WS #83 the Relevance of Dpgs for Advancing Regional DPI Approaches

Summary

This discussion focused on the relevance of Digital Public Goods (DPGs) for advancing regional Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) approaches, featuring perspectives from Africa, India, Europe, and Latin America. The session was hosted by the Digital Public Goods Alliance and explored how different regions are implementing DPI using open-source solutions to achieve digital transformation and inclusion.

From the African perspective, Desire Kachenje highlighted that DPI development is government-driven but ecosystem-enabled, with countries like Tanzania building interoperable systems using DPGs like X-Road while engaging private sector partners. She emphasized the importance of challenge-driven approaches that ensure citizen adoption and the need for local capacity building, citing Rwanda’s DPI center as an example. However, she noted significant challenges around data governance frameworks and policy harmonization across borders.

Rahul Matthan from India explained that the “India Stack” approach focuses on creating modular, interoperable, and open systems that can be layered in any order, not necessarily following the identity-payments-data sequence. He emphasized that DPI enables countries to leapfrog development, achieving in 10 years what might otherwise take 50 years, and advocated for embedding governance directly into digital architecture rather than relying solely on traditional regulatory approaches.

Henri Verdier discussed Europe’s approach to digital sovereignty, noting strong political alignment with DPI principles due to Europe’s tradition of public services and open standards. He highlighted the challenge of coordinating 27 different national solutions while building interoperability, emphasizing that the EU stack should be a “cloud of solutions” rather than a single system. He stressed the importance of maintaining democratic control over digital infrastructure to prevent corporate capture of governance functions.

Renata Avila presented Latin America’s community-driven approach, noting that seven countries have legislation supporting open source and open content. She highlighted successful examples like Brazil’s PIX payment system, which has expanded internationally, and emphasized the region’s strength in building active communities around digital public goods. The discussion revealed common challenges including ensuring interoperability, addressing local capacity needs, and maintaining data privacy and security, while funding was surprisingly deprioritized by participants who recognized that DPI offers cost-effective alternatives to proprietary solutions.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Regional Approaches to Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Development**: Speakers from Africa, India, Europe, and Latin America shared distinct regional strategies – Africa focusing on government-driven but ecosystem-enabled approaches, India’s modular “stack” methodology, Europe’s emphasis on digital sovereignty and interoperability, and Latin America’s community-driven open source initiatives.

– **The Role of Digital Public Goods (DPGs) in Scaling DPI**: Discussion centered on how open source software, open data, and open content can enable countries to build sustainable, interoperable digital infrastructure while maintaining local control and reducing dependencies on proprietary solutions.

– **Cross-Border Interoperability and Cooperation**: Emphasis on the importance of building DPI systems that can work across national boundaries, with examples like Brazil’s PIX payment system being used in Europe and regional cooperation initiatives in Africa and the Caribbean for financial inclusion and data sharing.

– **Challenges in Implementation**: Key barriers identified include lack of local capacity and technical expertise, data privacy and security concerns, ensuring inclusive access (especially for the 2.6 billion people without internet), and balancing innovation speed with proper safeguards and governance.

– **Digital Sovereignty vs. Global Cooperation**: Tension between maintaining national control over digital infrastructure while enabling international collaboration, with particular focus on reducing dependence on big tech platforms and building locally-controlled alternatives.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore different regional approaches to scaling Digital Public Infrastructure globally, examining how Digital Public Goods can facilitate this scaling while addressing challenges around local agency, interoperability, and inclusive technology development.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a collaborative and optimistic tone throughout, with speakers sharing experiences and best practices rather than competing perspectives. There was a strong sense of shared purpose among participants from different continents, united by common concerns about digital sovereignty and inclusion. The tone became particularly energized when discussing concrete examples of successful cross-border cooperation and when addressing audience questions about governance models and access challenges.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **Jon Lloyd** – Director of Advocacy and 50 and 5 at the Digital Public Goods Alliance Secretariat; Session moderator

– **Desire Kachenje** – Senior principal at Codevelop fund, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Looks after investments in Africa for core develop fund (non-profit investment fund focusing on supporting governments in rolling out digital public infrastructure)

– **Rahul Matthan** – From Trilegal; Expert on India’s digital public infrastructure (India Stack)

– **Henri Verdier** – From France; Former head of IT department for the French government, currently ambassador; Expert on European approaches to digital sovereignty and open source

– **Renata Avila** – From the Open Knowledge Foundation; Expert on Latin American perspectives on digital public infrastructure and digital commons

– **Audience** – Israel Rosas from the Internet Society (speaking in personal capacity)

**Additional speakers:**

– **Pei-Lin** – Online moderator, colleague at the Digital Public Goods Alliance (mentioned but did not speak in transcript)

– **Max** – Rapporteur for the session, colleague at the Digital Public Goods Alliance (mentioned but did not speak in transcript)

# Digital Public Infrastructure and Digital Public Goods: Regional Approaches to Global Scaling

## Executive Summary

This workshop session, hosted by the Digital Public Goods Alliance at IGF, brought together experts from four continents to examine how Digital Public Goods (DPGs) can advance regional Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) approaches. The session featured perspectives from Africa (Desire Kachenje), India (Rahul Matthan), Europe (Henri Verdier), and Latin America (Renata Avila), moderated by Jon Lloyd from the Digital Public Goods Alliance Secretariat.

The discussion revealed both convergent principles and divergent implementation strategies across regions, with strong consensus emerging around core DPI values of modularity, interoperability, and local capacity building. Jon Lloyd announced that Kazakhstan had joined as the 26th country in the 50 and 5 campaign, demonstrating growing global momentum for DPI initiatives.

## Regional Approaches to Digital Public Infrastructure Development

### Africa: Government-Led with Ecosystem Engagement

Desire Kachenje outlined Africa’s approach as “government-driven but ecosystem-enabled,” emphasizing that while governments must lead DPI initiatives to ensure public interest alignment, successful implementation requires active private sector and civil society engagement.

Tanzania exemplifies this approach, building DPI layers using both established DPGs like X-Road and locally developed platforms including the Jamii data exchange platform and Jamii wallet. Kachenje emphasized challenge-driven implementations, noting that projects addressing specific citizen needs achieve higher adoption rates than technology-first approaches.

The SADC region’s cross-border financial inclusion project demonstrates this principle, focusing on solving real problems for citizens conducting cross-border transactions. Rwanda’s establishment of a DPI center shows the continent’s commitment to building local capacity, though significant challenges remain around data governance frameworks and policy harmonization across borders.

### India: Flexible Modular Architecture

Rahul Matthan clarified misconceptions about India’s “stack” approach, acknowledging the terminology has created impressions of rigid implementation sequences. “I almost feel I must apologise for India stack because we started this idea of a stack, which leaves the impression that you must necessarily layer first identity, then payments, and then data sharing.”

India’s approach actually focuses on creating modular, interoperable elements that can be implemented in any order to address specific national priorities. This modularity enables countries to potentially achieve in 10 years what might otherwise require 50 years of incremental progress.

Matthan introduced the concept of building governance into system architecture itself, arguing that digital infrastructure can enable simultaneous innovation and regulation on the same platform.

### Europe: Digital Sovereignty Through Public Services

Henri Verdier positioned Europe’s approach within digital sovereignty concerns and the continent’s strong public service tradition. European alignment with DPI principles stems from both ideological commitment to public services and practical concerns about corporate control over digital infrastructure.

Verdier framed the discussion around fundamental democratic governance questions: whether societies can still empower people through infrastructure and good governments, or must accept living within big corporations’ infrastructure frameworks.

Rather than pursuing a single unified system, Europe emphasizes creating interoperable solutions that respect national sovereignty while building coherent regional capabilities. Verdier cited France’s partnership between the National Geographical Institute and OpenStreetMap as an example of successful public-private collaboration.

### Latin America: Community-Driven Innovation

Renata Avila highlighted Latin America’s strength in community-driven development, noting that several countries have legislation supporting open source and open content. The region’s approach emphasizes grassroots engagement, with active volunteer communities maintaining digital public goods like CKAN, Decidim, and other platforms.

Brazil’s PIX payment system exemplifies successful regional innovation, now expanding internationally. Similarly, India’s UPI system is gaining traction in the region through South-South cooperation agreements.

Avila distinguished between having strong DPG communities and implementing comprehensive DPI strategies, noting that “in Latin America we are very good at the digital public goods but we haven’t jumped yet to the big digital public infrastructure plans.”

## Key Challenges and Priorities

Interactive polls revealed participant priorities and concerns. When asked about top challenges, responses were evenly split between lack of interoperability, data privacy and security concerns, and local capacity limitations. A second poll showed participants prioritizing open source first principles and local talent development over funding concerns.

### Digital Inclusion and Access

The challenge of reaching 2.6 billion people without internet access emerged as critical, though participants agreed this shouldn’t halt DPI development. Solutions discussed included USSD-based platforms for basic mobile phones, physical access points at government offices, and offline-capable systems that synchronize when connectivity becomes available.

Matthan emphasized hybrid physical-digital approaches, while Kachenje outlined practical accommodations for various access methods. The consensus was that DPI systems should be designed from the outset to accommodate multiple access methods rather than assuming universal internet connectivity.

### Cross-Border Interoperability

Concrete examples demonstrated practical cross-border cooperation possibilities. Brazil’s PIX system’s international expansion and India’s UPI agreements with multiple countries illustrate how national DPI systems can achieve international reach while maintaining local control.

Regional initiatives are emerging across continents, with Africa developing payment systems and Latin America sharing geospatial infrastructure for climate-related data. The technical foundation for this interoperability lies in the modular, open-source nature of DPG-based systems.

