Digital public infrastructure: From ‘Can it scale?’ to ‘Where next?’

Last week in Barcelona, the annual Mobile World Congress forum showcased  the future of artificial intelligence, connectivity and digital transformation — from AI-enabled smartphones to robot travel agents to computers with 3D screens. Amid the product launches and innovation on display, one less flashy but increasingly important topic shaped policy conversations throughout the week: the evolving role of digital public infrastructure (DPI).  

The OECD defines DPI as shared digital systems that are secure, interoperable and designed to support the inclusive delivery of and access to public and private services. At its best, DPI enables governments to deliver services more efficiently, broaden access and inclusion and foster trust by responding more effectively to citizen’s needs. In recent years, national ID systems, instant payment platforms and interoperable data exchanges have expanded access to financial services, social protections, health care and emergency assistance while lowering costs and enabling faster, more coordinated support.

As these systems becomes more embedded in daily life, expectations naturally rise. DPI, like any digital infrastructure serving millions of citizens, must not only operate efficiently but also earn and sustain trust. Greater scale brings greater responsibility to protect users, manage risks and ensure accountability evolves alongside innovation. While all large systems must confront these challenges, they take on heightened significance in the context of DPI, given its widespread adoption, central role in public service delivery and the emergence of new technology and security threats, many accelerated by AI.

Against this backdrop, the DPI conversation is at an inflection point. Once framed as a question of adoption and scale, discussions in Barcelona suggest the debate has matured beyond deployment to durability. This shift brings significant opportunities and risks. As adoption accelerates, stronger governance and deeper partnerships between governments, technology providers, donors and civil society stakeholders will be essential to ensure rapidly expanding digital systems continue to deliver meaningful outcomes for users — enhancing security, sustaining trust and maintaining viability. Here are three takeaways.

As DPI matures, its success is less about technology and more about the partnerships that determine how decisions are made, who holds power and how accountability is enforced. Long-term viability depends on governance models that cut across institutional boundaries and align incentives around how systems deliver tangible benefits for people, not just how efficiently they operate. This means clarifying who sets standards, who oversees compliance, how disputes are resolved and how redress is delivered when harm occurs.

No single actor can answer these questions alone. Success depends on drawing on the distinct strengths of each member in the larger ecosystem. The public sector anchors governance, legitimacy and stability. Philanthropic actors can fund early development and de-risk experimentation. Private actors contribute investment, technical capacity, innovation, security and service delivery that expands access and drives adoption. And civil society plays a critical role in trust-building, inclusion and feedback loops to ensure systems remain responsive to public needs.

The challenge, then, is to move from ad-hoc collaboration that lacks cohesion to structured cross-sector partnerships that harness these complementary roles. Technology enables scale, but partnerships and governance determine how that scale translates into long-term public value. 

Just as governance must be shared, so too must financing. DPI systems are often launched with one-time donor investment, but its long-term operation requires steady and predictable sources of funding. Sustainable DPI demands diversified and blended financing models aligned to the full DPI lifecycle. This includes a combination of upfront philanthropic capital to de-risk early implementation, multi-year public financing commitments that are stable, transparent and self-sustaining, and private investment across infrastructure, operations and innovation.

X-Road, the open-source software that helps government agencies securely exchange data in Finland and Estonia, for example, illustrates how publicly funded digital infrastructure can be scaled and sustained through significant private sector and development collaboration and support. Similarly, Mastercard’s collaboration with the Egyptian Banks Company, Egypt’s advanced payment network and domestic operator, demonstrates how coordinated public-private investment can drive innovation and expand financial access while distributing risk and value creation across actors.

These examples point to a broader lesson: Structured and diversified funding models are needed so that infrastructure can evolve, adapt and continue to serve people over time. 

As debates around DPI mature, it is tempting to follow the logic that scale and adoption will naturally generate trust. But that assumption deserves scrutiny: Does scale really create trust? And even when trust exists, it does not automatically beget usage. Trust emerges only when systems collectively deliver value, protect users and respond effectively when things go wrong.

An outcomes-oriented approach reframes the question. It asks: Are users secure and protected? Do grievance and redress mechanisms work across institutional boundaries? Is interoperability resilient and responsibly managed? Shifting the focus to these questions moves DPI beyond infrastructure alone to lived experience and enhanced user experience.

This means treating the various forms of DPI as living systems that require constant iteration, data sharing and coordinated responses to emerging threats. It also requires enabling innovation across the full value chain, so that public rails translate into solutions that meet real user needs. When roles, responsibilities and incentives are aligned around shared outcomes, DPI becomes not just scalable, but resilient and capable of enabling participation for all and delivering on its promised public value over time. 

Ultimately, the future of digital public infrastructure will be defined not by how quickly it scales, but by how well it is governed, financed and designed to deliver real value to the citizens it is designed to serve.