Digital Public Infrastructure Day - UN Open Source Week 2026 (Part 4)

Thank you once again for getting back into the room for our closing session in time.
We'll now begin the closing ceremony and I'd like to invite Her Excellency, Angellah Kairuki, the Minister for ICT from Tanzania, who has joined us fresh from her flight to address us this afternoon.
Wasiri, welcome.
Excellencies, distinguished fellow honorable ministers, industrial and sectoral experts, distinguished panelists.
Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.
I am deeply honored to open today's panel discussion, and my sincere thanks goes to Ambassador Armani Gil, the UN under Secretary and special envoy in Technology.
For choosing Tanzania to co host the 2026 open source Week, together with other co hosts.
Your exceptional leadership sets a powerful example of the digital collaboration that is needed to govern our shared digital future.
Distinguish participants.
As we gather today, Tanzania stands ready to champion a critical pillar of the digital future.
Inclusion within our digital public infrastructure, and we understand the digital public infrastructure is a key foundational systems for our digital transformation.
The public systems like the digital IDs, the payment gateways, and the data exchange networks to succeed, all these, they must serve everyone, regardless of the geography, regardless of the gender and also socioeconomic status.
Inclusion is not a secondary goal.
It is the ultimate measure of the digital public infrastructure success.
Distinguished participants from thousands and years experience, we have learned an important lesson whereby the digital public infrastructure is not only primarily a technology project, it is a nation building project that must be inclusive from their design.
Tanzania Tanzania's roadmap to digital transformation outlines the foundational efforts to ensure that we build an inclusive digital ecosystem where no one is left behind.
Tanzania's National Development Vision 2050 places ICT as the backbone of our future growth.
We have set the clear benchmarks whereby 80% of the public services have to be delivered online, and 70% of our people must have the digital literacy.
To bridge the gap between these goals and our current reality, we must move beyond the traditional ICT and embrace the scaling of AI open solutions as essential catalyst to fulfill the promise of our 2050 national Denment vision objectives.
Today, our strategic partnership with the private sector drives our commitment to connectivity, but also for the seamless systems, interoperability through robust digital public infrastructure.
We are not just connecting people, we are building the industry's never system of the future that is anchored by the first class digital infrastructure.
We have a national backbone of more than 27,000 kilometers of fiber, more than 43 tired data centers, and critical undersea cable landings.
These efforts endorse the success by having an Internet penetration rate of 84.2%, making our nation stands fully primed and ready to drive the next wave of digital transformation.
Under the able leadership of Er Excellency, doctor Sam Su Hassan, the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, we are strategically advancing the Tanzania technologies stack, integrating the digital public infrastructure.
The implementation of the digital public infrastructure have significantly enhanced the public service delivery and accelerated the financial inclusion that is evidenced by our 63.2 million active mobile money accounts, and 58.1 million Internet users, 30 million citizens who are enrolled in our national identity ecosystem.
More than 12 million physical addresses have already been registered through our national physical Adré system, but we have also established a national EKYC capability, a national public key infrastructure, one national data exchange platform and 14 sectoral interoperability platforms that are connecting more than 800 government and private sector systems.
We've also strengthened the digital payments through the interoperable payment systems, interoperable QRA payments, and one of Africa's leading mobile money ecosystems.
Distinguished participants, discussions on the digital public infrastructure inclusion is key today.
The inclusion requires us to move from a fragmented, closed off digital systems and to move into a global technology ecosystem where no one own a single system, but rather we together but systems that can be shared, accessed transparently, and enable collective decision making.
However, to achieve all this milestone, key foundational matters should be addressed.
First, each country should implement a definitive strategy to build human capital that can actively contribute to development of DPI open source solutions aligned with global standards.
Our role must be to champion the cross border collaboration, developing talents that address strictly to universal data practices, but also foster a cohesive global digital economy.
Secondly, financing the DPIs.
Many countries have moved beyond the question of whether to build DPI.
The challenge now is how to sustainably finance the next generation of DPIs, including the trust services, governance frameworks, capacity development, but also long term operations.
Third, we must not leave in closed doors.
Data governance shouldn't happen behind the closed doors.
We need to create collaborative governance and transparent data practices whereby countries need practical support to implement the data protection, consent management, responsible data sharing, and trusted governance frameworks that strengthen the citizens confidence.
Inclusion demands a multi stakeholder approach, meaning that governments, the private sector, the civil society, We all have a seat at the table to negotiate the rules around data privacy, data sovereignty, cybersecurity, but also the AI ethics.
The future digital economy will increasingly operate across borders and to unlock the full potential of digital trade and regional integration.
We need interoperable identity systems, trusted data exchange frameworks, and seamless digital payments that work across countries.
DPI should be built around an architecture of open source frameworks within the objective to transform the DPI as non luxury asset, but a universal public good that ensures that every citizen participates in the global digital economy.
But also adoption of the AI brings its own set of challenges on digital divide.
True inclusion means that collectively we can embrace the principles of responsibilities, ethics, transparency and accountability throughout the design, development and deployment of DPI solutions.
Distinguished participants, inclusion within the digital public infrastructure is the definitive benchmark of genuine digital cooperation.
A key takeaway for each of us is that the DPI for inclusive growth is how each of us will ensure that every country, not only the most enhanced, can participate in and benefit from the emerging global digital economy, expanding opportunities, but also ensuring that there's no citizen, no community, and there is no country that is left behind.
