Digital Public Infrastructure: building blocks, not silos

For many years, digital government grew one system at a time. Each ministry or programme commissioned its own application, with its own sign-in, its own copy of reference data and its own way of taking payments. Each system might work well on its own, but together they leave citizens repeating the same steps and governments maintaining the same capabilities many times over.

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) offers a different starting point.

What makes something “infrastructure”

DPI refers to shared digital foundations, such as identity, payments, data exchange and registries, that many services can build on. The important word is shared. A capability becomes infrastructure when it is:

• Reusable: built once and used by many services
• Interoperable: connected through open standards and well-defined APIs
• Inclusive: designed so that every citizen can benefit, not only the digitally confident

From projects to ecosystems

The shift DPI asks for is less about technology and more about how we plan. Instead of asking “What system does this programme need?”, we ask “Which shared building blocks already exist, and what is genuinely missing?” New services then become a matter of composing existing components, not rebuilding them.

This is also where Digital Public Goods (DPGs) come in: open, reusable solutions that can be adopted and adapted across institutions and countries.

Questions worth asking

When reviewing any new digital government initiative, I find a few questions useful:

1. Does it reuse existing national building blocks where they exist?
2. Does it expose its own capabilities through standard interfaces?
3. Will the data it creates be usable by other services, with appropriate safeguards?
4. Is it designed for every citizen, including those with limited connectivity or digital skills?

Answering these well is what turns a collection of systems into a whole-of-government ecosystem.