Digital public infrastructure (DPI) has emerged as a critical approach to building digital capabilities essential for individuals’ participation in society and markets, encompassing roles as citizens, workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers. The potential benefits of DPI, including efficiency gains and value creation, depend on achieving scale. This requires minimizing technical, governance, cultural, and legal barriers to inclusive participation.
Engaging a full range of DPI implementers and stakeholders in discussions about these barriers can identify strategies for effective DPI design, implementation, and maintenance.
Virtual Roundtable Discussion
A virtual roundtable discussion was convened on March 27, 2025, bringing together country-level DPI implementers, private sector representatives, foundations, civil society, and multilateral organizations. The roundtable focused on increasing inclusion in DPI systems while enhancing their overall efficiency.
From this discussion, six key steps were identified to improve equality and inclusion through DPI:
1. Intentionally Design DPI for Traditionally Excluded Users
Technology design often centers on a generic user, but a more differentiated approach can reach a broader audience. DPI system design should prioritize populations that are typically left behind, including the elderly, individuals with disabilities, those living in rural areas, and low-income individuals.
Failing to adopt targeted approaches risks exacerbating existing inequalities. Iterative design processes that actively engage diverse end-users should be standard practice. In Norway, researchers and blind users collaborate to develop accessible digital public services. In Africa, an estimated 60% of people do not use digital technology despite adequate mobile network coverage. In India, individuals working in manual labor in rural areas face challenges such as difficulties with fingerprint detection.
Human-centered approaches are essential for designing and implementing DPI systems in such contexts. Attractive, intuitive, and accessible interfaces significantly boost user engagement. Inclusive DPI design processes can directly reduce common adoption barriers such as low literacy levels or language diversity. Practical solutions include user-friendly interfaces that are visually clear, equipped with multilingual, assisted-modalities, and capable of functioning offline, which is particularly crucial in areas with costly or limited bandwidth.
2. Use DPI to Disrupt, Not Perpetuate, Inequitable Social Norms
Technical solutions alone are insufficient to address the complexities of digital inclusion. Social norms significantly shape access to digital systems, often compounding existing inequalities. For example, power structures within households can affect women’s ability to use digital services freely.
When women are not seen as primary financial decision-makers, they are less likely to obtain identification or own mobile phones, particularly smartphones, and their access frequently depends on male family members. In some countries, targeted DPI for women can provoke a backlash, where women’s digital use is stigmatized as immoral and unacceptable.
Community-based initiatives, such as India’s Internet Saathi program, can address these barriers by training rural women to share digital literacy information with their peers. DPI design should proactively address these systemic barriers and dynamics rather than digitizing in ways that ignore and perpetuate existing disparities or potentially create new harms.
Identifying specific incentives that both encourage DPI adoption by those who are excluded while also disrupting societal norms that perpetuate exclusion can be a win-win. For example, the World Bank’s ID4D report on “Closing the Gender Gap in ID Ownership in Ethiopia” recommended offering Fayda registration at locations women already frequent, providing childcare and meals at registration sites, and collaborating with religious leaders, agricultural extension workers, and women’s networks for outreach and design.
Morocco has made significant progress in digitizing public services and integrating digital technologies to enhance access for all, including persons with disabilities. Developing centralized repositories of best practices and peer-to-peer learning mechanisms across regions could enhance the effectiveness of service-delivery strategies.
3. Educate, Empower, and Incentivize Key Actors in Service Delivery
End-user challenges are typically mediated by frontline bureaucrats or workers who introduce, manage, and support the implementation of DPI services. These actors play a crucial role in either reinforcing or dismantling exclusion. Training programs must equip and empower bureaucrats to navigate gendered, socio-economic, and cultural barriers. The level of trust between communities and frontline workers can shape DPI outcomes. Frontline workers typically possess deep knowledge of their constituents, making them invaluable for inclusive design processes. Programs like the ASHA workers in India have successfully increased female participation in financial and healthcare services, particularly in conservative regions where social norms constrain women from interacting with men outside of the family. In another case, a district administrator in Maharashtra, India, developed a Migrant Tracking System to ensure that mothers and newborn children received state support, demonstrating how local knowledge can drive inclusive innovation. Meaningful incentives for DPI actors are needed to ensure the participation of excluded populations and to standardize localized and innovative frameworks to reach national-scale inclusion. Businesses can support uptake through cost-saving programs, such as offering discounts to customers who use DPI-linked services. Private stakeholders of all sizes should be included in DPI deployment strategies. While large financial institutions may not serve rural women directly, smaller, community-based institutions usually do. Recognizing the importance and knowledge of these localized financial actors, incentivizing diverse business participation, job creation, and skill development within emerging digital economies can improve DPI design and reach.
