Introduction

This document provides a compendium of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) successes from around the world and their corresponding mapping to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It showcases how DPI can move the needle on achieving the SDGs, quantifying their potential impact. This resource is especially useful for practitioners, decision-makers, and policy-makers seeking to promote safe, inclusive, and resilient digital public infrastructure.

Key Insights

Understanding DPI

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) has four key characteristics: interoperability, built on open standards, operates at a societal scale, and has robust enabling rules and regulations. The compendium identifies Digital Identity, Digital Payments, and Consent-based Data Sharing as the three main categories of DPI.

G20 Framework for Systems of DPI

The G20 framework for systems of DPI outlines twelve suggested principles:

1. Inclusivity: Eliminate or reduce barriers to enable inclusion.
2. Interoperability: Enable interoperability using open standards.
3. Modularity and Extensibility: Extensible approach to accommodate changes.
4. Scalability: Flexible design to accommodate increased demand.
5. Security and Privacy: Adopt key privacy-enhancing technologies.
6. Collaboration: Encourage community participation.
7. Governance for Public Benefit, Trust and Transparency: Maximize public benefit.
8. Grievance redress: Define accessible and transparent mechanisms.
9. Sustainability: Ensure sustainability through adequate financing.
10. Human Rights: Adopt an approach that respects human rights.
11. Intellectual Property Protection: Provide adequate protection of intellectual property rights.
12. Sustainable Development: Contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Eradicating Poverty through DPI

DPI has the potential to address poverty challenges, such as lack of official identification, limited social security nets, and lack of access to banking. India’s Aadhaar system is one example, which empowered underprivileged people by facilitating direct benefit transfers during the pandemic. Up to 49% of Indian residents benefited from democratized access to public services using Aadhaar (Omidyar Network India, State of Aadhaar, 2019).

Ending Hunger through DPI

DPI can contribute to the eradication of hunger by improving agricultural data and credentials sharing, such as through FarmStack and Kenya Agricultural Observatory Platform (KAOP). FarmStack users have a 21% higher likelihood to adopt new practices that improve agricultural productivity (IDinsight, Digital Green Farmstack Evaluation Results, 2021).

Fostering good health and well-being through DPI

DPI has the potential to enhance health outcomes, such as through the ABDM (Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) initiative in India. 73% of vaccination sessions in rural areas were facilitated on India’s DIVOC based vaccination platform (UNDP, Winning over Covid (CoWIN)).

Achieving quality education through DPI

DPI has the potential to support improved educational outcomes. DIKSHA, a DPI operated by the Indian Government has expanded access to quality educational content, streamlined teaching processes and made customizable resources widely available to learners and teachers. 95% cost reduction in the training of three million teachers at quadrupled speed (Ministry of Education India, DIKSHA - Learnings from India Experience, 2021).

Achieving gender equality through DPI

DPI can reduce inequalities in financial access, such as by leveraging UPI (Unified Payment Interface) in India. Roughly 70 million Indian women are UPI users (Economic Times, UPI use among women low, assisted onboarding can drive uptake, 2023).

Achieving clean water and sanitation through DPI

DPI has the potential to provide access to safely-managed sanitation and improve wastewater management, such as DIGIT. 40 million Indian residents seamlessly access public services, including sanitation services (Bridgespan, Leveraging Technology to Advance Urban Governance, 2018).

Achieving affordable and clean energy through DPI

DPI has the potential to aggregate energy data and make it accessible, like OpenEl.

Bolstering work and economic growth through DPI

OCEN (Open Credit Enablement Network) is a DPI that securely shares customer credit information across India’s banks, fintech companies and other financial institutions.

Achieving sustainable industrialization through DPI

ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) is an open e-commerce platform to connect sellers with buyers across multiple e-commerce platforms.

Eliminating inequalities through DPI

Bhashini is India’s Al-led translation platform for creating content in multiple regional languages improving access to digital services by overcoming barriers of language and literacy.

Fostering partnerships through DPI

The IATI registry helps to record and track how aid money is spent in order to promote transparency and facilitate partnerships.

Key Statistics & Data

• 20-33% potential acceleration in economic growth by 2030 through financial DPI.
• 0.8-1 GtCO2e of 2030 targets for LMICs (about 4%) in carbon emission reduction through carbon trading DPI.
• 28-42% potential increase in access to justice by 2030 as DPI facilitates faster case management and reliable ODR.

Methodology

The compendium draws on a mapping of nearly 50+ exemplars across 17 SDGs. It assumes a ‘big tent’ approach to include solutions at varying levels of maturity. The team followed these steps:

1. Landscape proven and nascent DPI that have been developed and scaled globally across sectors and identify typologies.
2. Develop a framework around DPI functionalities and their use cases.
3. Identify open challenges and white spaces across SDGs and assess the potential for DPI approaches to address them.
4. Map DPI across the SDGs based on their functionality and potential to impact spotlight case studies.
5. Validate and test mapping with expert conversations and secondary research.
6. Synthesize into a crisp final report with two pagers on each SDG, highlighting communities, and identifying best practices and principles for practitioners.

Implications and Conclusions

The compendium concludes that DPI can drive exponential outcomes and accelerate the attainment of the SDGs by combining the right technology, governance frameworks, and robust public and private innovation. Developing inclusive DPI requires long-term support and planning. Nationally and internationally coordinated policy actions and investments are needed to transition from passive, closed information systems to ecosystems that are utilized by a diverse range of stakeholders. In summary, DPI approaches are opening new ways to re-think services. Greater investments and collaboration are required to build DPI approaches to tackle climate action.