Please find an excerpt below.

UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children and believes that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support the realization of children’s rights are critical to improving their lives.

As recognised in the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation Report in June 2020,  digital public goods – defined as “open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content” have a critical role in accelerating achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UNICEF along with the Governments of Norway and Sierra Leone, and the India-based think tank iSPIRT have jointly established the Digital Public Goods Alliance, a multi-stakeholder initiative to accelerate the attainment of the sustainable development goals in low- and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods. The DPGA is an effort to convene a network of partners from different sectors that will contribute to the identification, support, scale-up, and use of software, data, and algorithms that can advance humanity. 

As partners explore and scale efforts on digital public goods, UNICEF is sharing its experience in setting up operational processes and tools to support and build open source across all of it’s work.

Continue reading here: https://www.unicef.org/innovation/stories/unicefs-open-source-approach-innovation

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.

If you missed it, check out Part 1 on iSPIRT or Part 2 on Norway.  

The DSTI in particular is playing a key role by engaging private sector and university communities to help build the technology that makes the implementation of digital public goods possible. This comes from an understanding that, in order for DPGs to evolve at scale and with a lower barrier to entry, there needs to be a supportive ecosystem built up that addresses questions of resourcing and intellectual property. 

Sierra Leone is also setting an example by documenting their progress and lessons learned. DSTI gathers data to support policy and decision-making in the public interest and makes relevant data gathered throughout the process publicly available. 

Read more about the work of Sierra Leone’s Directorate of Science, Technology & Innovation on their website.

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.

Stay on top of DPGA news and updates join our newsletter.

Nominate digital public goods through this form.