Co-shaping our Digital Future: Advocating for the Inclusion of Digital Public Goods within the Global Digital Compact

Help protect and strengthen the impact of digital public goods by ensuring they are prominently recognised in the Global Digital Compact. Discover how, in less than 5 minutes, you can provide input at the end of this blog.

The Global Digital Compact (GDC), proposed in the United Nations Secretary-General’s “Our Common Agenda”, aims to establish shared principles for an open, free, and secure digital future by involving a wide range of stakeholders, including governments, the private sector, and civil society, at the Summit of the Future in September 2024. Throughout the ongoing GDC consultations, the DPGA Secretariat is actively advocating for prominent recognition of digital public goods (DPGs) as essential for unlocking the full potential of digital technologies – including software, data, content, and AI systems – to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

However, despite the emphasis on the importance of digital public goods by many Member States and stakeholders during the first informal consultations, the term itself, as well as broader references to open innovation, open source, and open access are absent from the draft structural elements proposed for the GDC.

It is our strong belief that how technologies are designed and developed matters – a GDC without prominent reference to digital public goods will set digital cooperation back instead of advancing it. The Roadmap for Digital Cooperation recognised digital public goods as important for attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2020, and as the DPGA’s 2023 State of the DPG Ecosystem report shows, the momentum around DPGs is stronger than ever.

We believe that those who are engaged in digital public goods-based cooperation across the world are best to explain why DPGs matter. Here is what DPGA Members have previously shared about why DPGs are important:

“Over time, I want to see more digital technologies developed in Africa for Africa. Digital public goods offer a model where African countries can develop local vendor capacity to create, adapt, and implement open-source technologies, instead of seeing us as recipients of technology.” – Cina Lawson, Minister of Digital Economy and Transformation, Togo

“Estonia has a longstanding tradition of exchanging learnings and best practices related to digital transformation with other countries. Digital public goods are important enablers of such digital cooperation.” – Nele Leosk, Ambassador-at-Large for Digital Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Estonia

“Leveraging DPI for digital acceleration is a top priority for Bangladesh. Borrowing from Vint Cerf: openness, inclusion, Innovation and collaboration were the 4 principles of the internet. They still apply to digital transformation today. Adoption of DPGs is therefore something we strongly encourage as part of this endeavour.” – Anir Chowdhury. Policy Advisor Aspire2Innovate (a2i), ICT Division/Cabinet Division/UNDP, Bangladesh

“The inherent openness of DPGs helps foster unique forms of digital collaboration. This helps countries – regardless of their geography – be in the driver’s seat of their digital transformation journeys, and maintain their digital sovereignty in an age where data has become the new gold.” – Yodahe A. Zemichael, Executive Director, Ethiopian National ID Program 

How the Global Digital Compact can help unlock the potential of digital public goods

Country adoption of digital public goods is growing rapidly, and their impact is being seen across an increasing number of use cases. However, for the potential of digital public goods to be realised, there is a need to both significantly increase and strategically prioritise and reallocate funding for their development and maintenance, as well as capacity building, technical assistance, and implementation support for developing countries. 

Prominent reference to digital public goods within the Global Digital Compact will be critical to help harness DPGs, and the support needed for them. This has been affirmed by the numerous countries including Colombia, Estonia, Mexico, Norway, and Singapore who have independently emphasised the significance of DPGs throughout the consultation process and has been further underscored by the Group of 77 and the Small States Group. The DPGA Secretariat is therefore concerned that the currently proposed GDC structural elements do not mention digital public goods, and ask for your help in amplifying this feedback.

How to input in less than 5 minutes

March 8th is the deadline to provide feedback on the current proposed structural elements of the Global Digital Compact. We strongly encourage all organisations that believe in the positive impact of DPGs to provide input via this form before March 8th. As the form relates to the structural elements only, our recommendation would be to keep inputs brief and pointed, but at a minimum indicate that DPGs should be included as an area of commitment. Our primary suggested input would be to expand the last commitment mentioned in the current form so that it reads “promote digital public goods and digital public infrastructure for inclusive development”.

In the spirit of digital cooperation: Please join us in taking this small action to shape our digital future together!

Photo by Cosmin Serban on Unsplash