The Work Ahead

The diplomat Dean Acheson wrote of being “present at the creation” as representatives from across the world came together to build a new generation of institutions and solutions following the Second World War. In the shadow of a catastrophic global crisis, leaders realized they needed to renovate the foundational structures of society. Communities had just experienced the devastation that accompanies the collapse of public institutions, and there was global resolve to prevent such a horrific crisis from recurring. The global architecture that emerged from that moment — including the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions — is still with us 75 years later. It has helped save generations from the scourge of another world war. As we survey the hundreds of thousands of lives we have lost to the coronavirus pandemic, we have reached an analogous moment; today, we need social and institutional innovation of a similar magnitude. Realizing this vision will require sustained focus on and investment in two areas: establishing institutional architecture to support these efforts and creating innovative funding models to ensure the financial viability and sustainability of this work.

In government, staffing is policy. The governments that have been most successful at deploying digital government platforms in their institutions typically devote specific ministries and departments to the task of improving the quality of their public sector technology. Organizations such as Finland and Estonia’s Nordic Institute for Interoperability, India’s Unique Identification Authority, South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT, and Canada’s Digital Academy offer examples of institutions that coordinate resources, talent, and strategies to accelerate the development of next-generation digital public infrastructure.

Every country should build domestic governmental capacity to help guide their public institutions in employing technology. There is a massive institutional gap in most countries, including the United States, that have not designated specific governmental bodies to develop overarching plans to deploy public sector technology. The need for more coordination on digital public infrastructure is particularly acute in federal political systems that devolve responsibility for administering public programs like benefits distribution and identity management to state and local authorities. But governments of all sizes could benefit from a Department or Ministry of Innovation and Technology. These coordinating bodies can break down data silos between government agencies, create a cross-agency national digital public infrastructure strategy, educate government officials on the merits and risks of next-generation digital systems, and channel staffing to increase the capacity of the public sector to build and integrate new systems.

At the same time, there is a growing need for new multilateral institutions to develop, host, and deploy digital platforms for public institutions. Pioneering partnerships including the Digital Public Goods Alliance, the Digital Impact Alliance, and the Prosperity Collaborative are demonstrating the importance of collaboration in this area. As authoritarian countries develop tightly integrated digital surveillance systems, it will be critical to offer alternatives based on accountability and transparency. Multilateral institutions can help establish best practices for responsible use, share open source solutions across the public sector, and establish standards for interoperability.

Governments, technologists, civil society, and philanthropic institutions should begin exploring new models to fund the development and deployment of digital public infrastructure. Digital government platforms will require funding mechanisms that incentivize sustained investment, iterative improvement, and public accountability. Hitting this trifecta is a tall order. However, broader use of open source solutions coupled with greater international coordination could enable countries rich and poor to build far more effective technology systems at a fraction of the cost of their current technology outlays. The federal government in the U.S. alone spends nearly $100 billion on public sector technology each year.

Early ventures in creating open digital ecosystems and international public-private partnerships illuminate how innovative funding models can sustainably finance digital government platforms. A recent report by the Omidyar Network and Boston Consulting Group observes that digital identity platforms Aadhaar and MOSIP used public and philanthropic funds to finance initial development and deployment, and later began charging fees for businesses to access the benefits of an established digital identity ecosystem. Other models like Estonia’s e-Residency platform allocate resources to the platform from the cost-savings generated through more efficient government services. In the public health sector, the global vaccine alliance Gavi corrects market failures by pooling demand from low income countries and coordinating vaccine production to lower inoculation costs. Economic growth catalyzed by better public health enables developing countries to co-finance their vaccines. Coalitions of governments, funders, and civil society organizations could guide the technology industry towards better social outcomes by adopting such a model.

Due to the long lifetimes of these projects, innovative finance mechanisms could also induce pension funds and sovereign wealth funds to invest in public technology platforms. Already, there are compelling models such as Ontario’s land registry that provide examples of how pension funds could provide the up-front liquidity necessary to develop world class technology and later benefit from long-term, stable financial returns. Hybrid models that use philanthropic capital to de-risk early stage platform development and long-term public and institutional investment to support deployment and maintenance could enable rapid scaling of successful systems.