery Network (CDN) to ensure high availability and low latency all over the world.

This brings us to this week, when the DPGA releases its API, with its accompanying public repository. We welcome your integrations while continuing to build together on this dataset for a more equitable world.

Are you a software developer, product manager, UI/UX designer, or community manager that enjoys a creative exploration of innovation and technology while contributing to digital public goods for a more equitable world, including the benefit of children worldwide? Stay tuned because DPGA Co-Host UNICEF’s Office of Innovation will be opening positions in the coming weeks, keep an eye on their Twitter and LinkedIn feeds for more information.

Follow our blog, or join our mailing list.

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

Nominate digital public goods through this form.

Cover Image: “Embracing openness at Bryce Canyon National Park in winter” by Victor Grau Serrat is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

For the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), reflecting on 2020 actually begins with our roots – the 2019 United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation report calling for the establishment of a broad, multi-stakeholder alliance, to facilitate access to and use of digital public goods. In December 2019 the DPGA was launched to answer that call, which meant kicking off 2020 with a lot of momentum.

Throughout 2020 significant steps were taken to support and accelerate the discovery and development of digital public goods that tackle real world challenges. We started the year off with two main goals, (1) establishing the foundations of the DPGA as a strategic entity with the potential for long-term impact and sustainability and, (2) to produce valuable outputs with immediate utility for the DPG ecosystem.

With these two goals in mind, and strengthened by the June 2020 Roadmap on Digital Cooperation, the DPGA achieved significant milestones in 2020.  Here is an overview of our top four achievements: 

1. Defining Digital Public Goods

The DPGA coordinated with other stakeholders to provide input to the definition of digital public goods that was published by the UN Secretary-General in the 2020 Roadmap. This definition contributes to a universal understanding of what constitutes a digital public good, laying the groundwork for how the DPGA can support open projects.

Building off this momentum, the DPGA thereafter operationalised the digital public goods definition into the DPG Standard, a set of nine indicators that comprise a comprehensive and shared assessment criteria for identifying projects as digital public goods. This standard is itself an open project and has benefited from several iterations. The DPGA is thankful to the communities and individuals that have helped support its development by contributing their thoughts and endorsements including CHAOSS, Creative Commons, DIAL, and Mozilla. The DPG Standard has also been featured by the Open Source Observatory and opensource.org.

2. Launching the DPG Registry

The DPGA mission includes promoting the discovery of digital public goods. To that end, in 2020 the DPGA significantly evolved the DPG Registry, which started as a prototype in early 2019. Today, the DPG Registry contains 471 nominated projects, and 20 verified digital public goods that have been assessed against the DPG Standard.

Our work relies on the ethos of open source. So, in December 2020 we launched a community sourcing experiment asking for public participation to review nominated open projects against the DPG Standard with the ultimate goal of distributing and expediting the process of determining if a project qualifies as a digital public good. This experiment will run through January 2021 and has already had engagement from teachers, students, tech practitioners, and many more. We continue to invite public participation in the experiment at validate.digitalpublicgoods.net.

3. Engaging Experts in Sector Specific Communities

In 2020 the DPGA began facilitating Communities of Practice (CoPs). CoPs convene thematic experts with the aim of identifying, assessing and  advancing high-impact potential projects that work towards the attainment of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Thus far, CoPs have focused on technologies for enhancing Early Grade Reading skills, Financial Inclusion, Digital Health, and Climate Change Adaptation. These groups include more than 60 experts from 40+ different institutions including NGOs, governments, think tanks, international banks, and funders.

In 2020 the CoPs began making an impact. In November, we released a paper on the relationship between digital public infrastructures (DPIs) and DPGs, and the particular relevance of their intersection for driving financial inclusion. In addition, an assessment of nine early grade reading projects was completed. 2021 will take the efforts of the CoPs even further.

4. Launching Country Engagement Pilots

Eager to document and share learnings that can help facilitate the impactful implementation of digital public goods, in late 2020, the DPGA developed an initial approach for piloting country engagements in low- and middle-income countries. In 2021 we will begin deploying short-term pilot activities in partnership with DPGA co-founders.