The United Republic of Tanzania is fully prepared to unite with the regional and global partners who champion and open, who champion secure but also fair digital landscape.
I thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Kariuki, for sharing the experience of Tanzania.
Next, we will hear a keynote on DPI for inclusive economies from the Chief Information Officer and Director of the Digital FAO and Agro Informatics Division of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
Mr.
Dan, I will not attempt to say your last name as you advise, but thank you.
You have the floor.
Thank you.
Thank you very much and good afternoon, Excellencies, Honorable Minister, colleagues.
Thank you for being with us and thank you for the opportunity to say a few words on behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN.
It has been a rich week already, and today we are here to discuss a topic that sits indeed in the heart of sustainable development in the digital age.
The digital public infrastructure of the DPI is there as enabler of inclusive growth as the topic of our session today.
Around the world, economies are increasingly powered by digital systems.
Yet, billions of people remain excluded from these opportunities that we see across the DPI implementations where we look at the identity payments.
We've seen some examples from Tanzania, data, public services, education, healthcare, agriculture, and markets.
The question before us, therefore is not simply how to digitalize societies, but how to ensure that digital transformation is inclusive, equitable, and leaving no one behind.
We can see this ambition reflected in the United Nations Global Digital Compact, the GDC, and recognizing that digital technology can accelerate achievement of the sustainable development goals, but only if we work together to close digital divide, expand participation in the digital economy, promote trusted data governance, and ensure that emerging technologies benefit all humanity.
Digital public infrastructure is one of the most powerful tools available to achieve these objectives.
DPI consists of foundational digital capabilities such as digital identity, digital payments, trusted data exchange, and interoperable public platforms that enable governments, businesses, citizens to interact efficiently, securely at at scale.
When designed for the public good, DPI becomes the digital equivalent of roads, electricity grids, and water systems.
It's basically the infrastructure that creates opportunity for everyone rather than privilege of the few.
However, technology alone is not enough.
Digital transformation must be inclusive, rights based, and multi stakeholder, respecting national priorities while promoting global cooperation.
From this perspective, open source cooperation and DPI implementation in the context of global digital compact highlights a critical lesson.
Infrastructure must be accompanied by governance, safeguards, standards, trust, and capacity building.
I can also offer a quick insight from the FAO the Food and Agriculture Organization.
How do we actually relate to the DPI and situation in the world and the agri food systems? We still have around 673 million people who faced hunger in 2024.
We know this.
We also have 2.3 billion people experiencing food insecurity.
We also have 2.6 billion people that could not afford a healthy diet.
These numbers remind us that digital transformation, including digital public infrastructure, must ultimately be measured by its ability to improve livelihoods, strengthen resilience, and connect people to food services, and economic opportunities.
We can see how agri food systems are essential in making nutrition food accessible and affordable to all.
The cost of inaction in this area is very high.
To give you some idea, agri food systems generate losses around $10 trillion each year in hidden environmental health and social cost.
Investments in transforming the agri food systems with help of DPIs is tremendous.
So with this sense of urgency and I think common purpose here, we are looking at digital public goods infrastructure, not as an isolated building blocks made of digital elements.
Such as identity, payments, government services, or tremendously useful.
But we also see DPI play a key role in enabling food security, agricultural productivity, rural inclusion, and resilience.
Agri food systems employ more than 1 billion people globally, yet many smallholder farmers remain excluded from digital services such as financial markets, advisory systems, and government support in many cases.
DPIs can help close these gaps by creating the trusted digital foundations that connect people, institution, and services.
FAO sees DPI is a key enabler of inclusive agri food system transformation.
I can point out three distinct areas.
First, inclusion, where digital infrastructures can help farmers access advisory services, climate information, extension support, market intelligence, and financial services, including remote and underserved communities.
Our joint work on digital inclusion emphasize reaching rural populations, women, youth and marginalized groups to ensure the digital transformation leave no one's behind.
I think it's true to say that a few years ago, there was almost a choice to participate in the digital economy.
But that's no longer the case.
We see that community, individuals not in a digital economy are completely singled out.
The second aspect is interoperability and public value.
I think this morning we heard also from Ahmed that the importance of using DPIs not only as a standalone solutions, but horizontally, and more importantly, also across different countries, building the community support for making DPI stronger and sustainable.
Third, the digital public goods and open ecosystems.
The FAO as an example, has adopted and promotes very strongly DPG first approach, recognizing that open, reusable and scalable digital solutions can help countries accelerate digital transformation in support of DPIs.
This vision strongly also aligns with the global digital compact, which calls for closing digital divides and expanding participation in digital economy.
DPIs provide shared digital foundations based on open standards, interoperability, and public value.
Today, at this session, the distinguished panel brings together ministers and practitioners from three regions at different stages of DPI maturity to share concrete use cases and transfer lessons on what makes cross border DPI work, what financing and safeguards are needed, and what the global ecosystem might deliver for countries just getting started.
So I thank you for this opportunity and looking forward to the panel next.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
Continuing with our closing program for this afternoon, I now invite miss Stella Mechan and her panelists to discuss with us DPI for inclusive growth.
Please welcome them with an applause and we're a class once.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for staying with us.
This is the last panel of very inspiring and insightful DPI day.
The panel on DPI for inclusive Growth will tackle the questions related to how DPI can enable inclusive digital economies with a focus on cross border use cases, regional interoperability, and practical lessons from implementation.
We started today with a session where we learned a little bit more about the ID Lac initiative that is being scaled across Lac region.
