WHAT ARE DIGITAL PUBLIC GOODS?

WHAT ARE DIGITAL PUBLIC GOODS?

In 2020, following a series of multi-stakeholder roundtables, the United Nations Secretary-General issued his recommendations in the Roadmap for Digital Cooperation in 2020. The Roadmap outlines eight key areas for action, including “Promoting digital public goods to create a more equitable world”.

Digital public goods are defined as “Open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable international and domestic laws, standards and best practices, and do no harm”. The report of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation notes that many types of digital technologies and content could accelerate achievement of the SDGs. It also explains that technologies can be thought of as “digital public goods” when they are freely and openly available, with minimal restrictions on how they can be distributed, adapted and reused.

The Digital Public Goods Alliance, a multi-stakeholder initiative welcomed in the Roadmap, aims to accelerate the attainment of the SDGs in lowand middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods. The Alliance has developed the Digital Public Goods Standard, which elaborates on the definition of digital public goods provided in the Roadmap. According to the Standard, a digital public good must:

1. Be relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals.

2. Use an approved open license, for example a Creative Commons license for open content.

3. Clearly define and document ownership of everything the project produces.

4. Demonstrate platform independence.

5. Have documentation of the source code, use cases, and/or functional requirements.

6. Include a mechanism for extracting non-personally identifiable information, if it collects such information.

7. Comply with relevant privacy laws, and all applicable international and national laws.

8. Demonstrate adherence to standards, best practices, and/or principles.

9. Demonstrate that they have taken steps to ensure the project does no harm, and that it anticipates and prevents specific harmful scenarios.

The Digital Public Goods Registry currently contains over 600 entries, of which 42 have been reviewed against this Standard and recognized

as digital public goods. Some examples of recognized digital public goods include Apache Fineract, an open source software for financial services; the KoBo Toolbox, a suite of tools for data collection in challenging environments; Project AEDES, a tool to predict potential dengue fever hotspots; the Global Digital Library, an open collection of educational reading resources; and the Standard for Public Code, which provides guidance to public organizations on how to successfully develop open source software that can be reused by others. Currently, there are no entries in the Registry for open AI models.

There is great diversity among the products that fall within the categories of open-source software, open standards and open content. For example, some types of software aim to tackle very specific challenges, whereas other serve as platforms upon which a host of other services can be built.

Platforms that provide basic or essential services that allow for other services to be built on top of it are often referred to as “digital public infrastructure”. One example is MOSIP, a modular identity platform designed to allow governments and

organizations to implement a digital ID system. By building on top of this platform, government agencies and private businesses can offer services to users, secure in the knowledge that each account relates back to one specific person. MOSIP has been recognized as a digital public good and assessed for its potential impact to drive financial inclusion. In the health context, DHIS2 is a health information management system that is used for data collection, management and analysis. DHIS2 is currently used by ministries of health in 73 countries, and has been used for COVID-19 surveillance since January 2020, when a COVID-19 tracking app was first developed in Sri Lanka. Using DHIS2, the Sri Lankan team was able to develop this and deploy the tracking app in just two days, demonstrating the potential of digital public goods to assist in rapid crisis response and management.

The Roadmap on Digital Cooperation emphasizes that digital public goods are essential in unlocking the full potential of digital technologies and data to attain the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular for low- and middle-income countries. Outlining several challenges related to access to digital solutions, it further notes that a concerted global effort to create digital public goods would be key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

In some areas, efforts to create open digital solutions are already well underway. These solutions may or may not be defined as digital public goods, as the frameworks under which they were developed were largely developed prior to the adoption of the Roadmap and the definition it uses. For example, in the health context, the term “global goods” is often used, defined as “digital health software tools that are adaptable to

different countries and contexts to help address key health system challenges.” The work to better understand the relationship between these terms, and to align the definitions and processes for approval of global goods and digital public goods in the health context is underway. Similar efforts may be required in other areas where open digital solutions that could contribute to the achievement of the SDGs have been developed.