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Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is a movement in the way of offering digital government goods and services iso that they are open (often open-source code and open protocol), interoperable (across platform providers), non-excludable, re-usable, and auditable. The DPI movement aims to recreate the decentralized access to information and agency that enabled the first wave of internet growth through open standards (e.g. TCP-IP, HTTP, HTML, SMTP, etc).

To achieve this goal, DPI projects have sometimes been built using Digital Public Goods (DPGs), which are open-source software packages maintained by communities of volunteers. ^[1]. Using DPGs is neither necessary nor sufficient for a government digital good or service to be labelled DPI.

Definitions of DPI differ among multilateral agencies ^[2], development banks ^[3], non-profit organizations ^[4], and governments ^[5], but all align on the goal of providing equal access to the digital economy in a way that respects national sovereignty and citizen rights as well as promotes broad interoperability among private and public actors on the internet. They also typically agree on defining digital ecosystems as gradients of DPI rather than a binary of DPI or not-DPI.

Some definitions omit the words "nonexcludable" and "auditable," such as those used by Co-Develop and the Gates Foundation. Defining a DPI as a functionally transparent ecosystem where not just anybody but everybody can partake presents challenges in defining who has a right to access government services, whether that means in cutting some people off from those services ^[6] or in reasonably requiring licensing as a financial institution in order to access API keys.

DPI is often likened to the physical infrastructure of roads ^[7]. Similarly to how governments have built and continue to build roads to connect people, DPI proponents argue ^{[8] [9]}, governments should also build digital roads connecting anyone anywhere. Contrary to some on-premise digital products of the private sector, these roads should allow any actor to connect with and transmit value (digital signatures, money, identification) with anyone else on the road, regardless the private platform they primarily use (for example, the ability to send money instantly digitally between bank accounts regardless the banks or middlemen being used) ^[10].

Digital Public Infrastructure-type projects have existed since governments began digitizing public services some 30 years ago ^[11]. The most famous example remains Estonia's X-Road project, a type of data-exchange layer built across immutable ledgers ^[12]

GAP on line between India and Estonia other examples

DPI as a phenomenon takes on new considerations when one understands the attractiveness of DPI to Global South countries, in particular. Although DPI-type projects are not new in government product offerings, their adoption by low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)/ Emerging Markets represents not just a way to meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, but also a way to maintain national sovereignty over their core digital government offerings. ^[13]

Two recent events have highlighted and accelerated the digital government push: the COVID-19 pandemic and India’s leadership of the Group of 20 (G20) Summit, an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 sovereign countries, the European Union (EU), and the African Union (AU). The COVID-19 pandemic heightened economic and geopolitical volatility, and accelerated countries’ attempts and abilities to offer goods and services digitally ^{[14] [15] [16]}.

Second, India’s leadership of the 2023 G20 Summit and their ability to drive a consensus leaders' agreement launched the conversation about these digital government offerings to the international stage ^[17]. The New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration introduced the label Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as “a set of shared digital systems that are secure and interoperable, built on open technologies, to deliver equitable access to public and/or private services at a societal scale.”

India tends to stand out as an example for DPI implementation given the scale and reach of its digital ID platform Aadhaar, instant payments system Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and suite of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) offerings ^[18]. India's path to scaling DPI drew on the country's size, scale, technological capacity, cheap mobile data, bureaucracy, and political economy.

Digital Public Infrastructure programs typically conceive of digital goods and service delivery as a "stack" of technology products.

At the bottom of the stack lies physical Information Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure.

Next, comes the DPI layer often composed of a foundational identification (ID) product, Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) products, an instant payments system, and data exchange system. Proponents of DPI argue these four core elements are essential to the equitable functioning of a digital economy ^[19]. Using each of these four elements typically requires connecting with the offering body's Application Programming Interfaces (API).

On top of the DPI layer comes the application layer, where private, non-profit, and public actors can build consumer-facing applications using the API's offered by the DPI implementer, often a government-owned and/or supervised body charged with offering and maintaining the public good. Ownership, oversight, and the transparency of these implementing bodies is controversial and still being widely discussed. For example, in order to use Aadhaar verification in India, an app developer can download API keys, public encryption keys, and even mock applications from the Unique Identify Authority of India (UIDAI) website. The UIDAI offers their python-based Aadhaar KYC verification package on GitHub under an MIT license.

