Governments worldwide are increasingly investing in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) — shared, horizontal digital layers that support service delivery, foster innovation, and enable social and economic development. DPI encompasses foundational elements such as digital identity systems, interoperable payment platforms, and data-sharing frameworks. These infrastructures aim to transform critical societal functions, providing digitized solutions that enhance service delivery, improve efficiency, and foster inclusion. For instance, initiatives like the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) have supported over 60 countries in issuing more inclusive, secure, and user-centered digital IDs to 550 million people, thereby facilitating the building of other digital public infrastructures. The DPI Map by the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) offers a global view of DPI deployment across 210 countries, showcasing the adoption of digital identity, payment systems, and data exchange platforms. In lower-income regions, such as Africa, DPI adoption is gaining traction, with countries implementing digital ID systems, mobile money interoperability, and data-sharing initiatives to improve governance and financial inclusion. Moreover, DPI has become a key priority in global governance discussions, with India, Brazil, and South Africa highlighting its role in fostering economic inclusion and state modernization during their G20 presidencies. In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa has emphasized the importance of digital transformation in public finance, highlighting DPI as a crucial tool to modernize governance, enhance service delivery, and improve fiscal management.
With DPI implementation accelerating across dozens of countries—outpacing even its definition—a global research agenda is emerging around key questions:
- What qualifies as DPI, and how does it differ from earlier and ongoing efforts to digitize public services, businesses, and public spaces? How is the understanding of these shared horizontal digital layers evolving across countries, and how do specific national experiences shape others?
- How can and should the impact of DPI be measured and studied? What parameters define its economic dynamics? Does DPI change the nature of state capacity?
- What makes DPI a form of public infrastructure—a foundational system that supports economic, social, and civic life?
A key area of interest has emerged around DPI’s potential to strengthen State capacity – the ability of governments to design, implement, and enforce policies effectively. By leveraging digital platforms, governments can potentially enhance administrative efficiency, reduce leakages, and improve coordination across departments. DPI also holds the promise of bolstering transparency and accountability, enabling better monitoring of public finances and service delivery. This promise is even greater in lower-income regions, where the performance of public institutions is expected (by all) to leapfrog into the future.
One area where DPI has demonstrated significant promise is tax administration, as recent evidence shows. DPI can simplify tax compliance, reduce enforcement costs, and expand the tax base, albeit with some enduring challenges. For instance, India’s integration of DPI with tax administration has improved tax outcomes and reduced fraud, while South Korea’s encouragement of digital payments adoption has simplified tax filing and boosted compliance. In Africa, Uganda’s online tax registration system, integrating national ID and tax IDs, registered over 350,000 informal taxpayers in 2022. Ghana’s collaboration with the National Identification Authority led to a threefold increase in tax registrations in 2021-2022, and South Africa saw similar growth. A GlobalDev post by Fabrizio Santoro and Lucia Rossel discussed recently what research has to say about these unprecedented advances.
Beyond taxation, DPI can also improve public financial management, public procurement and social protection programmes. For instance, digital procurement systems can facilitate competitive bidding, ensure better oversight of public spending, and improve efficiency in government contracting. A DPI stack can also expedite social assistance transfers, by leveraging digital IDs for authentication of beneficiaries and digital payments for secure and fast transfer delivery.
Topics for Contributions
GlobalDev at the Global Development Network (GDN) and the International Centre for Tax and Development at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the UK, invites you to draw on your research and the research you have access to, to write a blog on the role of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in strengthening state capacity and fostering development. Blog posts should be around 800 words and focus on any of the following key themes (the list is indicative and not exhaustive):
- How digital ID systems can improve State capacity in identifying citizens for better tax administration and social protection.
- The role of digital payments in enhancing financial inclusion, formalization in economies and growth.
- Challenges and risks in implementing DPI, including privacy concerns, cybersecurity, and exclusion.
- Case studies of DPI improving administrative efficiency and governance within public institutions, especially focusing on data exchange systems, inter-institutional collaborations, and systems integration.
- The impact of DPI on tax administration, revenue mobilization, and compliance.
- The role of DPI in strengthening public financial management and procurement systems.
- Realistic, actionable policy recommendations for governments and international organizations on DPI adoption.
All drafts focusing on state capacity and DPI will be considered. We encourage submissions from a wide range of authors, with a focus on contributions that (following GlobalDev’s editorial line) use existing high-quality research to illuminate the policy questions.
A special editorial panel will review submissions in response to this ‘Special Debate’ on GlobalDev, and we aim to process and publish drafts within 4 weeks of submission.
To learn more about this call, contact us at editors.globaldevblog@gdn.int. To submit, visit https://globaldev.blog/write-for-globaldev/