During the day, we also learned more about the interoperability and cross border initiatives that Estonia and Finland is implementing.
As the world in Africa, the Smart Africa Initiative is working on facilitating cross border data sharing between countries across Africa through the SDx Initiative.
In Asia Pacific, Asean countries are also looking into how to leverage DPI to enable cross border data sharing cross border transactions.
The initiatives the challenges and opportunities were also tackled in the earlier session here in this room on how DPI can enable digital trade and digital economy.
This has direct links with jobs, which is also a, a big development priority in many of the countries we are coming from.
We will look into some of these questions with our panel members and it's a great pleasure for me to introduce them to you.
I will start with Ana Maria Bermudez, who is country operations associate with Center for Digital Public Infrastructure in Lag.
We'll go to Anesk who's coming from Estonia and is representing the European Commission here.
Armando Jose Masua who is Vice Minister of the Innovation and Technology, Minister of Public Administration of the Dominican Republic, and Peter Egon, who is the founder and CEO of Evidence OS.
Thank you so much for joining us today and we'll go directly into the questions.
We know that and we've heard a lot today that DPI is and can be an enabler of inclusive digital economies.
I would like to come to you since you are coming from a region that is experimenting and applying this in practice.
If you could share with us a little bit more about some of the cross border DPI use cases that are being scaled in the LC region and how they are enabling the interoperability, the cross border data sharing, enabling better transactions between businesses, but also more opportunities for the people.
Over to you.
Awesome.
Latin America and then Caribbean, we have already identified several use cases like cross border use cases and different areas where these can create real value.
We have been exploring in health, in agriculture and trade, and in social protection.
For example, in health, since COVID, countries needed to ask the question on how does one country trace the digital information for another country.
Like without creating all the bureaucratic mechanisms that they can be reused for every country.
I think that's the question that is the heart of every cross border use case that you can find across the globe.
In agriculture, you can say many use cases.
For example, in Peru, we are trying to enable digital identity for farmers that export Cocoa to the European Union and they need to proof about the deforestation that they do.
The only way that they can do it without frictions is that they can also prove the digital like the identity in a digital context.
But I think that the foundation for all of these is the digital identity.
If you can just find the right use cases around the digital identity cross border, you can enable all the use cases that come because if a person can't identify digitally in another country the same way that they do in their own country without the extra registrations, without starting from scratch, none of the use cases that we can identify will scale.
That's exactly what ID have done that you have heard around the day.
Um, and you Stella knows really well about this project too.
Like today, Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Paraguay, and Peru are part of an initiative that allows people to authenticate on government service platforms around the lock using their own national credentials like no new registrations, no parallel systems, and more than Being able to do that with digital identity is like the trust layer that you can build across the region and that is what makes everything possible.
Payments, trade, health, social protection, everything.
The idea is that you can build in once and then you can go and use that trust layer that you have created around.
Thank you so much, Anna, and one of the enablers, but also impediments in scaling some of these good examples and pilots is trust.
Whether we as consumers can trust these systems and whether we have enough information to trust these systems.
I would like to ask you, Peter, if you could share a little bit more about what is evidence OS doing? And if in your experience, you could share some of these use cases or projects that have brought the trust to the consumers.
If you think these are some of the good examples that might be of interest to other countries, both to improve service delivery, but also to improve cross border transactions and trade.
Yeah.
Thank you for that question and it's a pleasure to be here.
To respond, I would give a bit of a background and then walk up to answer the question.
Background is in 2020 21, I was with a startup and they had designed solutions for different brain neuro, they call it neurodegenerative or conditions that affect the brain.
We wanted to market these solutions to all over the world, essentially, and Germany was one of the places we looked at as a market.
Because of the servers that we were using, which were located in the US, essentially, they would not procure the services because they wanted solutions that would be on premises.
Because the servers were in the US, they felt, I guess, it doesn't meet the requirements or the criteria for what their local laws were.
The concept of digital sovereignty came from that experience.
Personally, my background is medicine and I have lived in Finland for the last decade right next to Estonia.
One of the key things, at least how I approach digital public infrastructure, starting with identity.
I moved to Finland for school and the first month you have to get the col Hank iltonus.
It's the personal ID, I think Estonia has one as well.
It took about a month or two to get it.
Without that, I think access to services was almost impossible.
Banking can't really do banking without an ID.
Accessing government services also impossible.
Once I got the ID, so it's like a new world that opens up because I could do everything almost remotely, and then I learned about what's happening in Estonia.
From what I know, it's one of the most digitalized economies that also has economic benefits because they implemented these different elements of DPI.
To the trust question, I've actually spent some time on this, spoke to the people responsible for X Road, which is the infrastructure that is between Estonia, Finland, and I keep forgetting this other country.
Iceland is a third country.
But from that experience, I think I learned trust is one of the biggest barriers when it comes to digital public infrastructure because we're talking about exchange of information between, in this case, different companies.
Once I have the ID in Finland, I can access services from different private organizations, governments, and what they have designed now potentially cross border transactions.
Then the question of trust comes from when you are exchanging this information, they are obviously cybersecurity and other issues that could potentially be a problem.
But then the trust aspect also comes from, for example, in Finland, the solution is called Omar.
It's I can access my health record and other things.
But just because of that identity that I have, I can access the education platform, I can access the health platform, I can access government services.
The trust is who am I giving my information to? Who am I authorizing to have access to my information? Can I kind of take this consent that I've given back.
