Digital Public Infrastructure: Concepts, Global Efforts, Benefits, Challenges, and Success Stories

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is an emerging innovation that leverages digital technologies to increase access to public and social services towards improving people’s welfare and livelihoods in society. DPI is a set of digital systems that enable members of society to safely and efficiently connect to open-source digital networks to access social services and other economic opportunities that improve their welfare. The study explores the concept of digital public infrastructure, the global trends, opportunities and challenges. The study also highlights some DPI success and failure stories across countries, and it offers some insights into the challenges and risks of digital public infrastructure. It was shown that digital public infrastructure has many components, and it is enabling digital access to public goods and services for many individuals who lack access to essential goods and services. As a result, many individuals and firms are connecting with one another through a public digital networked infrastructure. However, DPI poses some risks or challenges such as difficulty in evaluating impact, cybersecurity risks, lack of interoperability between digital systems, digital exclusion, lack of private and public sector collaboration, lack of accountability mechanisms, ethical dilemmas and geopolitical concerns. The discussion in this article contributes to the digital society literature by showing that digital public infrastructure is an essential part of a digital society and the benefits of DPI to society are enormous if the risks can be mitigated.