‘Leaving no one behind’. This is the powerful but challenging promise that United Nations member-states have pledged to work towards in the pursuit of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). India has discovered some of the ways to move closer to this promise. With a vast and diverse population of 1.4 billion people, the progress made in the past decade to reach out and give social protection to every Indian has been impressive.
One of India’s most powerful tools in this journey has been Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). As the Norwegian Minister of International Development, I am impressed by the development benefits of the use of digital public goods. Aspiring to leave no one behind, India has been able to issue digital identities to almost all its citizens. In turn, this has provided them access to social services, the digital economy, government support services and more. These lessons can be used as a blueprint to maximise international development efforts.
The first is India’s role in accelerating the digital public goods agenda. During India’s G-20 presidency this year, the world saw that digital public goods are part of the international development architecture of the future. India made digital public goods and DPI more tangible. One key step was in getting all G-20 countries to agree to the G-20 Framework for Systems of Digital Public Infrastructure. Arriving at this common framework is an impressive feat. The definition (which describes “a set of shared digital systems” used to “drive development, inclusion, innovation, trust, and competition and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms”) captures the idea behind digital public infrastructure very well.
Digital South-South cooperation
Work on digital public goods provides a great example of how the world is organically organising itself in new ways, and how countries in the global South are now leading this effort. Over 97 million people in countries as diverse as Morocco, Togo, Sri Lanka and the Philippines have received by now an ID through the Bengaluru-developed open source ID source system, or MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform), an effort I am proud that Norway supports. It is also illustrative that today, members of the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) are meeting in Ethiopia for their annual assembly, and that these strategic decisions are taken in the global South. The international development ecosystem should pay attention to these conversations as they are shaping the world at an impressive speed — in a way which positively benefits the SDG agenda.
The Norwegian perspective
Norway has a long history of supporting digital public goods and is a proud co-founder and member of the DPGA, which provides a registry of certified digital public goods. Norway also recently pledged to become a frontrunner country in the 50-in-5 campaign, which was launched last week by the DPGA, the United Nations Development Programme and others. In this campaign, countries pledge to make at least one national digital goods available globally in the next five years. I can see only benefits in doing so. If taxpayers are paying for the development of national systems which can be shared without creating scarcity nor competition, then the default should be that it should be released globally as a digital public good. As the Minister of International Development, I am happy and proud to see that some of the digital public goods that Norway has already provided are being put to good use across the world.
One example is the weather services of the Norwegian metrological services Yr, which is used to forecast weather around the world. Another system is a warning system for plant health, VIPS, which has been used for over 20 years in Norway, and which is now being implemented in Malawi, Africa. Yet another example is the District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2), managed by the University of Oslo. The system is the world’s largest health management information system platform and is used by health authorities in 73 low- and middle-income countries, representing 30% of the world’s population.
There is also the use of digital goods to put food on the table. One crucial and defining challenge of our time is food insecurity. In response to a deteriorating situation for food security globally, Norway is placing food security at the centre of Norwegian international development efforts; digital public goods such as VIPS and others are a part of this picture. I am happy to see that 24 of the registered digital public goods are already targeting SDG2 on ending food hunger — and the list is growing.
No service nor good is fully free, and the same is true in the digital domain. Someone must finance the development of protocols and their maintenance and security. Going forward, governments and businesses need to respond to increasingly challenging concerns of privacy and data leaks.
Countries also need to ensure the safeguarding of digital sovereignty without tampering with an open, free and secure Internet for all or leading to Internet fragmentation by states and non-state actors. At the end of the day, sovereignty is every country’s first concern, and open solutions such as digital public goods are a good way to ensure not to end up in a vender-lock in or paid subscription mode. In the face of these complex challenges, the good thing is that we have a compass for the journey ahead, based on certifying and pooling our digital public goods under the global lead of the DPGA.
Following the Indian blueprint
I warmly welcome close collaboration with India within the frameworks of the DPGA and the 50-in-5 campaign. I am excited to be visiting India and to experience first hand how digital public goods have transformed Indian society. Together, we can draw on crucial lessons from India’s digital journey to ensure that even more countries leapfrog the digital divide just like India has.
Anne Beathe Tvinnereim is the Norwegian Minister of International Development