## Governance Models and Democratic Control

An audience question from Israel Rosas about multi-stakeholder versus decentralized governance models revealed nuanced disagreements about optimal governance approaches. Avila argued for commons-based approaches ensuring community engagement beyond political changes, while Verdier emphasized that digital sovereignty requires “the ability to implement collective democratic decisions through technology infrastructure.”

The discussion revealed different pathways toward shared objectives of democratic control and community engagement, rather than incompatible visions.

## Economic Considerations

Contrary to common assumptions about resource constraints, funding emerged as a deprioritized concern among participants. This reflected growing awareness of inefficient spending on proprietary technology solutions that fail to deliver value or contribute to local economic development.

Avila noted awareness of “money wasted on tech monopolies that don’t deliver value or pay taxes locally,” while Matthan described DPI as “a relatively cheap alternative to traditional development approaches.” However, Verdier called for better economic theory to understand DPI’s role as public service infrastructure creating ecosystem-wide value.

## Climate Applications and Future Directions

Matthan suggested applying DPI principles to climate challenges, arguing that the same approaches enabling financial inclusion could revolutionize climate action by connecting previously siloed climate data systems. Avila reinforced this potential by highlighting Latin America’s successful regional cooperation on geospatial infrastructure for climate monitoring.

The Digital Public Goods Alliance’s open source policies survey was mentioned as part of ongoing efforts to understand and support DPG implementation globally.

## Areas of Consensus and Ongoing Challenges

Despite diverse regional contexts, participants demonstrated remarkable consensus on fundamental principles including modular, interoperable approaches and the priority of local capacity building over funding concerns.

Persistent challenges include harmonizing data governance frameworks across borders, integrating legacy systems with new DPI approaches, and developing sustainable funding models for DPGs beyond donor-funded projects.

## Conclusion

The discussion revealed both the potential and complexity of scaling Digital Public Infrastructure globally through Digital Public Goods. While regional approaches vary significantly in implementation details, convergence on fundamental principles of openness, interoperability, and local capacity building provides a foundation for continued cooperation and mutual learning.

The session demonstrated that DPI development concerns not merely technical challenges but fundamentally involves democratic governance, economic development, and social inclusion in the digital age. The emphasis on community engagement and local capacity building suggests that sustainable DPI approaches must emerge from local priorities and capabilities, supported by global cooperation on technical standards and knowledge sharing.

Jon Lloyd: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to anyone, living or dead, is coincidental and unintentional. Please welcome the speakers. Good morning, everyone. It’s a real pleasure to be with you here this morning. Thank you to our generous hosts, the Kingdom of Norway. And a warm welcome to our session. It is the relevance of DPGs for advancing regional DPI approaches here in Workshop Room 2. I’m delighted to be here. It is a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for joining us. I’m delighted to be in the world you are and in person for being here bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in our first session on the second day. I’m the Director of Advocacy and 50 and 5 at the Digital Public Goods Alliance Secretariat. We’re delighted to have such a diverse group of participants both in person and online today. We’re delighted to have the global digital compact with the global digital infrastructure, also known as DPI, and digital public goods, which are also known as DPGs. Before we get going too far, though, I just wanted to introduce the 50 and 5 campaign. It’s one of the ways that the global digital compact has been put into action with the goal of making the world a safer and more inclusive place for all. We’re delighted to be here with the 50 and 5 campaign. It’s just over a year and a half into the campaign now, and in the spirit of this session, I’m very excited to announce that Kazakhstan is formally participating in the campaign as the 26th 50 and 5 country. We’re absolutely thrilled to share their commitment to implementing safe and inclusive DPI alongside their fellow 50 and 5 countries, including Kazakhstan, and we’re delighted to have them here today. So, let’s get started. I’m going to hand it over to our panelists. There we go. This topic is especially timely and relevant, as we consider last year’s global digital compact. In the GDC, countries have committed to implementing digital public infrastructure with safety and inclusion at its core, as well as committing to collaborate and cooperate with one another through sharing digital public goods. So, what does this mean in practice? So, in practice, countries can freely adopt digital public goods. That’s open source software, open data, open AI models, and open content collections that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain their sustainable development goals. So, what this means in practice is that countries can freely adopt digital public goods and use them to build components of their own, and to make the world a better place. So, let’s get started. So, just before I introduce our panel, I also want to introduce our fantastic team, helping facilitate the session. Joining as our online moderator here is Pei-Lin, and serving as our rapporteur today is Max, both my colleagues here at the Digital Public Goods Alliance. So, thank you to the two of you. We’re incredibly fortunate to have you here today. So, let’s get started. So, in the first room, we have Desire Kachenge from Codevelop. Next to me here is Rahul Matthan from Trilegal, Henri Verdier from France, and Renata Avila from the Open Knowledge Foundation. So, our objective for the next 75 minutes is clear. We want to explore different regional approaches to scaling DPI, and an opportunity to sporadically tackle scale of propriety and local agency and tech development. So, for our remote participants, you’ll be able to use our virtual platforms Q&A feature for questions. The chat for quick comments and reactions, and that is how we’ll be obtaining our questions. Onsite, here. Thank you again for being here. Let’s make this a truly insightful and collaborative session, and without further ado, over to you, Desire.

Desire Kachenje: Thank you so much. I will start by introducing myself. So, I am very honoured to be here. My name is Desire Kachenge. I’m based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I am a senior principal. I look after investments in particularly Africa for core develop fund. So, just really quickly, I’m sure a lot of our ecosystem here has heard about us, but core develop is an investment fund, a non-profit investment fund that focuses on supporting specifically governments, but also other stock stakeholders in rolling out digital public infrastructure. Our focus also expands to sort of like supporting in some of the challenges and bottlenecks, but also doing some research to understand a little bit more what digital public infrastructure looks like, but also the different approaches when it comes to deploying. And we work very closely with DPGs to see how they can make this sustainable. John, I don’t know if you want me to proceed?

Jon Lloyd: Sure, yeah. I would love to hear some context-setting remarks from the African perspective. Great.

Desire Kachenje: So, I think one of the key things that a lot of us are hearing, and what we’re seeing in the continent, is that digital public infrastructure is not just infrastructure. There are a number of other things that need to be considered when we want to roll out sustainable and scalable DPI. It’s also evolving to be not just a digital transformation initiative, but also sort of like a growth within the ecosystem to inspire innovation, but also to bring in private sector and other players. So, there are three key things that we’re seeing in the African region that I want to talk about. So, the first one would be, it’s being very government-driven, but ecosystem-enabled. So, I can give a good example here with Tanzania, where I’m based. Over the past few years, even before the concept around digital public infrastructure was formed, and some of the research around it had been done, Tanzania has been building different layers of DPI. So, they started working on the ID, like most countries, and then they started building an interoperable digital payment system, you know, starting with connecting mobile, you know, starting with connecting mobile operators separately, and then connecting banks, and then thinking, how can we build a platform that connects these two? In their first exploration on how this payment platform would be, they did work with a DPG, and they then decided to roll out an in-house platform that was and is still managed by the government. Currently, right now, Tanzania is exploring a very interesting, I would say, a very interesting implementation plan, whereby, while it’s government-driven, it is now rolling out what they are calling the Jamii data exchange platform. This is the third layer of the DPI. As they are doing this, they are not only working with local implementers within Tanzania, but they are bringing in different DPGs. Their data exchange platform is built on X-Rod, so they are working closely with X-Rod, but we are also working with them to build out what they are calling a Jamii wallet, which is a use case on top of this data exchange platform. They are doing this using digital local, which is a different type of DPG. At the same time, they are working closely with private sector to see how these platforms can interact, not just with government institutions, but also interact with private sector institutions and allow data exchange. That’s why I’m saying government-driven, but very much ecosystem-enabled. Another example is also around challenge-driven DPI. A lot of the data exchange platforms that are being rolled out, they are not being used by government institutions. A lot of public infrastructure platforms that have been rolled out so far, we are seeing a little bit of slowness when it comes to adoption. Even if it’s interoperable, even if it’s safe, if there is an adoption, and that means there’s no engagement with citizens, there’s no engagement with government institutions that need to use it, it cannot meet some of the potential that we see when it comes to DPI. So, the challenges that start with a challenge are not only more innovative and more customer-citizen-focused, but they also have more adoption from the point of rollout. I’ll give a good example in the SADC region right now. SADC region is the Southern Africa sub-Saharan countries. There are about 16 of them who are currently in the SADC group. One of the questions or challenges that came up is there is a lot of immigrants that are moving between these countries. While a lot of these immigrants might have a national ID and other documents, they’re still not in the formal form. The question then became why, and the quick answer was some of them just don’t have documents. For example, Zimbabwean, and I’m now working in South Africa, but I don’t have the right documents in South Africa to support me to be formally included in financial services. But then at the same time, we know that a lot of these countries already have national IDs. They already have national digital IDs. Then the SADC group had reached out to us and another partner within South Africa called FinMAC Trust to figure out, hey, can we build a use case that actually connects the national foundational IDs that are existing within these countries to be able to support immigrants to use formal financial services within Africa? We’ve seen the quick stakeholder engagement in this project. We already have private sector. These are the banks joining in. We already have the central banks who are paying attention to the project and seeing how they can come in. Then last but not least, innovation needs to meet serenity. That’s the other bit that I’m sure we’ll be exploring a lot more today, but there’s always a question around, hey, can we build a use case that actually connects the national foundational IDs that are existing within these countries to be able to support immigrants to use formal financial services within Africa? When we’re building DPI, especially specifically when we’re building DPI with DPGs, how do we ensure that countries have the local ecosystem to not only own, but run, maintain and develop new use cases? I think a good example is in Rwanda right now where they’re rolling out a number of use cases when it comes to DPI. And what they’re also doing on the side is they’re now deploying or they’re building up what they’re calling a center, a DPI center. And this DPI center is supposed to support ecosystem players, including developers, whether they’re in government or their private sector, and seeing in what ways they can be able to understand, build capacity for them to understand the use cases and how they can support in aspects of maintaining some of the use cases that will be rolled out in a few years. So I think that gives a bit of an example of how DPI has been rolled out in Africa. And if you know, I’m happy to explore this a little bit more. One thing I would mention is that there’s also challenges, which I think are globally, and we’re seeing it very in real time in Africa. And these are mainly to do with safeguards. So one of the one of them that I can mention is around data governance. So when we’re building these data exchange platforms, especially when the original bringing more than one country, we do not have we have very fragmented digital data governance frameworks that are existing. So this moves beyond just the platform itself. But how do we bring policy makers? How do we enable countries to harmonize some of the policies that are in place to ensure that the platforms have been built are safe and inclusive? So I will hand over back to