4. Cultivate Trust by Designing for Privacy and Agency
Ensuring evolving dialogue between technical design features and ethical and policy foundations of DPI systems can help cultivate citizen trust. The most marginalized individuals often face the greatest risks in being identifiable, which can make them vulnerable to harassment, abuse, or other negative behaviors. For example, women are disproportionately targeted by cybersecurity threats, increasing their risks when engaging with DPI. Moreover, even the perception of such risks, regardless of whether they materialize, can deter individuals from participating, ultimately undermining inclusion. User consent and selective disclosure should be foundational to DPI design, ensuring individuals have granular control over how their data is used, who can access it, and for how long. For instance, a positive design feature would allow individuals to explicitly consent to each distinct use of their data, such as choosing whether their biometric data can be accessed by government agencies or financial institutions. Best practices also dictate that DPI systems should minimize long-term data retention and use high-assurance verification modalities. These approaches can help ensure that people retain the freedom and agency to decide when and how they are identified. To prevent the centralization of personal information, governments could act as cluster providers, enrolling individuals and issuing identities while decentralizing authentication methods and service delivery to safeguard personal information.
5. Calculate DPI Investment and Returns as a Function of Inclusion
For DPI to attract necessary investment, stakeholders across government, private sector, and civil society must recognize potential long-term returns in addition to short-term gains. Currently, international loan-based financing of DPI emphasizes the latter. If repayment pressures drive governments to monetize DPI through user fees or data exploitation, it could undermine the inclusive mission. Sustainable financing requires accessibility and equity beyond short-term cost recovery. DPI’s interoperability is a key asset-the value of which can be quantified and elevated. Siloed governance often leads to fragmented technology, resulting in redundant efforts such as multiple ID systems for taxes, national security, and social benefits. Enabling digital services to integrate with commercial and cross-agency models enhances efficiencies while increasing opportunities for economic and societal value creation. For instance, government-backed (“G2P”) digital cash transfers have helped users establish local digital markets (“P2P”) on top of these systems. Regulatory incentives can further drive DPI adoption, as demonstrated in Ethiopia, where banks facilitate national ID registration.
Conducting Timely Research on DPI’s Demand-Side is essential for ensuring that these systems are inclusive and effective. Comprehensive research on the uptake and user experience of DPI systems is necessary. While traditional methods like user satisfaction surveys and exit interviews remain valuable, they can be complemented by more agile research methods that enable real-time rapid feedback loops for DPI implementers. Governments can incorporate inclusion metrics as key performance indicators in their DPI systems, with disaggregated usage patterns and outcomes by individuals and user groups becoming the norm. Understanding how people experience the process of obtaining an ID and using it to access services helps pinpoint where systems function effectively and where they create barriers. Time-use surveys may be useful in further quantifying these inefficiencies by measuring waiting times and associated costs, demonstrating potential time and cost savings for both users and service providers. Research insights based on these methods can help build a stronger case for DPI adoption and reinforce the argument that inclusion drives efficiency. Early research pilots designed to capture a longitudinal “inclusivity pulse” of DPI systems can function as a guide to diffusion of best research practices across country contexts.
Key Points:
– Comprehensive research on DPI systems is essential for ensuring inclusivity and effectiveness.
– Agile research methods can complement traditional methods for real-time feedback.
– Inclusion metrics should be key performance indicators in DPI systems.
– Understanding user experience can help identify system barriers.
– Time-use surveys can quantify inefficiencies and demonstrate potential savings.
– Research insights can strengthen the case for DPI adoption and reinforce the argument that inclusion drives efficiency.
– Early research pilots can guide the diffusion of best research practices across country contexts.