I think that's some of the services that the implementation of this infrastructure, the road, it tries to provide because you can at least from a legal point of view, you can tell who is accessing what data.
The trust infrastructure is further enhanced by the fact that there is a vetting process, I believe, for who is let into the network.
So I'm not the most technical person, but based on what I have read and what I have evaluated, it provides some level of convenience that provides access to the ordinary citizen.
I am from Cameroon.
I don't know what the identity situation is in Cameroon.
I also asked the earlier speaker who's from Serbia, if they were aware of what identity system is used in Serbia.
But just to conclude, I think trust is very important.
Trust is even more important when we add AI now on top of the digital public infrastructure.
The resources or the open source resources are out there.
I think just vetting these open sources and then putting them together is essentially what EOS, my organization is trying to do, and that's what I encourage people in the space to do as well.
The solutions are out there.
It's like trying to adapt them to the local use cases.
Thank you.
Peter, can I build on what you just said specifically, you mentioned AI and we mention AI all the time.
Why do you think trust is even more important now that we are so enthusiastically becoming consumers of AI? Yeah.
Yeah, thanks for the question.
So just a step back, AI is not new, generative AI that provides the fluency, what most people know as Chat GPT.
I think it's what is causing some of the, I want to say issues that we may have.
But what is the bigger issue is this concept I call institutional intelligence.
So at least before we had generative AI, we have what you call predictive models.
So given information, you can predict what is going to happen.
That comes with its own risks, risks like it can be wrong.
But with generative AI and how it has been used now, we're exposing potentially sensitive data to someone else's infrastructure, and that is a huge trust issue, at least for me and I see that what is potentially an issue when you combine DPI and AI and that Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This is a good way for us to move to Armando, who is coming from the government and the government of Dominican Republic is very proactive and advancing fast on its digital transformation agenda.
Today, I had a chance to speak with many of colleagues that are not from Dominican Republic, but they've been mentioning about the great work that you are doing in the country.
And not just on transforming, redesigning services, but also bringing AI into the service delivery.
How do you look at the governance trust safeguards agenda in the context of bringing AI into the DPI, but also bringing AI for service delivery in the Dominican Republic to ensure that people have the trust in the services and they can enjoy the services? Thank you so much.
It's a very interesting question that puzzles me every single day.
But our take when it comes for well, first of all, the governance and AI and safeguards and DPI is that we were AI, as the same way we're treating DPI for us.
It's a matter of creating a national capacity, state skills for harnessing this technology just to not just only for service delivery improvement, but rather how the state functions, whether it's the private or the public sector as a whole.
In that regard, having a proper governance in place it's not just something nice to have, but rather an imperative.
For that end, defining properly how the role that each sector should play into this is essential.
For example, like the minister mentioned this morning, we're drafting what would be our own national DPI framework, and that framework has defined clear institutional roles when it comes for who does what, whether it's the ministry, where it's the digital agency, what the sector level ministry should do, how they should do, how is going to be an engagement for civil society, how the private sector should participate, who can access to what information under which conditions and the specific guardrails that should take in place when it comes to data governance.
And stemming from that is that we're defining what would be our national digital architecture, defining for those basic governance rules.
And of course, DPI AI is also part of this integral agenda, and we're defining what would be what will be the first Dd AI enabled DPI blocks that will support all of this.
But if you don't have the proper guard rails built around it and the proper oversight, especially when it comes for the deployment of actual use cases that people will actually be using and having, what would be the human factor that should always be behind the delivery of each of the service, even though not necessarily in the front office, but in any capacity, then you shouldn't be doing this at all because the results might not be the most effective ones and instead of generating more opportunities equality for everyone, you rather would be generating a situation where you have different class of citizens and citizens that you definitely not like.
Since AI is such a new technology and we don't know what we don't know.
In working closely with your colleagues in government, how do you make sure that you are putting in place the right type of governance, the right type of safeguards? Also, keeping in mind that this technology is evolving so fast.
How do you learn about what's possible today and what might be possible tomorrow? Yeah.
Exactly, because this is something new that is evolving at a very rapid pace.
Having not necessarily a rigid set of rules, it's important, but also you have to have the flexibility to keep adapting as these technologies keep evolving.
That's one thing.
But definitely there should be someone steering the development, someone doing the measurements, analyzing what works and what hasn't worked just for you to be quick and have a rapid response and when it comes to the decision making process, that's behind the rationality.
Also, the importance of having human oversight present at all times can give you the right opportunity to intervene at a certain moment to correct any mistakes that the AI might commit while delivering the service itself.
Having that into place with something that will help us out on that front.
So that we're doing is basically taking a handout from the DPI safeguard manual.
Of course, we'll be adapting that not just for the DPI as a whole, but also for defining what will be AI safeguards as well.
Thank you.
Nelly, coming to you and the question that we have for you is more on the policy and regulatory alignment.
The European Commission, European Union has put out many framework strategies, programs to enable cross border data sharing of goods of people.
How do you see the role of DPI context of the EU ecosystem, and what do you think other countries can learn from the European Union in terms of good practices that can be adopted to enable regional interoperability across other regions? Thank you, Stella.
I am representing here Europe, but as I said, I come from Estonia.
I served as Estonia state ambassador and I'm really glad to see that the work that was my job is being continued by my panelists and also other participants in this room.
But perhaps coming to DPI and what makes it actually work, I would say that I haven't seen any successful regional DPI case without actually economic or other benefit behind it.
I think this is also the entire idea of digital public infrastructure.
