The Global DPI Summit, hosted in Cairo, Egypt from 1-3 October 2024, brought together representatives from more than 100 countries with diverse stakeholders from the public sector, private industry, and civil society to create a fertile ground for dialogue, knowledge exchange, and collaborations. The Summit focused on the powerful impact of safe and inclusive implementations of digital public infrastructure (DPI) to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  

This event spotlighted the extraordinary progress countries are making in adopting and implementing DPI. By highlighting the diverse and dynamic breadth of the DPI ecosystem, the Summit underscored the transformative impact of DPI on national and global scales, compelling use-cases, diverse technology solutions, policy frameworks, and implementation models that are reshaping public infrastructure.

The Global DPI Summit acted as a catalyst for fostering strategic partnerships and collaborations. These efforts will be instrumental in accelerating the DPI implementation journeys of various countries, enabling them to harness the full potential of DPI for sustainable development and societal advancement.

Overall, the Global DPI Summit has prioritized 7 Big Bets for 2025:

1. Knowledge Sharing and Stakeholder Engagement: A whole-of-society approach is essential for inclusive digital transformation. Governments, the private sector, civil society, academia, and individuals must collaborate to develop and strengthen local digital ecosystems. By sharing knowledge, resources, and innovative solutions, countries can accelerate their DPI journeys and ensure that everyone can adopt and adapt to develop their DPI capabilities.

   Call to Action 1: Let us promote increased knowledge sharing, technology exchange, and cross-border collaboration to learn from best practices and accelerate DPI implementation worldwide. This includes fostering the development of open digital and data commons to facilitate the sharing and adoption of innovative solutions.

2. Universal Safeguards: DPI should be designed and implemented with the needs and well-being of users at its core. This requires a comprehensive framework of safeguards to prevent unintended negative consequences.

   Call to Action 2: Let us commit to developing and adopting a universally agreed set of safeguards to ensure that DPI is people-centric, transparent, accountable, and fair of all users.

3. Inclusive Innovation: DPI should benefit everyone, regardless of location, gender, or ability. This requires addressing gaps in last-mile connectivity, device availability, digital skills training, and open-source technologies.

   Call to Action 3: Let us invest in inclusive DPI initiatives, such as partnerships with the private sector, community-based organizations, to accelerate last-mile solutions, to ensure that everyone has access to the benefits of digital technology, and no one is left behind.

4. Thriving and Capable Local Digital Ecosystems: DPI requires a strong enabling environment and the combined efforts of the public and private sectors. Governments should create conducive policies and regulations, while the private sector should invest in developing inclusive digital solutions.

   Call to Action 4: Let us build the capacity of all actors to implement, innovate, scale, and lead digital transformation, ensuring digital sovereignty and a thriving local digital ecosystem.

5. Sustainability and Green Practices: DPI offers immense potential to empower nations, communities, and individuals in addressing the urgent threats of climate change and environmental degradation. By fostering transparency, data sharing, and innovative green financing, we can create scalable solutions that contribute to a more sustainable future.

   Call to Action 5: Let us leverage forward looking DPI that anticipate and limit long-term harms, enhance sustainability, combat climate change, and protect our planet for future generations.

6. Financing DPI: Adequate financing is essential to improve accessibility of technical assistance, governance capacities, and open innovations for countries. By leveraging existing initiatives and securing targeted funding, we can ensure that nations’ DPI efforts are not impeded and that everyone contributes to the digital revolution.

   Call to Action 6: Let us unite to provide the necessary resources and support for the widespread implementation of DPI, enabling us to address critical global challenges.

7. Interoperability and standards for DPI: Technical standards can enable cross border interoperability which is a fundamental precondition for service delivery, credential verification, security, data privacy and data sharing in areas of social security, health, education, travel, and finance. Multipurpose digital wallets will become critical components for the interoperability of DPI to enable citizens to prove their identity, make payments, store travel documents, health records and educational certificates, as well as gain access to digital services. In this regard, open standards, open APIs, open-source software, and the international standards that support them will be very important.
   
   Call to Action 7: Let us commit to adopt international standards for the various DPI components including digital wallets and implement policies that will enable cross border interoperability and promote an open, inclusive, equitable, secure, trusted, and sustainable digital transformation.
    

   
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