Jon Lloyd: you, John, and happy to take any questions. Thank you very much, Desire. That was a really excellent insight into into how Africa is approaching DPI development, especially using DPGs. Rahul, we’ll move on to you now. And we’ve heard so much about the India stack. And I would like to just hear more about like how India has approached its DPI development and its approach

Rahul Matthan: to DPGs as well. Thank you. Thank you, John. So I, I almost feel I must apologize for India stack, because we started this idea of a stack, which leaves the impression that you must necessarily layer first identity, then payments, and then data sharing. And really, it’s not mandatory that you have to do it in that way. So even though we sort of think about in stack and the stack approach as a pathway by which you must progress up the chain of DPI is, I’m here to say that the the real idea of a stack is that we are creating modular elements, DPGs that can be layered on top of each other in whichever order you want for whichever solution you want. And that really is the the stack approach that India has followed. Now, India happened to start with identity, and then built a very powerful payment system, which is currently doing 18 billion transactions a month, and then has built data sharing. But if you think sideways, India has built DigiLocker, which is a very powerful credential system. And credentials are very useful for a number of things, from skilling, to government to person payment solutions, to all sorts of things. And so the real India approach, I would say, is leaning into some of the definition of what DPI is, which is open, interoperable, modular systems. And you can start wherever you want on the stack, you don’t necessarily have to have an identity, digital identity system, it’ll help if you have one, but you don’t necessarily have to have one. But you have to build these solutions to be modular, interoperable, and open. Because it’s only if you build them to be modular, interoperable, and open, that you can really reach population scale, because you never have to rebuild something that you have built previously. And that is a really powerful statement of how digitalization needs to happen. Now, India has, of course, as you know, been doing this for 15 years. So if you do it for a decade and a half, you have some time for introspection, and you can go back and see, what is this thing that you’ve built? And once you’ve figured out that you’ve built something which is pretty cool, you can then go and see what else it can be used for. And one of the things that I’ve been playing with is this idea that some of the things that Desai was talking about, that we’ve got to really sort out data governance. Because at the end of it all, we are unlocking a lot of data, and we need to do it in a safe manner. And so how do you do it? The traditional lawyer in me says, you’ve got to write laws, and you’ve got to build policies, and you’ve got to do it the way we’ve done it for many centuries. But the power of digital, and the power of digital where everything is digital, is that you can actually build some of that governance into the design of the architecture that you’re using. Now, this is an idea that’s not new. 25 years ago, Lawrence Lessig wrote a marvelous book called Code and the Other Laws of Cyberspace, where he said that on the internet, code is law. Now, at that point in time, the internet was a thin sliver of what we all do. Today, the internet and digital is everything that we do. I’m here in Norway, and I don’t need to take out my wallet, which is remarkable, because in many cities, even in Europe, you have to. And I can travel around from Oslo to Lillstrom using just the app, know which train is coming when the train is canceled on me. I can very easily get the other train. It’s remarkable that you can do all of this using an entirely end-to-end digital system. But when we do that, we’ve got to remember that that same digital system gives us the tools to actually in-build governance directly into the interactions that we have. This, to me, is the hidden secret of digital public infrastructure, because digital public infrastructure really is an infrastructure layer that you have created for transactions. Laws are the offline way of telling us how transactions need to be conducted. And in an entirely online world, the laws that tell you how to transact can actually be written directly into the ways in which these different modules interact with each other. And so the term that I coined, the phrase I coined, is that we’re building an infrastructure on which regulators can regulate and innovators can innovate. And this is different from the other infrastructures that are built by innovators on which only innovation can happen on the terms of the people who control the platforms. And then regulators are forced to use the traditional old world ways of coming up and saying laws, etc. But if the regulators can also participate as regulators on that infrastructure, they will be able to set the rules and the innovators will be able to innovate on the same platform. And that really, I think, is the secret hidden message of digital public infrastructure.

Jon Lloyd: Yeah, it’s very interesting, especially given India has been a real leader in the DPI space and a real example that a lot of countries are looking to. And Omri, maybe we can move to you now. And we’ve heard a lot about this idea of the Eurostack, although we know it’s several different things. But I would like to hear more about the European approaches to digital sovereignty, role of open source in that, and in particular this concept of the digital commons and how that aligns with the digital public goods agenda. Okay, so thank you for being there. It’s a pleasure

Henri Verdier: to exchange with my friends. So I was listening to the two first speakers. I feel that the perception of the DPI movement in Europe was immediate and very positive, maybe because we have a long tradition and we love good specification. You know, Europe is a birthplace of, I don’t know, the metric system, the ITU, and a lot of open standards, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a lot of open source like Linux, etc. And we love when the world is properly organized. So these ideas that you can manage, plan, we love it. And the second thing is that there is probably an ideological alignment because we have a strong culture of public services, and maybe in the discussion we need to precise that public service is not government, so that’s not exactly the same thing. And in France, the culture of the public servant is really strong, and they don’t consider that they are there to obey to the minister. They have a service to deliver and they do it. And probably a third connection is the idea that when we see the digital world as we see it, if we want to protect an open, free, decentralized, vibrant internet, and to protect democracy, the right to the people to decide their collective future together, and to impose some solution, we need this layer of DPI to implement some political decision and collective decision on the big, the open internet. So I think that we are ideologically aligned, but because the need to change was not the same, we didn’t go as fast as India, for example. I say very often in Bangalore, I use UPI in Bangalore, but in France you can buy a baguette with a contactless payment with your phone without any fee for decades. But that’s a very old and imperfect system. You need a bank account, a credit card, an emulation of the credit card, the connection, so that’s a very complex system, but you can do it, and that’s quite free. So the need to change was not the same until the growing concern regarding sovereignty. So France was probably the most concerned with sovereignty forever, because we are a bit Gaullist, so we say we decide, we want strategic autonomy. I have to say that a lot of other Europeans were a bit less concerned and then we have this movement which is not just the Trump administration we have also companies that becomes very very big and heavy and start to act as political actors so when you see of course the most obvious is Elon Musk but you can if you see carefully you can see others they want to decide the future of the of the world of geopolitics and national politics as to Brazil what Trump must try to do so we have a growing concern and to be frank we are really really really heavily dependent and vulnerable to American companies and American infrastructure everywhere can you do you remember last month the American government decided to cut the email of the prosecutor of the criminal international criminal court that’s something impressive so because of this we are progressing toward the slowly but firmly to other kind of digital public infrastructure will all this culture of good organization and public service and for example next year we’ll have the you digital wallet which is a very important step because we will have the same standard in all the European citizens phone to present and interact with digital ID and we we’ve learned to separate some attributes from the idea so for example I will be able to prove that that I am more than 18 years old without giving my name which is very compromising for a lot of issues and and now I’m going in the last 30 seconds to our very good and open source but we are still European and we are still 27 countries and so when you say to any European country let’s build a common EU stack they will say all of them will say of course let’s take my solution let’s take X road let’s take France connect let’s take and probably we’ve lost 10 years because of this because of a kind of competition between national solutions and now we are learning thanks to the open source movements to build buckets of interoperable solutions for example there is a Franco-German project a sweet numeric that’s the desk for the public servants this is not one solution this is a series of module and you can you can add your own module the group will test if this is interoperable with the others the group will develop the interoperability if needed and we will have so I finished to say that the only way from my perspective for real EU stack is not one stack is a variety of solution and altogether we pay attention and we build interoperability and the EU stack will be a cloud of nebulous we say in French of solutions but and we you will be able to decide I take matrix or I take another one but I know that when I do enter in this world I can interact with all the others and we are progressing fast from one year more or less things are accelerated and this is deeply connected to the DPG movement because for this we need all those communities of open source open standards developers small companies

Jon Lloyd: associations etc excellent thank you Henri I think you’ve touched on especially those issues around I guess the sovereignty issue which is coming up design and Rahula both kind of covered that in their introductions as well and Renata let’s move to you and I’d like to hear more from the Latin American perspective as well about how how countries in lack approaching DPI as

