February 25, 2026 | By Amr Ahmed

In his seminal paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Alan Turing proposed what later became known as the Turing Test. A machine, he argued, could be considered intelligent if it could convincingly imitate human conversation well enough to fool an interrogator. The test was not concerned with what the machine was, but with what it could plausibly pass as. 

Seventy-five years later, a similar question is beginning to surface in the world of digital public infrastructure (DPI). As DPI systems proliferate across countries, sectors, and political contexts, the global community faces a quieter but no less consequential challenge: does DPI meet the Turing Test? The aim is not to judge specific implementations, but to frame how DPI can be designed to deliver its intended outcomes. 

While the definition of a DPI system is still evolving, the second annual Global DPI Summit reiterated two themes consistently across its three days: DPI is framed as a sovereign and inclusive digital stack, designed to deliver services to citizens at population scale. This framing now underpins much of the global DPI discourse. 

The global momentum on DPI is undeniable. According to UCL’s DPI Maps, 64 countries operate DPIlike digital ID systems, 97 have DPI-like digital payment systems, and 103 maintain DPI-like data exchange frameworks. 

Yet as DPI spreads, the risk is no longer failure by absence, but failure by imitation: systems that adopt the language, branding, and surface characteristics of DPI while falling short of its underlying objectives. Two most frequently cited of these objectives are to achieve digital sovereignty and to drive financial inclusion. Thus, the logical question is: to what extent has DPI genuinely advanced countries’ sovereignty and inclusion agendas? 

Sovereignty: Control vs. Self-Sufficiency 
Sovereignty has become the dominant lens through which DPI is debated. Governments increasingly frame DPI as geopolitical infrastructure, essential to economic resilience, national security, and technological independence. Concerns around vendor lock-in, external “kill switches,” and shifting geopolitical alignments now feature prominently in DPI discussions. 

At the heart of these debates are unresolved tensions between sovereignty and interoperability, innovation, and resilience. This raises a fundamental question: what does meaningful digital sovereignty actually entail and is DPI the only way to achieve it? 

In practice, achieving DPI’s operational objectives—reliable service delivery, security, resilience, and the ability to evolve over time—requires confronting a set of practical constraints. These include limited local capacity, ecosystem fragmentation, and long-term technological dependencies. Sovereignty, in this context, is not a binary condition, but one element along a broader spectrum of agency and autonomy. 

At its core, digital sovereignty is about agency: the ability for governments to make informed choices, diversify dependencies, invest in local innovation, retain independence and control over governance and data, and adapt systems as needs change. In many cases, regional interoperability frameworks, open standards, and multi-vendor ecosystems may strengthen sovereignty rather than weaken it. A DPI system that emphasizes sovereignty in intent but struggles to interoperate, adapt, or be maintained locally may ultimately undermine its own objectives. 

Inclusion: Who Is Being Served? 
Inclusion is the most frequently cited goal of DPI and the area where its most visible gains have been achieved and celebrated. Governments implementing DPI have issued hundreds of millions of digital IDs and expanded government-backed payment systems to populations transacting digitally for the first time. For many users, DPI has reduced friction, lowered transaction costs, and enabled basic participation in formal systems. 

Yet inclusion is too often measured at the point of access rather than through sustained and meaningful use. Recent work by CGAP and Findex underscores that financial inclusion has evolved beyond account ownership to encompass usage, frequency, resilience, and broader financial health outcomes. 

What remains largely absent from DPI assessments is a systematic analysis of whether users engage with these systems regularly, derive tangible economic benefits, and improve their financial resilience over time. Evidence from Findex and related research shows that adoption and intensive use of faster payment systems tend to be highest in markets where digital payments were already growing and among users who were already digitally active. This suggests that access alone is an insufficient proxy for inclusion. Without sustained use and measurable improvements in financial health, DPI risks expanding coverage without delivering proportional economic impact. 

The implication is clear: DPI can significantly expand access, but unlocking broader economic opportunity requires more deliberate design choices to enable more robust financial health. Transaction volumes and system coverage matter, but they are not sufficient. Inclusion must be assessed through who uses DPI regularly, for what purposes, and with what outcomes—and whether users retain meaningful choice among complementary systems. 

Looking Ahead: DPI in 2026 
As DPI enters its next phase, sustainability is likely to define the agenda in 2026. If recent years were shaped by rapid deployment and political commitment, the coming year will test whether these systems can endure—financially, institutionally, and operationally.  There is now broad recognition that DPI cannot rely indefinitely on donor funding or philanthropic capital. With development budgets tightening globally, governments will face increasing pressure to justify ongoing investments in DPI alongside other public priorities. The central challenge will not be whether DPI is valuable in principle, but whether its value can be demonstrated, sustained, and financed over time. 

Whether digital sovereignty or financial inclusion is the primary objective, countries should be wary of unquestioningly pursuing DPI by imitation.  In 2026, the debate should broaden from proving that DPI works, to ensuring that it continues to work—securely, at scale, and in ways that can adapt to changing needs. Policymakers will need to confront difficult questions around cost recovery, publicprivate collaboration, and the risk of crowding out private-sector activity where state-backed systems intersect with local ecosystems. Addressing these questions constructively will depend on treating the private sector as a core design partner, not a secondary stakeholder.             

Failure to address these questions early and consistently risks producing systems that appear to “pass” only under limited conditions, relying on narrow expectations or favorable contexts to signal success. As they scale and confront greater complexity, those gains may not hold, reminding us, as Turing concluded, that while we can see only a short distance ahead, we can already see how much work remains to be done.