Robust digital systems that can deliver efficient and reliable services are a priority for governments around the world. Digital public infrastructure offers a comprehensive route to achieving this goal.
In pursuit of efficient and reliable public services, governments across the globe have long attempted to harness the potential of digital technology. However, this agenda is no longer simply a modernization effort to cut bureaucracy and costs. It is now a strategic necessity particularly in a world where digital sovereignty, resilience, economic autonomy and alternatives to the technological dominance of the US and China are increasingly important.
Past approaches to this modernization process have often resulted in siloed and inflexible digital solutions. The digital public infrastructure (DPI) concept can facilitate a more comprehensive approach to foundational digitalization that enables the provision of modern public and private services, such as healthcare, tax collection and local authority services. Common principles – interoperability, the flexibility to be updated and built upon, and the ability to securely share data – are central to successful examples of such DPI systems. The term DPI here means the principles behind this strategy as well as the resulting digital systems and platforms. A number of countries including Brazil, Estonia, India and Singapore are pioneers of robust, modern digital infrastructures that promise a two-fold benefit: a state and economy able to leverage government assets using the latest technology, and a path towards reducing the geopolitical strategic vulnerabilities and dependencies prevalent in current technology approaches.
Facing the challenges of sluggish economic growth and increasingly antiquated bureaucracies, today’s decision-makers are vocal in their support of new technology solutions, referred to here as their technology stack: a collection of technical systems and software used together to implement digital applications. The emergence of AI in particular has accelerated government plans for technological transitions around the world. For example, the UK’s recent AI Opportunities Action plan promises to drive economic growth and modernize public services. For many countries, the process of modernizing the state, society and the economy has taken on a new urgency in the context of a fast-changing global order, in which the pace of technology development in the US and China has the potential to expose other countries to risks related to dependency and a lack of alternatives.
Single points of technological failure and international tensions are emerging, with catastrophic, global consequences when things go wrong.
In July 2024, an alleged outage caused by a botched update to a single piece of software operated by Crowdstrike disrupted airlines, hospitals, banks and media organizations across the world, causing an estimated $10 billion worth of damage in hours. Elsewhere, the Ukrainian military’s reliance on Starlink satellite internet has prompted questions about operational reliability, with reported uncertainties over coverage and access during the conflict. The service operates under terms set by the US provider, which has imposed restrictions on certain uses in Crimea. This situation underscores the broader importance of diverse communication channels for government operations and civilian outreach during wartime.
Public disagreements between tech giants and nation states, and a creeping sense of values misalignment, has raised the question of whether countries have sufficient sway over these vital pieces of political, cultural and information infrastructure.
The central role of giant digital platforms in search and social media has historically been approached as a regulatory challenge by countries. But public disagreements between tech giants and nation states, and a creeping sense of values misalignment, has raised the question of whether countries have sufficient sway over these vital pieces of political, cultural and information infrastructure. Speaking during the 2024 US presidential election campaign, JD Vance threatened to withdraw the US from NATO should member states continue to attempt to regulate speech on US social media platforms.
For Western democracies, the scramble to realign with and respond to the changing priorities of the US administration under President Donald Trump has prompted a growing fear, one shared by most sovereign nations: the digital foundations on which they rely – economically, politically and culturally – are shaky and alternatives are urgently required.
Current digitalization strategies – which tend to be costly, dependent on foreign service providers, siloed, outsourced, vertically-integrated, extractive, and usually built elsewhere and hammered into shape through regulation – are unfit for a world where the sovereignty and capacity of states for technological governance are at a historically high premium. Add to this tight domestic and development budgets and drives for government efficiency, and it is clear that a new approach to digitalization is essential.
While for some in Europe this realization has been sudden – seen in the frantic activity around plans for a technological solution for digital infrastructure in the form of ‘EuroStack’, for instance – the same is not true for other countries. Alternative ways to build society-scale technology have been piloted, tested, resourced, refined and championed by leaders in India, Brazil, Kenya, Tanzania, Togo and elsewhere. A number of factors have played a part in the choices these countries made in their approaches to DPI, including concerns over high costs (as demonstrated by government IT spend in OECD countries, which is 20-times higher than it is outside of the organization); the threat of technology dependency and resulting desire for national tech champions (advocates of new technology); or the urgent need to modernize states and economies, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For countries exploring new approaches to technology governance and provision, these strategies and the technologies that underpin them – loosely grouped as DPI – can provide a path forward that is tested, modern, scalable, cooperative and immediately available. However, any DPI implementation must carefully address fundamental civil liberty concerns including data privacy, surveillance risks and the protection of anonymity. Essential safeguards include robust feedback mechanisms, government transparency and clear avenues for public redress – all critical for maintaining democratic legitimacy and public trust.
There is a difficult balance to manage. On the one hand, governments risk undermining their sovereignty by becoming overdependent on foreign technology providers. On the other hand, poorly equipped government services that fail to leverage modern technology can create and exacerbate their own governance challenges and leave citizens underserved.
When designed and implemented with strong democratic principles, DPI approaches represent both a path towards state and economic modernization and a strategic response to the technology sovereignty challenge that has emerged over the past 25 years – an issue brought so sharply into focus for Europeans since the beginning of the second Trump administration.