Renata Avila: well yes I think that it really connects well with the last bit of Henry because I think that the emphasis in Latin America is communities and it is very interesting because we start early the vision of the public infrastructure was being discussed in Latin America early 2000s and an example of that is that seven countries in Latin America have legislation for open source and open content so those those two pillars it is not words but actions in many countries in Latin America I can list it Argentina Brazil Ecuador Peru Venezuela Uruguay and Cuba and I will say that the first thing that the Latin American countries understood together with code is law is that technology is politics and we learned the hard way you know like after some sanctions to some countries in Latin America of course you are shot you’re cut off vital things that you need to do your work and that accelerated in the early 2000s a transition you know when when when Latin American countries were like you know adopting some policies that were not welcome but the main provider of technology had to move the open source was the the way you know and and the interesting thing is what it was institutionalized they were like yeah units inside ministers in charge of this and there were like resources allocated to that and but in parallel and it’s something that is very important because that didn’t last long the institutionality after transitions and left right left right left right as it is seen in our very vital democracies and many like you know was discarded or defunded but what it stayed was the community component and the that’s the highlight of the continent the communities around open source the communities around free software the communities around open content are very active like it’s very interesting you know you see in Europe like a lot of funding for community works and digital social innovation and so on compared it’s not enough but compared to Latin America in Latin America is the volunteer you know it’s what you do after work it was what you do on weekends you edit a Wikipedia article you code and contribute to a collaborative platform and and so what I will say that what it is different is that in Latin America we are very good at the digital public goods and but we haven’t jumped yet to the big digital public infrastructure plans except some specific cases one case that is very exciting is the case of pics in Brazil and it is it is it even made it to Europe you know like I am at the moment living partially in Portugal and I was in Lisbon and I saw pics I could pay by pics in in Portugal Brazilians can pay with pics in Portugal imagine that you know like it’s very interesting and it is being adopted in Panama Peru Bolivia Paraguay Venezuela Ecuador and Argentina is doing a pilot and it makes sense because Brazil is you know half of our continent so all the border countries are making easy to exchange we are not Europe we don’t have the euro it’s difficult these frictions with currencies and a lot of very complicated legislation because of money laundry and so on so this is making a real difference and the other thing that I want to highlight this the ugly dog nobody speaks excite in an exciting way about it is the geospatial infrastructure most of Latin America sure geospatial infrastructure which is that is a digital public good and that’s amazing that really enables the work of many many public offices and on the other highlight is data see can which open knowledge foundation coded initially and in now is one of the default platforms in more than 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and and D can as well and so the civic and the CDM also is many of the Latin American participatory platforms and many other smaller civic tech projects follow the logic and I already listed a digital public goods but one thing that before I do not want to forget because it connects to India is an emergent emergent trend of South South cooperation which is very very exciting in in the frame of bricks and carry comb India stack has signed emojis with Cuba Colombia Suriname to not in Tobago and you remember Buddha and Barbados and that’s a subregion practically you know the Caribbean and Colombia Colombia is the only one in the mainland but it is very very exciting to see how all of this connects the the Caribbean Caribbean communities also super strong in communities of open source and so what I will say that is the highlight of the region is that it’s a region that can make what will be different is that is not only the tech techies and the regulators but is the community ready to take active informed participation in how you build your digital public infrastructure and so that those are the exciting news from the region great thank you so much and

Jon Lloyd: we’re going to jump in now to a real question-and-answer component of this we’d really like to have your feedback and questions particularly online make sure that you’re submitting those we’ve heard a lot of common threads coming through here and common use cases in particular I think one compelling thing that’s coming out is this idea of the cross-border use cases which I don’t necessarily think that countries are considering when they’re implementing their own DPI but the importance of interoperability and the solutions is becoming more and more prominent you mentioned it with pics and I’m funnily enough that you can now use in Europe And, of course, Desire covered that as well with just being able to access financial services using your digital ID. And so, but Rahul, maybe I can jump to you quickly. But what do you think are some of the big differences between the way that India has been approaching its DPI development and what you’ve been hearing from the other speakers?

Rahul Matthan: So look, I don’t think there’s much that’s different. I think, you know, we came from a different place. As Henri said, we, to India, and I think this is true of a lot of the global south, this is the only way to leapfrog development so that we can, I think the statistics are, do in 10 years what would have otherwise taken us 50 years. And I think a lot of countries are seeing that. Now, France didn’t need to do that because France had already put the 50 years in and they were sort of 50 years ahead. And for the rest of the developed world, this is not, in that sense, a necessity for many of the traditional elements of the stack. And I think, you know, digital identity, if you’ve got a very strong civil registry, you don’t really need to do what India did and get biometrics to the whole population. You just rely on your civil registry. If you’ve got a working payment system that reaches everyone in the country, you don’t need to go and build a PICS because already there’s a way in which to do it. But for the countries of the global south where they’re seeing that there’s a lot that we have to achieve, this is a quick way to do it. Now, just to touch on the interoperability across borders, India, as you know, is a subcontinent. And so in many ways, of course, there is a need to interoperate with other countries, but we are a billion people and we really need to focus first on interoperating inside and reaching everyone in the country, which is what the identity system did. Unfortunately, the payment system, as big as it is, is only covering maybe 300 to 400 million people. We have a billion left to cover. So we have a long road ahead of us, even within the country. But I think there are many other elements where we can and must cooperate. I’m going to put a plug for climate because using digital public infrastructure to solve the climate crisis is probably the most important, urgent innovation that we can think of as the next step of digital public infrastructure. You may think, as I’m saying this, you may say, what is he talking about? But let’s just agree this is 10 years from the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement isn’t really working. Temperatures are rising beyond the point where I think we can scale it back to our climate objectives. The approach of building grand consensus between countries is not working because countries are not committing and people are walking out of the agreement. We’ve got to find a different way. And the one thing about DPI is DPI unlocks abundance. We are stuck with data and valuable opportunity in silos that don’t connect to each other. And if we can just rethink the way in which we address climate challenges by connecting our silos, we will find that solving the climate problem does not cost the trillions of dollars that it’s estimated to cost because that is an old world way of thinking of solutions. And I strongly urge all of us here, I mean, COP is in Brazil this year, and I strongly urge all of us to rethink the way we go about this because DPI has shown a way for very, very big challenges like financial inclusion. I see no reason why that can’t be applied to something as important as climate change.

Jon Lloyd: And Renato, I’ll jump to you because you mentioned this a little bit when you were speaking earlier, but Latin Americans are sharing geospatial data, I think, in terms of addressing that climate using digital public goods. How have they been built and governed in a way that’s enabling this cooperation and collaboration?

Renata Avila: Well, I think that the Geosur project, I don’t know the details of the governance, but it is usually cooperation across the region is very dynamic and fluid, especially in two issues, in cross-border cooperation and in health issues. I think that the pandemic, PAHO, for example, has played a key… There’s regional mechanisms that have enabled this cooperation. I think that also two actors have played a crucial role, and one is the Inter-American Development Bank, and the other is, you know, the regional mechanisms such as CELAC and OAS, to make countries agree on general frameworks, of course, not at the level of coordination of Europe, but close to that. I think that also the lack of tailored solutions and the lack of prioritization by the Global North of solutions specific to Latin America had accelerated that in the geospatial area. And one more that is very important. It has also… Latin America has been one of the pioneers together with India, actually, in opening also knowledge and opening research that will be like key… It’s a combination of data, knowledge and infrastructure that makes the region very ripe for more ambitious efforts around climate.

Jon Lloyd: Excellent. And speaking about regional ambitions, desire, we’ve heard a lot, especially from the East Africa community recently, we know that there are commitments being made on this idea of cooperation and collaboration. So there’s a lot of political will there. And that’s a thread that I’ve kind of heard coming through as well. But is there also a risk through moving too fast and not necessarily taking a multi-stakeholder approach and the effects that that might have on inclusion or exclusion of people and in terms of being able to access services?

Desire Kachenje: Thank you. Great question. So I think the way you’ve put it is actually very correct. There’s a lot of political will. And this is more specifically, I would say, when it comes to digital payments, even like with the East African communities, mostly around digital payments and how we can, you know, connect some of this digital infrastructure that’s existing. So right now, just for context, it’s worthwhile to understand that, you know, in Africa, DPI is looked at mainly to kind of solve some of the fragmentation issues, but also to bring together inclusion. So like to solve for the digital divide. And digital payments took off more, I think, in Africa region than, you know, in most other parts of the world, because it came from a need, a necessity that a lot of African citizens want to send small amounts of money to rural areas that probably don’t have network and don’t have internet. And that caused, you know, mobile banking to skyrocket, et cetera. And then from there, it was now easy to create interoperability because it was very clear the use case that needs to be there. Now, I think to answer your question, there are two risks that, you know, a lot of countries are looking at and a lot of regional operators are looking at. We already have PASS, which is the Pan-African Payments Incentive System. We have TCIB for the southern region. And there are a number of others that are coming up. But one of the bigger questions has been there is a lot of smaller amounts that are being shared across these countries. And the platforms, while the interoperability is there, they are not really accommodating such amounts. And so some of the work that is being done, and I think I want to give, you know, more like congratulations to some of the DPGs in DPI right now who are focusing on working with some of these regional organizations, for example, Comesa, to say, hey, can we have a use case that just focuses on something like merchant payments, where these are your smaller payments, and to enable smaller SMEs or to smaller amounts to be sent in the region. So this is really helping when it comes to inclusion. An example of this is that Comesa is currently working with Modulook, which is a DPG for payment platforms. And they’re doing a trade platform whereby it will allow smaller traders to send smaller amounts of money within the region. The other bit I think we’ve mentioned, it comes to that there is a lot of legacy systems that are existing in Africa currently. And a lot of these legacy systems, it’s been hard to then transition them to actual platforms, and then it’s even harder to transition them in a way that we’re using the DPI approach, you know, making them interoperable, making them open. And we are seeing right now that DPGs is taking, a lot of countries are taking a different look at DPGs and they’re more open, although we’re also seeing specific requests that, fine, let’s use an open source platform, but can we have the data being on-prem, so being on the ground, which then brings a lot of questions around, you know, how do we manage this? How do we incorporate this? So I would say when it comes to inclusion, it’s usually to look after the low-income populations and the harder-to-reach populations. And the other bit is then how do we ensure that, you know, a lot of the governments are comfortable in some of the open systems as they are built, and spending less more time in trying to customise them specifically for one country, because then now when we’re trying to connect regionally, we have to do more customisation, which can be quite expensive and time-consuming.

