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. 

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.

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