The Human and Economic Impact of Digital Public Infrastructure

This document provides a quantitative analysis of the potential economic and human impact of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in 70 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) by 2030. It focuses on the finance, climate, and justice sectors, estimating how DPI can accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goals. This report is valuable for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners interested in the role of digital infrastructure in international development.

Key Insights

Right Technology Architecture for DPI

There are five core DPI categories that create the underlying rails to facilitate interoperability and reusability between systems and use-cases: IDs and Registries; Electronic Signatures, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Trust; Data and Credentials; Payments; and Discovery and Transactions.

Open Digital and Technology Standards and Protocols

These enable interoperability to ensure that digital tools and solutions work together – and do not create, entrench, or exacerbate siloes that limit scale or impact. For example, interoperability between civil registration and identity, or interoperability between national ID systems and health ID cards.

Transparent, Accountable, and Participatory Governance Frameworks

Robust and clear cross-system governance and regulatory frameworks are critical components of safe, inclusive, and secure DPI. Data privacy rules should apply to both health registries and social protection registries.

DPI in the Finance Sector

Adopting DPI within finance can help LMICs improve account access and use, increase the efficiency of G2P transfers, and expand credit availability.

DPI in the Climate Sector

DPI can bring benefits to carbon offsets and trading, land mapping, and weather information and monitoring.

DPI in the Justice Sector

DPI can accelerate digital transformation efforts within the justice sector, increasing and enhancing service provision.

Shifting to Open Source Technologies

Overall, sectoral implementation of DPI could allow for faster adoption of services, improved inclusion and transparency, and increased efficiencies compared to siloed or proprietary solutions. The building blocks supporting DPI are generally built on open-source technologies.

The role of a Digital Ecosystem to Drive DPI Development

DPI cannot be sustained or flourish in a vacuum; it requires the combined efforts of the public and private sectors -and civil society. Governments can shape an enabling environment of policies and regulation to encourage digital development, and build digital skills and capacities across society.

Key Statistics & Data

• LMICs can achieve 20 to 33% acceleration in GDP growth by adopting finance-related DPI in payments and credit.
• LMICs can increase access to state-backed dispute resolution systems by 28 to 42% by 2030 through DPI adoption.
• Global weather data and early warning systems, as DPI, can improve annual income for smallholder farmers by $95to$170 per household by 2030, representing a 5 to 11% increase.
• LMICs can grow their GDPs by $200to$280 billion through finance related DPI.
• Government direct benefit transfers can increase by between $17to$21 billion through finance related DPI.

Methodology

The study followed a four-step, mixed-methods approach to estimate the added impact of DPI implementation in the finance, climate and justice sectors across 70 selected LMICs:

1. Map use cases and associated impact pathways across each sector.
2. Forecast the impact of DPI assuming an S-shaped adoption curve.
3. Estimate the incremental impact of DPI vs. next-best plausible solutions, for instance closed and proprietary solutions.
4. Extrapolate steps two and three for 70 LMICs, accounting for the maturity and digital readiness of their sectors.

Implications and Conclusions

DPI is a crucial tool to ensure digital improves public service delivery, and catalyses economic, social, and broader human development. The report recommends increased knowledge sharing and technology exchange among countries. For DPI to be most successful, countries need downstream development of open-source tools.