Jon Lloyd: Interesting. And Omri, I’m going to ask you a question a little bit about some of this regulation. You know, we’ve heard the Silicon Valley approach of move fast and break things. Unfortunately, it seems like they’ve broken too much, perhaps. But I think in Europe, given that often the rest of the world would look to Europe in terms of tech regulation. and the DSA, the AI Act, all of that kind of thing. But what we’re hearing here is that with DPGs and for DPI, there needs to be a lot of flexibility and openness in the approach. But in terms of, I guess from this European or French perspective, what are some of the non-negotiable elements that need to be in place, I guess from your perspective, in order to maintain that sense of innovation and collaboration, but need to, I guess, set the box in order for us to all play in?

Henri Verdier: Very interesting questions. I’m building an answer. Yes, obviously, there are non-negotiable elements and that are all the decision of free democracies. So privacy, human dignity, free speech, as we consider that free speech should be. So it doesn’t allow you to ask to kill people online, et cetera, et cetera. And if we cannot implement our collective decision, we are not a democracy anymore. And that’s why sovereignty matters, because you cannot conceive a democracy without sovereignty. You can conceive sovereignty without democracy, but you cannot conceive democracy without sovereignty. So first, second observation, starting from the Indian, I will take the Indian vocabulary. You cannot regulate just with law. You need a techno-legal approach. By the way, you need champions if you’re not creative, innovative. If you don’t have research, intellectuals, creators, companies, startups, et cetera, you won’t impose your views. So you have to be part of the movement, and you have to conceive a way to implement a bit the regulations. So that’s why we need a longer conversation regarding rules as code. But yes, that’s important to be sure that when you decide something, you know how to implement it. Interesting example, for years and years in Europe, we are very concerned by age verification, because we know that very, very young children go to pornographic websites, but I’m speaking about the age of eight. Ten percent of the children less than eight years old are seeing pornographic content online. But if you just say, we want to check the age, it doesn’t mean nothing. So the question is, how can we do this? And because we need to respect privacy, et cetera, the only solution is to have a proof of age separate from the identity. And for this, you need to conceive an infrastructure, and that is efficient, auditable, because we need also to be sure that they are really separating those information, et cetera. Because your question is about regulation, it’s also politics, I just want to add one last word. I was asking to myself, what do we have in common, because we are from four continents, and we have a lot in common. And I was thinking that something that we have in common is a bit hidden, because it’s so obvious that we don’t pay attention to this. In a nutshell, I think that we would all agree that a good society needs equal access to some basic public services, needs democracy and a collective decision, needs free speech and free innovation for the market, et cetera, et cetera. But this is not a real consensus. So we have this in common. This is not what most of the companies of the Valley think. And they are developing an infrastructure to capture our economies, to transform us into a kind of global Uber driver’s economy, within their platform, where they take all the added value. And if you pay attention, there is a real theory, probably it started with Milton Friedman, but now they have more and more books, the network states, worse to be seen, because that’s the program of Elon Musk. Let’s replace the old-fashioned nation states with big vertical companies, one for education, one for… And that’s the big front line and the big battle. Can we still empower the people through infrastructure and good governments to respect dignity and innovation and everything, or do we have to let our lives within big corporations and their infrastructure? And that may be one of the secret connections between all those movements.

Jon Lloyd: I’m just going to pause for a second here, and we’re going to launch a Mentimeter poll. Those of you online, there was applause in the room next to us, which we heard. So there is a Mentimeter poll here. If you’re able to join using this QR code or go to the link here in Menti, we’ll launch that in just a second. I think people are still taking photos of the QR code. It’s just coming up now. Okay. Let’s launch that poll. So we’ve heard a little bit about some of these challenges in DPI implementation from regional perspectives here, but in terms of scaling DPI globally, what do you think are the biggest challenges? We can see some of the answers coming in now. All of us panelists are watching them come in. Do we have multiple answers? It’s the biggest challenge, Henri. You had to choose just one. Yeah, these are quite interesting answers. I’ll just read out what the options are here. So we’ve got lack of interoperability, ensuring data privacy and security, addressing local capacity and agency, funding and resource allocation, and political will and governance. It looks like we’ve got a bit of a dead heat here between three of these options. I’ll just open it up to our panelists. What are your reactions to seeing this, Renata?

Renata Avila: You know what I love is that everybody deprioritized funding and resource allocation because we are now well aware of all the money spent in tech monopolies that deliver nothing and not even pay taxes in our countries. So I think that that’s clear. That’s consensus now. And when you were saying what we have in common, what we have in common is that we are squeezed without options and we really need to work together, all the people here at this table, in reverting the lack of options and the heavy dependencies that we have in a system that is not delivering for democracy or for sovereignty. The second thing that is very interesting in the results is also the need to address local capacity and agency because very quickly something that I am a part of is that most of the local capacity, most of the programs training civil servants are run by big tech from Silicon Valley. Most of it, most of it, like basically training our civil service just to think that they are the only solution available and ignoring all this rich ecosystem of possibilities that we could take. So those are like my two comments.

Henri Verdier: Henri, very briefly this time, I am the only one that did vote for economic allocation because of the word allocation. First, it was very difficult to choose because everything here was very important, but I feel that we need a better economic theory of the economic role of DPI. If we decided in Europe a century ago to make postal service or whatever as public services, it was because it did create so much value everywhere that it was quite impossible to take the value everywhere. So I think that this is the best way to finance something that creates value everywhere. We need such a theory for the modern version of public service that is DPI.

Jon Lloyd: Do we still have Desire with us? I hope so because Desire, how are digital public goods addressing some of these issues around like funding resource allocation where Africa is a historically resource constrained area still now? What is the role of digital public goods in helping address that in terms of DPI development and launch?

Desire Kachenje: Yes, so I think firstly it’s very interesting for me to see this because I agree, I really like that adjusting local capacity is quite high up there. I think what we’re seeing here, funding and resource allocation is still quite a huge issue because a lot of these other issues, addressing local capacity, political will and lack of interoperability for a lot of African countries, they do need funding to sort of solve some of these issues. I think there’s a slight difference there in terms of the outlook here. In terms of DPG, I would say it’s a double-edged sword. So there’s one side that a lot of DPGs already have easy to use and source code that can be easily implemented within African countries. But then at the same time, a lot of DPGs still need to build local capacity. within the countries that they’re operating in, which then this requires time and resources and funding. So DPGs have done a great job in understanding the challenges and needs, specific needs, when it comes to different African countries and different approaches to DPI. And I think DPGs are also putting their hand up in terms of coming up with easier ways or more efficient ways to roll out. But at the same time, there’s also the other side that a lot of DPGs are funded. So sustainability around maintaining some of the DPGs long term for them internally itself is still something that needs to be discussed. But when they are rolling out in African countries, the customization and the the ability to remain sustainable past the project, especially because most of most of the project when it comes to DPIs that use DPGs are donor funded. So sustainability past that donor funded project is still a question. And then last but not least, John, if I really want to touch on data, privacy and security, and I know that, you know, it’s it’s something that we’re discussing on and on. But it’s such a crucial issue, even when it comes to working with DPGs, because a lot of let’s say if we look at something like that, there are some countries that still do not have clearly defined, you know, what is what does it look like when it comes to digital data for specific populations, like when we’re looking at children? What is that a privacy for children, especially when it comes to things like digital IDs or digital bathroom registrations? So while we have a number of DPGs such as OpenCRVS, which are doing a great job when it comes when it comes to like registrations. But this, you know, we’re seeing a bit of a struggle here for countries to then adapt privacy and security issues, which kind of make a lot of projects halt in between, because then you will have CSOs coming in and saying, how safe is this? Yes. So I think that’s my quick take.

Jon Lloyd: Excellent. Yeah, that was extremely useful. We’re going to launch a second Mentimeter question now, because it relates a lot to what Desire was just speaking about. So here we go. Hopefully you still have the Mentimeter link up from before. But which of these do you believe is most effective in ensuring countries build and evolve technologies based on their own priorities? So here’s the Mentimeter link. If you if you lost it before our options here, we’ve got open source first principles, decentralized DPG governance models, promoting digital commons, which I think relates to the European agenda here, local talent development and training to address some of those capacity issues. And then this idea of, I guess, international funding, but with local control. So this is very interesting as well in terms of open source first principles. I know Renati, you spoke about many countries in Latin America having this open source first approach. And seeing some of the answers changing here now as well. Oh, God. It’s very interesting. Also, if there’s anyone present with us who would like to ask a question, please feel free to come up and and ask them at the microphones either side of the stage. We’d love to hear from you. Hey, Len, how are answers coming in, questions from online? Or we can take a look in a second. Great. And Rahul, maybe as these results are coming in, what are your reflections about this?

Rahul Matthan: I mean, it’s interesting to see funding right at the bottom. I think this is repeating what we saw in the previous Mentimeter. And I think the idea really is that it doesn’t take a lot of funding. It’s not that funding is not important, but actually, DPIs are a relatively cheap alternative to doing this. I think it’s interesting to see local talent development right on top, because this is something that we sometimes don’t really fully grok as to how important this is. You can build these wonderful platforms, but there is a last mile that needs to be implemented by government servants, NGOs, even ordinary citizens. And the development that’s required in order to do that is actually non-trivial. And we can’t automate everything away, as no matter what you do with digital, there’s always that last mile. But even as I’m speaking, I’m seeing that we’ve got three tied for third place. And it’s clearly local talent and open source as the top two, which in many ways really aligns with the way I think about these things. This is really the two most important things we should be thinking about.

Jon Lloyd: And do you see the use of digital public goods in assisting with the local talent development and training?