No 2020 year-in-review would be complete without a reflection on the challenges we all faced as a result of the global pandemic. While COVID-19 brought near-insurmountable challenges, it also illustrated how digital technologies can both create and prevent inequities, ultimately highlighting the need for countries to accelerate digital transformation. The need for quality digital public goods that are accessible, adaptable, and deployable is clearer than ever.

The increasing awareness of COVID-19’s long-term economic impact added urgency to international conversations about digital public infrastructures, sparking new energy and interest in understanding, assessing, and promoting digital public goods with the potential for countries to deploy as part of their  digital foundations.

In 2021 we hope to capitalise on our early successes and build on the momentum in the DPG ecosystem. There is more clarity now than ever before on the urgency of digital transformation and we have a unique opportunity to scale up international cooperation around digital public goods. 

Read more about our year in review here.

To learn more about the Digital Public Goods Alliance:
Join our mailing list.
Follow us on Twitter @DPGAlliance.
Nominate digital public goods through this form.
Participate in the community sourcing experiment.

Today, the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) launched our first community sourcing exercise! 

We’re asking you to participate by reviewing open source projects against the Digital Public Goods Standard with the ultimate goal of determining if a project qualifies as a DPG.*

Why participate? 

Open source represents an unprecedented opportunity to fundamentally alter power balances in international development. But, we can’t harness that power without the cooperation of many – reviewers, maintainers, creators, policy makers, and so many others (that means you!). 

This community sourcing exercise will give you the opportunity to delve into some of the largest up and coming open source projects. You’ll get a chance to understand their licenses and documentation, and how they’re designing for best practices, standards, privacy and more. 

By participating, you’ll get a better understanding of open projects that are making a difference in the world, particularly those that are advancing practical solutions to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). You’ll also join a growing number of innovators working on technology for development (T4D). 

There’s more! We want to show our appreciation for your reviews! We’re working with the UNICEF Office of Innovation’s Blockchain Team to recognize those who contribute with a blockchain-based badge. This badge will be displayed on your Gitcoin profile. As a reviewer, you’ll earn the first Kudos ever issued by the DPGA!

What We Learn When You Participate

The Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) strives to embody the principles of openness and transparency in how we operate. We want to engage people who share in our mission of promoting digital public goods for a more equitable world.

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation states, “Currently, access to digital solutions is often limited through copyright regimes and proprietary systems. Most existing digital public goods are not easily accessible because they are often unevenly distributed in terms of the language, content and infrastructure required to access them.”  

To address these issues, we plan to screen and assess digital public goods that have been nominated to our DPG Registry, but are not yet screened against the DPG Standard. We are looking for engagement in this screening process. 

Our aim is to build a process that is reliable, scalable, transparent and open. Ultimately, we want our vetting process to fit with our open values and to leverage the expertise of not only our staff, but also the community to help assess these projects. 

Desired Outcomes 

Our hypothesis is that, by crowdsourcing this screening process, we will arrive at some degree of consensus and therefore be able to move a significant number of projects from “nominated” to “Digital Public Good”. We will be testing this by using confidence ratings in our questions and looking at the overall agreement among reviewers. 

We also want to hear from you – is there interest in participating in an activity like this in the future? Are there better ways to engage you to support an effort like this? We encourage you to leave feedback in the comment boxes throughout the process to help us learn and grow. 

Want to get involved?

Here’s how you can participate:

1. Go to https://validate.digitalpublicgoods.net.
2. Login with your GitHub credentials (or create a profile, if you don’t have one already).
3. Select an open source project that has been nominated as a Digital Public Good.
4. Follow the step-by-step instructions to review the project and decide whether or not you believe it meets the DPG Standard criteria.
5. The validate webapp will open a Pull Request on your behalf.
6. To receive your blockchain-badge, submit your Pull Request (PR) to the Gitcoin Bounty (login with your GitHub credentials).
7. Badges will be allocated on a rolling basis – check back on your Gitcoin profile for your badge!

Ready to try for yourself?

*We define a digital public good as: “open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the SDGs.”

For more information on the Digital Public Goods Alliance or the Digital Public Goods Standard, visit our website. 

For specific inquiries related to licensing, please reach out to: nominations@digitalpublicgoods.net