So we set these foundational elements of payments, data, data interoperability, identity, not only because they are needed, but because these allow us to create some value.
And I have to say that sometimes this is also, let's say, forgotten in this DPI discourse to see how we can improve governance, how we can, let's say support economic activity, let's say, when we look at European Union, if I want to participate in a tender with my company and some other European companies, I don't have to go and prove that I'm not in debt or a criminal law or something similar, but this data flows automatically, let's say, across countries.
But you asked also from the policy and the regulatory framework.
I think this is actually where Most DPI regional initiatives may stall.
It is not about the technological interoperability.
I think this can be solved quite quickly, but it's really the legal and policy framework around it.
This takes time.
This takes a lot of time, but I would say by the value of Europe, of course, we have the interoperability framework, we have now the Interpreter Act, we have the framework for identity, we have EIDas and these are good examples to, let's say, inspire other countries and regions and they have.
I do not mean here to copy what has been done, but just to see where these issues are and what could work, what not, and what could be amended for different contexts and countries.
But I think where the real value is is that it has been put in practice.
We have actually worked on the institutional and organizational processes across 27 member states and they are not that similar.
I can guarantee you.
That coming from Estonia, I may not think that everybody is in the same page when it comes to tech innovation and we have managed to put it to work not only inside the European Union, but also across EU and other countries.
Europe has finalized, let's say, the mutual recognition of digital identities with Ukraine and Moldova.
It is finalizing it now with Egypt and Brazil.
I think this is the experience that is immensely valuable.
But perhaps some lessons and I have here a little bit of Estonia and Europe hat.
When we talk about the regional DPI, we also actually talk about differences, the regional differences.
We have countries that are advanced, we have countries that are not advanced.
And then there is a question, how do we find this middle line with those who want to go really far and those who are still catching up and of course, there is quite a bit that can be done, but I would maybe like to stress one that what is important is actually to have the capacity and to be by the table where the technological standards are discussed, where these policy frameworks are discussed, where the legal frameworks are discussed and set even if the country is not yet implementing DPI.
Because otherwise, what will happen is that others decide these frameworks, the standards, and then you are in a situation where you have to implement something that was decided by the others.
But this also means that we actually have to invest heavily in the capacity, I would say also in the regulatory capacity to be in the table and have these discussions.
But having said that, coming from Estonia, I would like to maybe just say that it's not often those that are lagging behind that obstacle the cross border data sharing and services.
I was involved in a big pilot of Europe called TOP project.
Basically this focused on cross border data sharing and digital services.
Then we were looking at the obstacles, and then to my surprise, I found out that Estonia was not the most active partner because Estonia did not trust those that were lagging behind.
It's not actually always the ones that are behind that are not eager to share data across borders, it can be also the other way around.
Actually, this landscape is a lot more complex than we might think.
Thank you.
I picked up several important messages from your intervention.
Putting things in practice, that's very important.
Then something that we don't usually talk about as much as we probably should, it's building regulatory capacity and taking every opportunity to participate in the dialogue and platforms where the standards, where the policy and the regulatory frameworks are being set up or defined.
Since you mentioned that you've been a tech ambassador.
And we are getting close to our session, but I'd like to hear everyone on the panel in terms of if you were to share one recommendation with everyone who is in the room today and we have participants from the ecosystem, but also policymakers, decision makers.
What would be that one recommendation or one key takeaway that you think is very important to not to forget about when it comes to building DPI for inclusive growth.
I'd like to start with you, E, since you've been the tech ambassador.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I think I will continue from this regional perspective that I'm representing here.
I think while we should be aiming at all these framework in place, agreements in place, regulatory frameworks in place, I believe that sometimes we cannot wait until all this is place.
When there is a political will, when there are resources, when there is an opportunity, I would simply encourage everybody to start working with each other also across borders because it's only by doing that we can develop the needed frameworks and also actually build the trust of doing things.
I would close with my opening statement to say that when building TPI, I think in parallel, we should really building the cases for TPI to see what we are actually needing these for.
Thank you.
Anna, over to you.
Any final thoughts? One recommendation is really hard.
I think we people that work implementing DPI have many learnings from what we have done.
But if I have to pick three, the first one is that you need to relate or correlate the government's goals with what you are building as a use cases for the cross regional um, initiatives because this usually is disconnected and the fuel that you have when you are doing something new, when you are trying to be part of something that is working regionally, that fuel ends in a point.
You need to really connect what you are doing with the government goals and what the priorities of the government and is really solving some problem for the citizens, and I think that can give more scale and adoption that we think.
The second could be just countries spend amounts of time designing the perfect solution in DPI, but in general in technology, but in DPI happens a lot.
The perfect use case, the perfect governance model, and I understand why DPI charges identity, data payment regulation and that feels like you need to get it right before you do it because you cannot fail on that right.
But the evidence in our experience, especially in lab I think globally, it's that the countries that move fastest, they have to work from a baseline, even if it's an imperfect one.
So like There are a lot of conversations that you can have around, for example, as Meely said, about governance, about frameworks, about regulation.
But those conversations in early stages of DPI doesn't get to anywhere when countries really understand what is DPI, what they are building, what is it use it for, you can start having conversations valuable for regulation, firm frameworks and so on, related with the real capacity of DPI and not with aority or a framework.
That leaves me to Third one that is use cases are never as clear as we assume.
In every implementation that we have cooperate with in lack and globally, we thought that we have identify use cases, but when you are really getting that to operation, that doesn't make sense and probably is not that use cases that you are aiming to when they are not related, what you want to do.