Rahul Matthan: Of course. No, I mean, look, we can keep chipping away at the amount of physical or non-digital steps that we need to take to build this. And I think certainly in doing that, building DPG type training, talent development solutions using Sunbird and things like that are extraordinarily powerful. But I think that at least when I speak to DPI development in other countries and not just in my country, I find that this is the thing that governments are most concerned about. And it may just be a fear of the unknown, but a lot of governments are concerned about how much it’s going to take to actually really roll this out in countries. And I think that’s certainly something that we can look to improve using DPG solutions, building DPIs even just for talent development. But we can’t ignore the fact that this is a concern and that this is something that needs to be actively addressed.

Jon Lloyd: Thank you. And we have a gentleman here with a question. If you could just start by introducing yourself and then, yeah, and if it’s directed to the panel or anyone in particular.

Audience: Okay. Thank you very much. My name is Israel Rosas. I’m with the Internet Society, but this question is in my personal capacity. I’ve seen that the data public infrastructure is broadly prominent in the global data compact, for instance. And now that we are discussing how to integrate the global data compact implementation into the WSIS Plus 20 review process, I’m curious about the framing of decentralized governance models for DPI. What would be the panel’s impression on, instead of just decentralized governance models, adopting a truly multi-stakeholder governance approach for DPI? Because I think that there are slight but important differences, so it will be interesting hearing your thoughts. It’s a broad question for the panel. Thank you.

Rahul Matthan: I mean, look, I’m a huge fan of decentralized anything, but we’ve got to realize that we all need to cleave to a certain set of common principles. And so, once again, picking back on Henri’s point, the concern with a lot of this is sovereignty. And one of the challenges with sovereignty is that if you’re utterly decentralized, in the process of being completely decentralized and multi-stakeholder, you can lose some of the sovereignty requirements that you individually need. So to me, I like the global digital compact. I’m part of the DPI safeguards framework, once again, all of which are saying, let’s build some principles that we all agree with. And then let’s leave it to countries to develop the bespoke governance frameworks that are appropriate for their context and what they want to achieve. And I think that that is the combination we need. As Henri said, what is common to all of us? There are many things that are common to all of us. We must absolutely adhere to those things, because that’s the reason why we can all meet at places like this and exchange views in a language that we all understand. But at the same time, we’ve got to recognize that we as nations and as sub-national institutions have our own objectives that we want to achieve. Some of those in India, in Africa, in Latin America are very different from what Europe and North America want to achieve and can achieve. It’s not wrong. It’s just that those are differences that we’ve got to recognize. And part of the way we recognize the difference is to also recognize the commonalities and say, as long as we’re common, you can be different. And maybe that’s what you’re trying to say, because multi-stakeholderism also is that. But I fear that we lose that if we make it not grounded on common principles. And I think the common principles are important.

Henri Verdier: If I can add one word. As Raoul said at the beginning, a EU stack or Indian stack doesn’t have to be a cathedral. It can be diverse and modular, etc. Some things are very regalian, we say in French, regalian. The source of citizenship is a state. You cannot crowdsource citizenship. But you can build important parts in a very multi-stakeholder approach and with a new form of cooperation for the state with civil society, with public goods. For example, in France, before being the ambassador, I was the head of the IT department for the government. I did build a strong partnership between the National Geographical Institute and OpenStreetMap. And now we do deliver some important public services in cooperation between OpenStreetMap and the National Geographic Institute. Or we did build our own instant messaging system, CHAP, with Matrix. And we just asked Matrix to develop some features and we did finance. And they did implement it as they want. So you can, for a lot of important parts of this, you can be completely multi-stakeholder in the governance and development. And for other parts, probably you cannot because the state has some role.

Renata Avila: I wrote a paper precisely about that with some colleagues and we suggest instead of multi-stakeholder approach a commons-based governance approach for digital public infrastructure and it beyond the national uses is the only way that it will help scale and localize digital common efforts. It increases transparency and accountability, it accelerates impact, it reduces governance data and even localization frictions and the most important thing it secures community engagement so even if the government changes you have people actively involved in the governance of infrastructures that are of common benefit.

Jon Lloyd: We have a question from the chat here that I will just address and this is a lot to do with inclusion and specifically around access and desire. I’m going to look to you because we’ve heard examples from digital public goods for example Mojaloop which is a digital payment system. Many people access that on feature phones rather than smartphones but the question here is with 2.6 billion people not using the internet, any comments on how to overcome the divide?

Desire Kachenje: I was actually just reading that same question and asking myself the same thing. I think what we have seen with a lot of this is not just for payment systems even when you’re looking at something like ID, one of the key questions you would get from the African citizens, we were talking about this ID for Africa a month ago whereby a lot of citizens are asking the question, I don’t have internet, why do I even need a digital ID and what does that look like? Instead of that can we focus on providing access such as internet to rural areas? So yes, it’s a big question and I think one of the things that I’ve seen a lot of specifically LADPGs trying to address is to create other ways for access when it comes to some of the use cases that are being deployed. So like you mentioned Mojaloop, they are providing access for future phones. If you look at other things such as data exchange platforms, there are some data exchange platforms that are built upon USSDs which is something that is very common for a lot of African countries but the governments have really tried and some of the nations and some of the governments have really tried to create systems whereby all local communities have spaces within their proximity that have access to desktops and internets and all of these digital platforms can be accessed there. So if you move in, if you walk around some of the revenue authorities across African countries, they do have desktops and access points whereby you can still use the digital platform at their office using those platforms. So that is something that has been a lot of countries are trying to do but I think Joseph is raising a very significant question that goes beyond just rolling out use cases when it comes to DPI. The question is the access to internet is still a prominent challenge when it comes to a lot of African countries and I think other countries.

Jon Lloyd: Sorry, you just broke up there and I think that illustrates this point a little bit in terms of access. We’ve only got a little bit of time left, thank you Desire. Just one final question before we continue, which is we’ve heard so much about this idea of like e-gov and all of that kind of thing leading up to this, now it’s like the DPI approach. Just very quickly, are there any differences? Are we talking about the same thing? Is the DPI approach, particularly using DPGs, is this a fundamental new way of thinking? I mean look, I hate to use the Shakespearean

Rahul Matthan: phrase arose by any other name. I really don’t care as long as it is open, modular, interoperable and to me I think we are trying to call the same thing by different names and I’m not going to sort of stick my hat on a particular name. We’ve got to achieve the same thing no matter where in the world we are, no matter what we call it and I think that if we stop, as Andre says, saying my solution is best and try and find a way to say, look, these are all solutions that have the same common ideas, let’s find a way to make them work because countries have built entire infrastructures on a particular solution. It’s no point saying that that is a bad solution. You’ve got to find a way to make that work with whatever you’ve got because we are now moving to a multi-stakeholder world where these systems have to work with each other. I do want to use UPI in Brazil the same way PIX is being used in Portugal but I can’t. I want to use UPI here in Norway but I can’t. We’ve got to now sort of stop worrying about which it is as long as we can make them interoperable. I just want to pick up on that last question which was around the need for the internet. I don’t want to ignore the statement that there is a large population that has been denied access to some of these miracles because they don’t have the internet but at the same time I don’t want that to be a reason for us to stop building DPIs until the whole world is connected because we can’t do that either. We have to push this out. I realized my horror that there are parts of Canada that don’t have 24 by 7 electricity. Now electricity is a hundred year old technology and if we wait for every last person on the planet to be connected whether Elon Musk does it from space or we do it on the ground, it’s too late. What we have to do is to ensure that access to DPIs is not denied because of a lack of connectivity and there are many ways to do that. We can build offline solutions. All we’re saying is that this is a digital public infrastructure. We’re not saying it’s an internet driven digital public infrastructure though that’s how it’s delivered in a lot of places. We’re saying lean into the power of digital and then the way you access digital could be using the internet, it could be using QR codes, you can do what we call fidgetal, half physical half digital, you can do online offline, many many solutions. When India rolled out Aadhaar, we did not have internet in the entire country that we were reaching. Many people went out, enrolled people offline, came back to wherever they’ve got connectivity and uploaded it into the server. We still do that in a lot of different technologies. Africa should do it, there are parts of the world even in the developed world where you don’t have wonderful connectivity. That does not mean you stop building our DPI because we’re not saying it is internet driven. We’re saying lean into digital. On that note, I think we need to wrap it

Jon Lloyd: up. So thank you especially to our speakers, Desire, Rahul, Henri and Renata for your insights here. What we’re hearing is that despite these kind of like nuanced regional approaches, the things that really count are openness, interoperability, this ability to work together, build out your local vendor ecosystems, capacity development, all those kind of things are important and the importance of political will. Essentially we have a shared ambition for this inclusive and interoperable DPI. Digital public goods are kind of coming through as a way to ensure that that is able to happen. One of the things that came up in the Mentimeter was this idea of open source policies. I’m just going to plug a survey here that the Digital Public Goods Alliance, 24 members of the alliance have put together this open source policies and practices survey. We would love everybody, as many people as possible to be doing this. We’re aiming to collect even if you don’t necessarily have an open source first policy, it’s really useful to have your insights in this and the learnings from that are going to enable other countries to learn from one another, organizations to learn from one another and able to implement digital public goods. I’ll also just mention here we will be having some actionable recommendations coming out of this policy for strengthening things like local capacity and agency in addition to the survey. We encourage you to continue to engage. Do we have to make your survey on a google doc? Really? Really? I was hoping that wouldn’t come up. Next time. Our rapporteur Max, he’s going to be synthesizing the key takeaways from this session and we’ll upload that to the IGF session page. Thanks for calling us. Thank you again. We look forward to continuing this important work together. We ended slightly early. Thank you again so much. Workshop two. Workshop two.