The Digital Public Infrastructure movement is diverse and countries adopting this mindset bring their own goals, needs, and capabilities to the movement. However, they also face a shared international context that influences their choice to adopt DPI projects. In addition to the internal needs of these countries such as financial inclusion, digital identification, commercial digitization and innovation goals, countries also face external pressures and geopolitical dynamics that help explain the overall DPI push. In contrast to the early DPI-like projects, current DPI projects face three main forces that elucidate the recent formalization of the term DPI and the push behind its adoption.

The mounting tension between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America encompasses a focus on technology. ^[20] This focus permeates the hardware and software used ^[21] as well as the standards setting competitions that makes systems interoperable or not ^[22]. Scholars around the world have taken to studying the role(s) of technology and standards setting in building alliances of like-minded partners and imperial systems alike. ^[23] In theory, DPI offers middle countries a third way that does not depend on technology services from either the United States or China. DPI would also offer these Global South countries a chance to leapfrog digital development in rich countries and to influence global standards setting goals and governing bodies. ^[24]

Many Global South countries were colonized by European powers and that historical memory influences current beliefs around technology development strategies. Fearing the emergent strength of US and European tech firms such as Apple, Amazon, Google, etc. has caused Global South leaders to focus their digital development strategies on avoiding vendor lock-in. ^{[ citation needed]}

Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani gave a speech in January of 2019 where he invoked the legacy of India's founder and anti-colonial activist Mahatma Gandhi to call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fight what Ambani called “data colonization." “For India to succeed in this data-driven revolution,” he said, "we will have to migrate the control and ownership of Indian data back to India … in other words, Indian wealth back to every Indian. India’s data must be owned and controlled by Indians only, not the global corporates. There is a need to launch a movement to bring back the control of data in our hands.” ^[25]

Similar calls for heeding the perceived colonial dimensions of development strategies have long been a part of Global South technology discourse ^[26]. Not limited to development literature, the rise of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has galvanized fears in Global South countries over the ability of major technology firms "to dominate, monitor, and influence social, political, and cultural discourse through the control of core communication and infrastructure mediums. While traditional colonialism is often spearheaded by political and government forces, digital colonialism is driven by corporate tech monopolies – both of which are in search of wealth accumulation," argues Abeha Birhane, a PhD Candidate at the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin. ^[27]

Similar arguments on the positioning of major U.S. tech firms in emerging markets have caused concern about the perceived monopoly power of these firms and their ability to replicate colonial structures for the twenty-first century. ^{[28] [29]}

As a government-led digital goods movement, DPI has faced various controversies and criticisms. Critiques generally focus on the distribution of power and control of a DPI system and the extent to which participants in a DPI system have control over its offerings.

Concerns about the dominance of US "big tech" firms and colonial histories have galvanized Global South leadership to chart their own digital path. But the emergence (and success of) some countries in building digital government services has prompted its own fears of government dominance. Scholars such as Smriti Parsheera, a Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi's School of Public Policy have written at length about the emergence of what she calls "Alt Big Tech," a phenomenon where governments take on the same competition inhibiting, and privacy-violating activities they originally aimed to prevent. Her recent paper detailing Alt Big Tech "argues that while recognising (sic) the innovation and progress of these new [Digital Public Infrastructure] systems, it is also important to keep an eye on their potential to emerge as ‘alt big tech’ – systems that create new opportunities for dominance and power play that can bear significant consequences for competition, innovation, and public interest in the long run." ^[30]

Data localization or data residency laws require data about a nation's citizens or residents to be collected, processed, and/or stored inside the country, often before being transferred internationally. Closely tied to the concept of Data sovereignty, data localization is the idea that data are subject to the laws and governance structures of the nation where they are collected.

Some governments and government-aligned DPI-promoting bodies have taken to interperting and promoting the idea of DPI federation as data localization. For example, The tendency of governments and the Center for DPI interprets "decentralization" as "data stay[ing] where it's been collected." ^[31]

Researchers studying and promoting cross-border interoperability have highlighted the technical and policy difficulties of adhering to multiple data localization laws as well as the barriers those differences can put on small businesses to grow. ^[32] Other researchers have questioned the technical and the digital efficiency or even possibility of data localization laws to store data on a country's citizens. ^{[33] [34] [35] [36]}

Despite the existence of DPI-like projects for the past thirty years, a variety of major non-profits and multilateral development agencies have recently worked to advance the goals of the DPI movement. Some have lead projects focused on a specific element of the DPI stack, others fund projects, some assess and evaluate DPI projects, while some undertake a component of each. Below is a list of major DPI players and their chief roles.

• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  
• The World Bank
• Center for Digital Public Infrastructure (CDPI)
• Co-Develop
• United Nations Development Programme
• University of College London (UCL) Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
• Digital Impact Alliance

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