Um, so talking and giving the time to talk about the real use cases that you are going to operate with DPI is something that you need to do.
And actually at TDPI we are testing this methodology to close that gap, and that in one week, the countries can really see what they are building in the technology bar because we have been saying the whole day I have been listening technology is not the hard part.
The part is regulatory.
The hard part is the standards and so on.
But countries takes more than a year.
Trying to understand the technological part.
That's our experience.
Yeah, we say that is the easiest part, but it's not the easiest part.
We are trying to work at CDPI in a methodology that can be really easy and that in a matter of weeks, we can just show the countries what is DPI, what is useful for, and that we can have a roadmap of documented use cases so you as a country can understand what is it, can trigger conversations about regulation and all that you have to do for adoption for scale.
But you can also have a roadmap of prioritized use cases that can really work for the countries.
Anna, thank you for anchoring us into the problem.
Focus on the problem to solve first, and thank you for the call to action.
Just start.
Peter, any final words from you? First, thanks for having me on the panel and it's been very interesting listening to the rest of the panelists.
I picked up on what you mentioned about the project that you're working on where Estonia does not trust the other participants.
That was a long time ago.
Hopefully this has changed.
Okay.
Well, it speaks to the question that you have just raised and she also mentioned technology is not the biggest barrier anymore.
I think bringing the right stakeholders to the table from the beginning is one of the ways that you can ensure a smooth implementation of most of these solutions.
So she mentioned political will, resources.
I think resources is one of the issues that may affect certain places.
DPI comes after electricity comes after a lot of other things, and those are things, there is still lots of inequality that haven't been addressed.
So even though we have DPI and we are adding AI to it, I think consideration of how the inequalities that this may magnify should be something that should be seriously considered.
Thank you.
Thank you for bringing the inequality in your final closing words.
Armando, from a government representative to the government representatives in this room, what would be your key takeaways? Key takeaways with all of this is that you have to have a two pronged approach when it comes for this topic.
You have to first, working on the top on all the political **** against all the political conversations, defining the policy, defining the regulation and so forth.
While at the same time, you have a bottom up approach where you have not just a society move but also a technical community, not just defining what would be the product, defining what would be the use cases, understanding the user needs, but also learning by shipping, by start building, by showcasing, by start doing Because if you wait for the policy to get the policy right or to have the right political approval for a specific thing, nothing will happen.
If you really want to enact real change, you need to start working at all levels and getting everyone involved as much as possible because that's the only way you can see and reap the benefits of having EPI as the core of your strategy or the core of the world would be our ideal state in the future.
Thank you.
Thank you to all of you for sharing your insights, key learnings in how by leveraging DPI, we can enable better services and better transborder across border partnerships, and we hope that everyone who joined us for this panel found this discussion insightful and interesting.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Stella and the panel for your insights.
I want one club for you all in one, two, three for spring through to this hour.
Kudos to you all.
The DPI community in the world is a better place because of you people in this room today.
Now, we're going to the last last session of this day, which entails a very interesting preview.
For that, I believe the setup is now complete.
Drum roll, please, I finally invite back on the stage, our USG to open up this closing session.
Thank you.
Thank you, Nanja.
Really kudos to all of you.
We're nearly there.
I will be very brief and just not sum up the day but just point to you some highlights.
It's been an exciting day.
Right in the middle of the open source week, so we are halfway there.
Remarkable day.
I want to acknowledge the presence of the minister from Tanzani who's come straight from the airport to this meeting hall, delivered her keynote address.
Madam Minister, thank you.
Thank you for your commitment, the commitment of other ministers who've spoken throughout the day, given us these exciting insights from how it is to develop and implement DPIs nationally.
They have made this day very special.
So just to perhaps reflect on how this day comes together, how this week comes together, none of these sessions were run alone.
The entire program is co created with partners from across the ecosystem, and that's the way we show support for their work.
Digital cooperation, which is our mantra here at the Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies, does not work alone.
It only works when we bring different stakeholders, different regions, different perspectives together.
And all the UN entities involved in the implementation of the Global Digital compact are here.
They've contributed to the governance of this week.
They've contributed to the design of the program, which as I mentioned, showcases the achievements of the entire ecosystem.
This is digital cooperation in practice, not the UN talking, but the whole community, leading governments, international organizations, the open source, tech community, philanthropies, and the private sector.
Our role today was to convene and to connect.
Now, we've learned today that DPIs continue to be a high priority for member states.
Everyone has understood that this approach is strategic.
It allows you to use limited resources with the maximum impact for building an inclusive digital economy, for building a more responsive government that's closer to citizens needs.
The issue is not the why of DPI, it is now the how of building DPIs safely, inclusively, and at scale.
We know very clearly now through the insights that have been generated by this community that DPIs development potential comes only when they are built with trust, together with all members of society.
And today, it's clear that when we take into account all perspectives, DPIs can deliver real value.
We heard today how countries are taking a more sophisticated approach to building out DPIs, connecting it to the AI challenge, but not confusing it with chasing this pot of gold at the end of the AI rainbow.
Keeping their sights clearly on serving the people and being agile, being deliberative about that goal.
During the breakout sessions, which were really a highlight of the day, whether the focus was on financing and other challenges or on interoperability, we heard candidly about the gap between ambition and resources.
The financing needs surfaced across all our panels and the financing roundtable this afternoon was very helpful and a surfaced for us the urgency of the challenge.