Agreement points

Modular and interoperable approach to DPI development

Speakers

– Rahul Matthan
– Henri Verdier

Arguments

India’s stack approach creates modular, interoperable elements that can be layered in any order, not necessarily following the identity-payments-data sequence

Europe has ideological alignment with DPI due to strong public service culture and concerns about digital sovereignty, leading to interoperable solutions rather than one unified stack

Summary

Both speakers emphasize that DPI should be built as modular, interoperable components that can be combined flexibly rather than following rigid sequential approaches or creating monolithic unified systems

Topics

Infrastructure | Digital standards

Funding is not the primary constraint for DPI development

Speakers

– Rahul Matthan
– Renata Avila

Arguments

DPI represents a relatively cheap alternative to traditional development approaches, enabling 10 years of progress in what would otherwise take 50 years

Funding is deprioritized because of awareness of money wasted on tech monopolies that don’t deliver value or pay taxes locally

Summary

Both speakers agree that funding constraints are overemphasized, with DPI offering cost-effective alternatives and growing awareness that money spent on tech monopolies has been wasteful

Topics

Economic | Development

Local capacity building is crucial for DPI success

Speakers

– Desire Kachenje
– Rahul Matthan
– Jon Lloyd

Arguments

DPGs provide cost-effective alternatives but require local capacity building and sustainable funding models beyond donor-funded projects

DPI can use various access methods including QR codes, ‘phygital’ (physical-digital) solutions, and offline-online hybrid approaches

Open source first principles and local talent development are most effective for ensuring countries build technologies based on their priorities

Summary

All speakers emphasize that building local capacity and talent development is essential for sustainable DPI implementation, regardless of the technical approach used

Topics

Development | Capacity development | Infrastructure

Digital sovereignty requires technical capability to implement democratic decisions

Speakers

– Henri Verdier
– Rahul Matthan

Arguments

Digital sovereignty requires the ability to implement collective democratic decisions through technology infrastructure, not just technical independence

DPI enables ‘regulators to regulate and innovators to innovate’ on the same platform through techno-legal approaches rather than traditional law-only regulation

Summary

Both speakers agree that true digital sovereignty means having the technical infrastructure to enforce democratic decisions and regulatory frameworks, not just independence from foreign technology

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure | Human rights

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize community-driven and challenge-focused approaches to DPI development, prioritizing real user needs and community engagement over technology-first implementations

Speakers

– Desire Kachenje
– Renata Avila

Arguments

Challenge-driven DPI implementations have better adoption rates than technology-first approaches, as seen in SADC region’s cross-border financial inclusion project

Latin America emphasizes community-driven approaches with strong open source legislation in seven countries and active volunteer communities maintaining digital public goods

Topics

Development | Sociocultural | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers highlight successful examples of South-South cooperation in DPI, showing how developing countries can share and adapt each other’s digital infrastructure solutions

Speakers

– Renata Avila
– Rahul Matthan

Arguments

India’s UPI system shows potential for international cooperation, with agreements signed with Caribbean and South American countries through South-South cooperation

Brazil’s PIX payment system demonstrates successful cross-border expansion, now usable in Portugal and being adopted across Latin American countries

Topics

Economic | Infrastructure | Development

Both speakers agree that lack of universal internet connectivity should not prevent DPI development, and that alternative access methods can bridge the digital divide

Speakers

– Rahul Matthan
– Desire Kachenje

Arguments

DPI can use various access methods including QR codes, ‘phygital’ (physical-digital) solutions, and offline-online hybrid approaches

2.6 billion people without internet access represents a significant challenge, but DPI development shouldn’t wait for universal connectivity

Topics

Development | Digital access | Infrastructure

Unexpected consensus

Deprioritization of funding as main constraint

Speakers

– Rahul Matthan
– Renata Avila
– Henri Verdier

Arguments

DPI represents a relatively cheap alternative to traditional development approaches, enabling 10 years of progress in what would otherwise take 50 years

Funding is deprioritized because of awareness of money wasted on tech monopolies that don’t deliver value or pay taxes locally

Better economic theory needed for DPI’s role as public service that creates value everywhere, similar to historical postal services

Explanation

Unexpectedly, speakers from different regions (India, Latin America, Europe) all agreed that funding is not the primary barrier to DPI development, contrary to common assumptions about resource constraints in developing countries

Topics

Economic | Development | Infrastructure

Commons-based governance over traditional multi-stakeholder approaches

Speakers

– Renata Avila
– Henri Verdier

Arguments

Commons-based governance approach for DPI is preferable to traditional multi-stakeholder models as it ensures community engagement beyond government changes

Europe has ideological alignment with DPI due to strong public service culture and concerns about digital sovereignty, leading to interoperable solutions rather than one unified stack

Explanation

Both speakers unexpectedly converged on preferring community-based governance models over traditional institutional approaches, emphasizing continuity beyond political changes

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development | Sociocultural

Overall assessment

Summary

Strong consensus emerged around core DPI principles: modularity and interoperability over monolithic systems, local capacity building as essential, funding not being the primary constraint, and the need for governance approaches that ensure democratic control and community engagement

Consensus level

High level of consensus despite different regional contexts, suggesting that DPI principles are universally applicable while allowing for local adaptation. This consensus has significant implications for global DPI development, indicating that a common framework can accommodate diverse regional approaches while maintaining core principles of openness, interoperability, and democratic governance

Different viewpoints

Governance models for DPI – Multi-stakeholder vs Commons-based vs Sovereignty-focused approaches

Speakers

– Audience
– Renata Avila
– Rahul Matthan
– Henri Verdier

Arguments

Multi-stakeholder governance approach should be adopted for DPI instead of just decentralized governance models

Commons-based governance approach for DPI is preferable to traditional multi-stakeholder models as it ensures community engagement beyond government changes

DPI enables ‘regulators to regulate and innovators to innovate’ on the same platform through techno-legal approaches rather than traditional law-only regulation

Digital sovereignty requires the ability to implement collective democratic decisions through technology infrastructure, not just technical independence

Summary

Speakers disagreed on the optimal governance model for DPI. The audience member advocated for multi-stakeholder approaches, Renata preferred commons-based governance for continuity, Rahul emphasized techno-legal integration allowing both regulation and innovation, while Henri stressed sovereignty and democratic decision-making capability.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development | Infrastructure

Funding priorities and economic theory for DPI

Speakers

– Henri Verdier
– Renata Avila
– Desire Kachenje

Arguments

Better economic theory needed for DPI’s role as public service that creates value everywhere, similar to historical postal services

Funding is deprioritized because of awareness of money wasted on tech monopolies that don’t deliver value or pay taxes locally

DPGs provide cost-effective alternatives but require local capacity building and sustainable funding models beyond donor-funded projects

Summary

Henri emphasized the need for better economic theory and proper funding allocation for DPI as public service, Renata argued funding isn’t the main constraint due to waste on tech monopolies, while Desire highlighted ongoing funding challenges in Africa where donor dependency remains problematic.

Topics

Economic | Development | Infrastructure

Unexpected differences

Role of funding in DPI development priorities

Speakers

– Henri Verdier
– Renata Avila
– Desire Kachenje

Arguments

Better economic theory needed for DPI’s role as public service that creates value everywhere, similar to historical postal services

Funding is deprioritized because of awareness of money wasted on tech monopolies that don’t deliver value or pay taxes locally

DPGs provide cost-effective alternatives but require local capacity building and sustainable funding models beyond donor-funded projects

Explanation

Unexpectedly, speakers from different regions had contrasting views on funding importance. While poll results consistently showed funding as low priority, Henri (Europe) argued for better economic allocation theory, Renata (Latin America) dismissed funding concerns due to tech monopoly waste, and Desire (Africa) emphasized ongoing funding challenges. This regional divide on funding perspectives was surprising given the supposed consensus.

Topics

Economic | Development | Infrastructure

Overall assessment

Summary

The main areas of disagreement centered on governance models for DPI (multi-stakeholder vs commons-based vs sovereignty-focused) and the role of funding in DPI development, with unexpected regional differences on economic priorities.

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level. While speakers had different approaches and emphases, they shared fundamental agreement on core DPI principles (openness, interoperability, modularity) and the importance of local capacity building. The disagreements were more about implementation methods and governance structures rather than fundamental goals, suggesting productive debate rather than irreconcilable differences. This level of disagreement is constructive for the DPI field as it allows for diverse regional approaches while maintaining common principles.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize community-driven and challenge-focused approaches to DPI development, prioritizing real user needs and community engagement over technology-first implementations

Speakers

– Desire Kachenje
– Renata Avila

Arguments

Challenge-driven DPI implementations have better adoption rates than technology-first approaches, as seen in SADC region’s cross-border financial inclusion project

Latin America emphasizes community-driven approaches with strong open source legislation in seven countries and active volunteer communities maintaining digital public goods

Topics

Development | Sociocultural | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers highlight successful examples of South-South cooperation in DPI, showing how developing countries can share and adapt each other’s digital infrastructure solutions

Speakers

– Renata Avila
– Rahul Matthan

Arguments

India’s UPI system shows potential for international cooperation, with agreements signed with Caribbean and South American countries through South-South cooperation

Brazil’s PIX payment system demonstrates successful cross-border expansion, now usable in Portugal and being adopted across Latin American countries

Topics

Economic | Infrastructure | Development

Both speakers agree that lack of universal internet connectivity should not prevent DPI development, and that alternative access methods can bridge the digital divide

Speakers

– Rahul Matthan
– Desire Kachenje

Arguments

DPI can use various access methods including QR codes, ‘phygital’ (physical-digital) solutions, and offline-online hybrid approaches

2.6 billion people without internet access represents a significant challenge, but DPI development shouldn’t wait for universal connectivity

Topics

Development | Digital access | Infrastructure

Key takeaways

Regional approaches to DPI development vary significantly but share common principles of openness, interoperability, and modularity

Digital Public Goods (DPGs) provide cost-effective alternatives to proprietary solutions but require substantial local capacity building and sustainable funding models

