Conclusion: Advancing DPI

Digital systems promise to inject unprecedented efficiency into societies. Whether those solutions advance communities or exacerbate existing divisions will ultimately depend on how technologies and the structures that support them are designed, governed, and protected. As part of this effort, building and sustaining DPI in a way that lays the groundwork for a more secure, inclusive, participatory digital ecosystem is a formidable challenge requiring both patience and bold action.

Beyond the funding issues explored in this paper, several complementary areas remain ripe for further attention. Leaders committed to DPI will also need to work together on:

• Defining Scope: Stakeholders should assess the ideal scope of DPI efforts—whether to remain focused at a national level or on regional or global collaborations.
• Field Building: Advancing a shared understanding of DPI is critical. This could benefit from a comprehensive playbook for building DPI systems that are intentionally designed to be people-centric. Including users in the design process is a start, and in-depth mapping of strategies—as well as lessons learned from past implementations—can help ensure that new systems support inclusion and connectivity.
• Establishing Governance Models: Multi-stakeholder leaders must devise mechanisms to govern and facilitate responsible development, maintenance, and sharing of DPI solutions, building on foundational research to date (see Appendix 3).
• Incentivizing Sustainable Development Models: Building on the recommendations in this report, further thinking is needed about how governments can create incentives that support the DPI ecosystem.
• Exploring Related Fields: This could include learning from public-private partnership models common in the development of physical infrastructure or medical advancements, as well as the evolving possibilities posed by emerging technologies.
• Strengthening Overall Capacity: In addition to the need for technical skills, countries in both developing and developed economies would benefit from increased knowledge of policy development, procurement, and governance processes relevant to DPI.
• Prioritizing Interoperability: Next-generation DPI will be more effective if it is interoperable both within and across jurisdictional boundaries. For example, digital payment solutions should be interoperable with registries for delivering social assistance and, ideally, facilitate cross-border transactions. Projects that are piloted by multiple jurisdictions from their inception could be more likely to achieve such interoperability.
• Advancing Technology Policies, Safeguards, and Standards: Successful scaling of DPI will require government foresight to protect residents and organizations from certain risks associated with digital adoption. This could include regulation to ensure that personal data rights are protected and that artificial intelligence systems are unbiased and deployed in a manner consistent with societal values.
• Implementing Software Development Best Practices: Civic innovators will have to acknowledge that DPI solutions are often more effective when developed with best software development practices, such as open source systems,¹ agile product development, and user-centered design.

Across a range of considerations, the decisions about DPI made today will have long-term implications for the health and vibrancy of societies in the future. Policymakers, funders, and technologists must prioritize sustainable funding discussions from the start to enable safer and trusted outcomes in the public digital ecosystem.