We are really grateful to the international financial institutions, the philanthropic foundations who are funding the DPI space for coming together on that particular track.
Development banks, donors and foundation, the open source community, everyone coming together, our UN partners with not only offers of support, but guidance on how to layer the investments from national budgets, philanthropic grants to private sector contributions, and then multilateral development bank investments.
So generosity matters, availability of finance matters, but how we organize ourselves to absorb it and in which direction do we spend it, that matters a lot.
Let me just say a word about the safeguard side of it.
It's the DPI safeguards initiatives.
I think member states made a strong commitment in the Global Digital compact to this aspect of safeguards, which build trust, which leads to adoption, which leads to impact.
And so the safeguards initiative is built on that simple premise that without safeguards, citizens will not trust DPIs.
And without that, there will be no adoption and no digital dividend.
So this is an example of different stakeholders coming together to develop the safeguards initiative, the UN system coming together, working with them and achieving impact as a result.
And this is why today, I like to invite two people who symbolize this cooperation to join me on stage.
So Raji Raji Chansrin from UNDP, please join me in applauding her.
UNDP, which co leads this initiative with Oded, and then CV Maduer from Co Develop, who's a strong advocate and supporter of this work directly and across the eco system.
Raji, the DPI Safeguards initiative has recently launched the accelerator, and I'm sure you're going to speak about it and some of the other interesting interventions being planned to accelerate DPI with safeguards.
And I believe this will be very relevant for the community here.
Maduer has an exciting announcement to end the day.
But to take this forward, I'd like to invite my colleague, Moritz from Mao, to come and join them onstage.
Moritz, over to you.
Thank you, US.
It's audible.
Yeah.
Thank you, USDGil.
It's a privilege to be here on behalf of UNDP, and we're deeply grateful to your leadership and your team's partnership working with UNDP on advancing DPI over the last three years.
Together, we have made safeguards central to a lot of global conversations.
The amount of times we heard safeguards, inclusion, trust architecture today is an incredible success that we have achieved over the years.
We also have the DPG and the open source community building with safeguards.
A shout out to a lot of the DPG who have reached out to us in the last two days to discuss how we are building it as safe and secure.
It is an intel inside moment for the DPG, at this point in time.
We are also learning with our lighthouse countries, whether it is countries who are starting new like Dominican Republic or countries who are evolving an older system, uh, like Brazil with a cadastralabinal, rural evolution with safeguards or people who are building with mature setting like Ag DPI, with AI in Maharashtra in India that we are seeing wherever it is, we're seeing countries coming and asking, how do we adopt safeguards into it.
We also acknowledge minister from Tanzania who are also building it with safeguards and going for inclusion in a very big way.
Thank you, ma'am.
Our learnings from this over the years has been that people are not asking how people are not asking why safeguards, but they're asking how safeguards and for that there is a need, there is a place for these conversations to take place.
There is also funding which needs to occur.
The accelerator has come out of these learnings over the past few months years of work.
We've opened up the accelerator to bridge this gap between the framework and actual action.
Helping governments, they are advising organizations and CSOs to partner, to work together and embed safeguards.
This accelerator that we have opened up is open for two different kinds of entities to start with.
It is for civil society organizations and UN organizations.
Though we are getting a lot of requests on, I'm neither this nor that, how do I work with you all? We are still looking into those kinds of applications.
We are looking at live work which is taking place.
It could be in foundational systems like digital ID payments or data exchanges or sectoral applications across health, agriculture, climate, financial inclusion, social protection, et cetera.
Each applicant is requested to propose the safeguards effort in two areas.
Either one of these, you could be looking at system level work, which is a national level assessing risk that you see across the DPI or the digital ecosystem and how we can build a roadmap.
Or you could be specifically talking about risk that you're seeing such as a redressal mechanism which needs to take place or how do we improve uptake from, let's say women or from a certain marginalized community.
We are open to both of safeguards work.
Uh, the only requirement that we want to underline is that it should have meaningful civil society engagement, and a very, very active role throughout, and it's not a one off consultation in all of these applications.
In return, the participants get practical tools, ecosystem expertise, a global peer community and catalytic funding.
You get anywhere between USD 40,000 to 70,000, If you are funded, but yet you want to be part of this cohort, there is a non funded track which you can be part of, so we are super excited for countries, for the UN advisors, and for civil society to join and share their work.
This is also a call to the ecosystem over here.
You could be sharing your expertise, so please join us as a partner or an enablers collective to the safeguards accelerator.
Our team is over here, and we are happy to have this conversation with you.
This accelerator is in collaboration with 55, the Open Government Partnership, OGP and code and the applications for this inaugural cohort is open right now.
We're taking applications as three waves.
The first wave is June 30th, the next one is July 15th, and the last one on July the last.
We really hope that you have got enough things to talk about today, learn about, and you will come up with applications for us.
Before I handed to Moritz, a last shout out.
There was much which was discussed about funding and financing today.
We will be soon launching an open call for inviting two kinds of applications.
We need actual practitioners from Ministry of ICT, planning, and finance so that we can learn about what is the cost of DPI, how much goes into the early part of the build and how much goes into the implementation, and where the safeguards fit into this costing process.
We're also calling for practitioners who uh, built these long Excel sheets, who have lived this project documentation, who have lived experience to come and present their point of view to this ministerial group.
We're looking for two calls, one from experts and one from the actual practitioners who are building this.
So please do watch for this and engage with us.