Cross-border interoperability is emerging as a critical success factor, with examples like Brazil’s PIX system and Africa’s regional payment initiatives demonstrating practical implementation

Digital sovereignty and democratic governance can be maintained through commons-based governance approaches rather than traditional multi-stakeholder models

Local talent development and open source first principles are the most effective strategies for ensuring countries build technologies based on their own priorities

DPI development should not wait for universal internet connectivity – offline and hybrid solutions can bridge the digital divide

Climate change represents a significant opportunity for DPI application through connecting data silos and enabling more cost-effective solutions

The distinction between e-government and DPI is less important than achieving open, modular, and interoperable systems regardless of terminology

Resolutions and action items

Digital Public Goods Alliance to continue collecting responses for the open source policies and practices survey from 24 alliance members

Rapporteur Max to synthesize key takeaways from the session and upload to the IGF session page

Continue engagement on developing actionable recommendations for strengthening local capacity and agency

Kazakhstan formally announced as the 26th country participating in the 50 and 5 campaign

Unresolved issues

How to address the 2.6 billion people without internet access while continuing DPI development

Sustainable funding models for DPGs beyond donor-funded projects

Harmonization of fragmented data governance frameworks across countries, particularly for cross-border implementations

Balancing speed of implementation with multi-stakeholder inclusion to avoid exclusion of populations

Data privacy and security frameworks for specific populations like children in digital ID systems

Long-term sustainability and maintenance of DPI systems after initial implementation

Integration of legacy systems with new DPI approaches in a cost-effective manner

Suggested compromises

Use modular, interoperable approaches rather than insisting on specific technological solutions or naming conventions

Implement ‘phygital’ (physical-digital) hybrid solutions to accommodate areas without reliable internet connectivity

Adopt commons-based governance that balances state sovereignty requirements with multi-stakeholder participation

Focus on common principles while allowing countries to develop bespoke governance frameworks appropriate for their context

Build offline-capable DPI solutions that can sync when connectivity is available

Combine government-driven initiatives with ecosystem-enabled implementation involving private sector and civil society

Start DPI implementation wherever countries have capacity rather than following a prescribed sequence

I almost feel I must apologize for India stack, because we started this idea of a stack, which leaves the impression that you must necessarily layer first identity, then payments, and then data sharing. And really, it’s not mandatory that you have to do it in that way… the real idea of a stack is that we are creating modular elements, DPGs that can be layered on top of each other in whichever order you want for whichever solution you want.

Speaker

Rahul Matthan

Reason

This comment is insightful because it challenges a common misconception about DPI implementation – that there’s a prescribed sequence that must be followed. It reframes the ‘stack’ concept from a rigid hierarchy to a flexible, modular approach, which is crucial for countries with different starting points and priorities.

Impact

This comment set the tone for the entire discussion by establishing that DPI approaches should be flexible and context-specific rather than one-size-fits-all. It influenced subsequent speakers to emphasize regional variations and the importance of tailoring solutions to local needs rather than copying India’s exact approach.

The traditional lawyer in me says, you’ve got to write laws, and you’ve got to build policies… But the power of digital, and the power of digital where everything is digital, is that you can actually build some of that governance into the design of the architecture… we’re building an infrastructure on which regulators can regulate and innovators can innovate.

Speaker

Rahul Matthan

Reason

This comment introduces a paradigm shift from traditional regulatory approaches to ‘code as law’ – embedding governance directly into digital infrastructure design. It presents a novel solution to the tension between innovation and regulation.

Impact

This concept of techno-legal approaches became a recurring theme, with Henri Verdier later building on it by discussing ‘rules as code’ and the need for technical implementation of regulatory decisions. It shifted the conversation from viewing regulation as a constraint to seeing it as an integrated part of infrastructure design.

Innovation needs to meet serenity… When we’re building DPI, especially specifically when we’re building DPI with DPGs, how do we ensure that countries have the local ecosystem to not only own, but run, maintain and develop new use cases?

Speaker

Desire Kachenje

Reason

This comment highlights a critical gap often overlooked in DPI discussions – the sustainability and local ownership beyond initial implementation. It introduces the concept that technical deployment is insufficient without local capacity for long-term stewardship.

Impact

This comment redirected the discussion toward capacity building and local agency, which became central themes throughout the session. It influenced the Mentimeter poll results where ‘local talent development and training’ emerged as a top priority, and shaped subsequent discussions about the importance of community engagement and local ownership.

There is probably an ideological alignment because we have a strong culture of public services… we need this layer of DPI to implement some political decision and collective decision on the big, the open internet… Can we still empower the people through infrastructure and good governments to respect dignity and innovation and everything, or do we have to let our lives within big corporations and their infrastructure?

Speaker

Henri Verdier

Reason

This comment reframes the entire DPI discussion as fundamentally about democratic sovereignty versus corporate control. It elevates the conversation from technical implementation to existential questions about the future of democratic governance in the digital age.

Impact

This comment created a philosophical anchor for the discussion, with other speakers referencing the tension between public and private control. It influenced Renata Avila’s response about communities being ‘squeezed without options’ and shaped the conversation about sovereignty as a non-negotiable element in DPI development.

What I will say that is different is that in Latin America we are very good at the digital public goods and but we haven’t jumped yet to the big digital public infrastructure plans… the highlight of the continent is the communities around open source… it’s what you do after work it was what you do on weekends you edit a Wikipedia article you code and contribute to a collaborative platform.

Speaker

Renata Avila

Reason

This comment introduces a crucial distinction between having strong DPG communities and implementing comprehensive DPI strategies. It highlights the role of grassroots community engagement as a foundation for sustainable digital infrastructure, contrasting with top-down government-led approaches.

Impact

This observation about community-driven development influenced the later discussion about governance models, leading to Renata’s proposal for ‘commons-based governance approach’ rather than traditional multi-stakeholder models. It also reinforced the importance of local capacity and community engagement that emerged in the poll results.

I strongly urge all of us to rethink the way we go about [climate change] because DPI has shown a way for very, very big challenges like financial inclusion. I see no reason why that can’t be applied to something as important as climate change.

Speaker

Rahul Matthan

Reason

This comment dramatically expands the scope of DPI applications beyond traditional use cases to global challenges like climate change. It suggests DPI could revolutionize how we approach complex, multi-stakeholder problems by connecting previously siloed data and systems.

Impact

While this comment came later in the discussion, it opened up new possibilities for thinking about DPI applications and influenced Renata’s response about Latin America’s geospatial infrastructure cooperation. It demonstrated how DPI thinking can be applied to cross-border, global challenges beyond traditional government services.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally shaped the discussion by establishing several critical frameworks: the flexibility and modularity of DPI approaches (challenging rigid implementation models), the integration of governance into technical architecture (moving beyond traditional regulation), the centrality of local capacity and community engagement (ensuring sustainability), and the broader democratic implications of infrastructure choices (framing DPI as essential for sovereignty). The comments created a progression from technical implementation details to philosophical questions about democratic governance in the digital age. They also established common ground among diverse regional approaches while respecting local contexts and priorities. The discussion evolved from describing what different regions are doing to exploring why these approaches matter for democracy, sovereignty, and global cooperation. The interactive polls reinforced these themes, with participants prioritizing local capacity development and open-source approaches over funding, validating the speakers’ emphasis on community engagement and sustainable development over purely technical or financial solutions.

How do we ensure that countries have the local ecosystem to not only own, but run, maintain and develop new use cases when building DPI with DPGs?

Speaker

Desire Kachenje

Explanation

This addresses the critical challenge of local capacity and agency in DPI implementation, ensuring sustainability beyond initial deployment

How do we bring policy makers and enable countries to harmonize digital data governance frameworks, especially when bringing more than one country together for data exchange platforms?

Speaker

Desire Kachenje

Explanation

This highlights the fragmented nature of data governance frameworks across countries and the need for policy harmonization for cross-border DPI initiatives

How can we use digital public infrastructure to solve the climate crisis as the next step of DPI innovation?

Speaker

Rahul Matthan

Explanation

This represents a new frontier for DPI application, suggesting that DPI could unlock solutions to climate challenges by connecting data silos and enabling new approaches beyond traditional consensus-building

How can we implement rules as code and techno-legal approaches in DPI governance?

Speaker

Henri Verdier

Explanation

This addresses the need for embedding regulatory compliance directly into digital infrastructure design rather than relying solely on traditional legal frameworks

How can we develop a better economic theory of the economic role of DPI to understand its financing and value creation?

Speaker

Henri Verdier

Explanation

This seeks to establish theoretical foundations for understanding how DPI creates value across entire ecosystems and how this should inform funding models

How do we ensure sustainability of DPGs long-term, both internally for the DPGs themselves and for countries implementing them past donor-funded project periods?

Speaker

Desire Kachenje

Explanation

This addresses the critical challenge of maintaining DPI systems and DPG platforms beyond initial implementation phases and donor funding cycles

How do we address privacy and security issues for specific populations like children in digital ID and birth registration systems?

Speaker

Desire Kachenje

Explanation

This highlights gaps in privacy frameworks for vulnerable populations in DPI implementations

How can we overcome the digital divide for 2.6 billion people not using the internet while still advancing DPI development?

Speaker

Online participant (via chat)

Explanation

This addresses the fundamental challenge of inclusion in DPI when a significant portion of the global population lacks internet access

What would be the implications of adopting truly multi-stakeholder governance approaches for DPI instead of just decentralized governance models?

Speaker

Israel Rosas (Internet Society)

Explanation

This explores different governance models for DPI and their potential impacts on implementation and sovereignty

How can we make different DPI systems interoperable across countries (e.g., using UPI in Brazil or PIX in other countries)?

Speaker

Rahul Matthan

Explanation

This addresses the practical challenge of cross-border interoperability between different national DPI systems