With that, thank you.
Thank you for being a great audience and over to you Moritz.
Thank you very much, Rajen.
Also, hello from my side.
It is a pleasure to be here.
Part of my job is to work with many people here in the room on the DPI Safeguards Initiative from the Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies side.
I would like to highlight a second way of how you all can engage with the DPI Safeguards Initiative.
That is by joining the action tracker of the initiative.
It is a way how every organization here in the room that works on DPI safeguards can make their work visible on a global platform.
So the action Checker will go live early next month, and it will be a platform where you can showcase the work that each of your organizations does on advancing DPI safeguards.
Through the action Tracker, you will have officially endorsed the framework, and we want to provide you all with a platform to show the great work that you all do.
I don't want to take up too much time because we do have an exciting announcement from Madukar on where this community meets next, and I believe that we have a video for which we would need the slide back up there.
And so on.
Service enrollment without any complicated steps, these are the moments digital public infrastructure makes possible.
Behind them are shared rails, digital systems designed for public use, built with safeguards, connected to real services and shaped around people.
Across the world, countries are deploying DPI for social and economic impact.
In Indonesia, CRS and BI Fast are changing everyday commerce, making payments easier and more affordable, with MSMEs at the center.
In Brazil, PIs and the country's DPI stack show how digital public infrastructure can become part of everyday life, lowering transaction costs, expanding participation, and creating measurable economic value.
In Ethiopia, FIDA shows how fast foundational identity can scale.
In less than a year, enrollment reached over 40 million people, nearly half the country's adult population.
In Ukraine, DA shows another kind of impact public services that continue to reach people even in war.
In India, identity, direct transfers and UPI have helped access move at population scale, lowering costs and expanding digital participation, and many more countries are contributing to this movement with their own implementations and lessons.
Every country's journey is different.
So begin with health, some with agriculture, some with payments, identity, social protection, public services, or crisis response.
But all are working toward a shared objective, building more efficient, inclusive, and trusted societies.
At the 2027 Global DPI Summit, we will gather not just to ask what is possible, but to learn how.
We will ask what was built? What did we learn? What changed for people? From Cairo to Cape Town, the Global DPI Summit has brought the DPI community together.
In 2027, the summit heads to Asia for the first time.
Ahead of the summit, we are asking our community to share stories of DPI implementation.
If your country has used DPI to create real human impact, we invite you to share it.
Bring your evidence, bring your lessons, bring your ambition to the Global DPI Summit 2027, building the infrastructure of trust together.
Thank you to our colleagues at OT and the UNDP for having us at Code participate here.
This partnership has been important for us for a number of years now and the important work that the UN system and many partners in the room have done over the last few years is really a sign of progress in the many countries that are participating.
As we've thought about the Global DPI Summit, when we started CoDlop about four years ago, um, we thought maybe we should do an announcement that we're launching code, but it wasn't exciting.
Who knew code? Nobody knew what we wanted, or what we would do.
We said, let's do some work for the next two or three years, work with the larger community that will really actually shape this ecosystem of DPI.
Two years ago when we started the idea of DPI, we reached out to the audit office, UNDP, World Bank, ITU.
And who came in as co hosts along with us to shape this global DPS summit that we just saw here.
This is actually, of course, there are four of us as co hosts this time.
The Asian Development Bank has reached out.
They would like to participate as costs as well.
We welcome them with open arms and look forward to co shaping the agenda for the 2027 Global DPS Summit.
This summit really is a celebration of all of the collective progress we've all made over the last few years.
I've been in the DPS space for a few years now.
DPA was not on the radar three, four, five years ago, and I think it has taken all of us to actually get this DPI to center stage really.
If you look at all of the conversations across countries, across institutions these days, digital invariably has a DPI component, an active DPA component.
In the conversations.
I think that's progress.
We should celebrate the progress, and I think Bali would be a great place.
Welcome all of you to participate and bring in our ideas, bring in our accomplishments, share your failures so we can learn and continue to build this amazing community.
Thank you very much for the opportunity.
Look forward to seeing you all in Bali in a few months from now.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, Madu Car.
And the Office for Digital and emergent Technologies is really proud to be co hosting this event as alongside a lot of other entities from the multilateral system.
Oh, boy, am I looking forward to going to Bali.
Thank all that is left now at this stage is to thank you all for coming here.
I would like to particularly thank the member states who are co hosting this event and the delegates that participated here.
It is really also your leadership that allows us to carry this agenda forward.
A big thanks goes to our partners who have made this week possible, who have made many receptions on all of the evenings possible throughout the week.
But first and foremost, thank you all for coming here today.
Lastly, the event is not over, but we have the Osbos for Good Day tomorrow.
So do come back tomorrow because tomorrow we will discuss how institutions build and maintain the knowledge to sustain everything that we have discussed here today.
Thank you all, and I look forward to seeing you at the reception.
I think one thing we need to ask Maruca, he didn't say when, so we start booking our tickets.
The dates came up.
Did everyone grab the dates? Because I know ticket prices Thank you once again for when we're looking forward to the DPI summit.
Thank you to Audit and the Office of ICT for hosting this DPI day.
Thank you once again to you all.
With that, ladies and gentlemen, we call it a successful DPI day.
For those who are proceeding to the reception, it's a ticketed situation, so those with the tickets will nowhere to go.
Lastly, do not forget about the feedback that will be very helpful for how these sessions iterate.
I've been your host for today.
Thank you so very much.
Have a lovely evening.