Multistakeholder Governance for DPI

1. Why multistakeholder governance matters now

1.1 Digital public infrastructure: Societal collaboration for societal scale

Digital public infrastructure is transforming societies through the provision of digital identity, payment, and data exchange systems. These represent the foundations upon which individuals and states can build new technologies, businesses, and services, and together they promise to accelerate economic development, support governments to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and bring individuals and states into closer relationship.

The digital transformation of government is one of the biggest evolutions of public service delivery, and it is not going away. Digital public infrastructure (DPI) offers an approach for actors to exercise sovereignty and to proactively shape the arc of transformation rather than leaving it in the hands of others. The competing interests that seek to shape this transformation, and the extensive pollution of the digital soil in which this takes place, together make establishing trust all the more important in establishing a digital state that delivers for its people.

Governments are increasingly selecting DPI as their approach to driving societal-wide digital transformation, and those that get safeguards and governance right stand to unlock its full potential. There is growing recognition that DPI systems which actively involve constituents across society generate the legitimacy and trust that drive adoption, and that adoption is what converts public infrastructure into public value. For governments that have moved beyond the question of how to build and deploy these systems, multistakeholder collaboration (the active involvement of government, civil society, and the private sector in shaping and stewarding DPI initiatives) is the proven means by which they can secure that return on investment and ensure these systems deliver at scale.

As with historical infrastructure such as roads, electricity grids, and the internet, DPI initiatives are unfolding across a diversity of social, economic, and political contexts. Interest in the DPI approach has moved beyond early pioneers like India, Singapore, South Korea, Estonia, and Brazil and as of 2025, expanded to more than 100 countries (out of 210). The goals being pursued are ambitious and varied, from economic growth and the efficient allocation of public services to the realization of individual rights and opportunities. Governments that draw on the knowledge, networks, and legitimacy of a broad coalition of partners are better positioned to achieve these goals faster and more durably than those acting alone.

DPI as a large-scale infrastructure initiative is not only a technical challenge. It disrupts the status quo and creates opportunities for some while closing them for others. It is also an approach that connects across government, and across diverse stakeholders. This is precisely why multistakeholder governance is a strategic asset, not an administrative burden. Shared conceptual frameworks and goals, and effective governance institutions built with input from across society, are what enable DPI to earn widespread trust, adapt to new challenges, attract continued investment, and maintain accountability when things go wrong.

The question for government practitioners is therefore not whether to engage partners, but how to do so strategically: which partners to bring in, at which stages, and through what structures. This is not a concession of control; it is how governments amplify their own impact. Governments are uniquely positioned to lead this effort, and in different contexts, different government actors may be the most well positioned. For example, it may be political figures, bureaucrats, regulators, judiciary, or auditors who are best placed to lead efforts to advance multistakeholder collaboration. They hold the authority to convene, the mandate to act in the public interest, and the ability to set the terms on which partners engage. Where there is political will and institutional willingness, multistakeholder collaboration offers access to the full range of knowledge, capacities, reach, and legitimacy that no single actor, public or private, can provide alone.

1.2. Why a multistakeholder governance guide for DPI?

The problem

DPI inherits many of the governance challenges associated with digital transformation more broadly, but the speed and scale at which it is being adopted by governments makes the stakes particularly critical and the need for targeted guidance urgent. With infrastructural projects such as DPI initiatives, trust among diverse stakeholders (government, private sector, and civil society) has a key role to play in determining success. yet there are many instances of poor adoption: digital identity systems being rolled out, but few users picking up their cards and fewer still using ID-enabled services. Data exchange systems are operational in theory, but hard copies of documents are still expected and presented. The absence or erosion of trust not only puts public investments at risk, but also brings the operator’s (and in turn, the government’s) legitimacy in question.

Yet building trust is hard, a quality of perception and relationship as much as a technical aspect. There is limited guidance on what it takes to build trust, and a lack of clear, practical guidance to support governments in their efforts to establish and maintain trust in DPI systems. This is partly because societal-scale approaches to digitalization are relatively new, and partly because the literature is more focused on the impressive outcomes DPI can enable than on how inclusive governance processes actually work. Despite broad consensus on the importance of inclusive and accountable governance, reflected in calls from the G20, UnDP, and others, there are few DPI-focused guides for those seeking to put these commitments into practice.

The gap in guidance is compounded by the varied and often difficult conditions in which DPI initiatives operate. State capacity differs enormously across implementing countries. not every government has the institutional infrastructure, technical expertise, or dedicated resources needed to design and sustain complex governance processes, especially multistakeholder ones. Sociopolitical context presents its own constraints. In countries with high levels of institutional distrust or corruption, broad engagement processes can be difficult to design credibly and risk being captured by powerful interests. In countries deploying digital identity systems or other initiatives that depend on achieving mass enrollment, the window of political opportunity is often narrow, and decisions about governance architecture may need to be made quickly, with limited time for extended consultation.

This guide is designed with these realities in mind. rather than offering a single blueprint, it draws on evidence from adjacent fields to identify what has worked across a range of contexts, and why, so that practitioners can adapt its guidance to their own circumstances. It is also designed to complement and support other initiatives, such as the DPI Safeguards Initiative and OGP national action plans.

The normative case

The case for multistakeholder governance is well grounded in both principle and evidence. In 2023, G20 leaders called for the creation of DPI initiatives that are “safe, secure, trusted, accountable, and inclusive.” 5 A 2025 World Bank white paper argued that DPI initiatives should center principles of “equity, trust, and value.” 6 The shared goal across these frameworks is to design DPI initiatives that build and maintain public trust through inclusive governance.

The Universal Digital Public Infrastructure Safeguards Framework gives this principle its clearest formulation:

“No single group of responsible authorities can enable, maintain or sustain DPI; its systems are only effective, safe and inclusive if the ecosystem is utilized with a whole-of-society approach.” 7

This encourages initiatives to engage communities and to provide avenues for remedy and redress when things go wrong. It emphasizes the need to include groups that are traditionally overlooked, discriminated against, or marginalized. To formalize this, it calls for “the establishment of a robust legal, regulatory and institutional framework that should promote transparent and participatory multistakeholder governance.” 8

Building on this, the recent DPI Roadmap Playbook advises that all stakeholders “who likely can affect or who are affected by the outcomes” of DPI initiatives should be included in participatory processes. 9 It recommends contextually specific combinations of formal and informal processes for consultation, discussion, and co-creation throughout the digitalization life cycle, in order to shift “the nature of who engages in and shapes digital policy issues” (see Box 2). The shared idea is that a diversity of stakeholders can help DPI initiatives to be appropriate for, and to iteratively adapt to, the complex challenges they face, and that governments have the critical task of creating the processes, relationships, and institutions through which that engagement can occur.

The pragmatic case

The utilitarian case is equally well established. research on traditional digitalization efforts shows the consequences of getting governance wrong: ad-hoc and poorly coordinated collaboration between state representatives, donor organizations, and private actors led to inefficiencies, duplications, high costs, and vendor lock-ins. Together, these factors can result in substantial investments that fail to deliver and may have to be repeated. Tokenistic consultations with, and a lack of ongoing involvement of, the intended users of digital infrastructure resulted in low adoption rates, limited innovation, and prevented the exchange of information needed to address problems as they emerged.

In contrast, multistakeholder processes that include a diversity of voices, that give participants meaningful influence, and that create ongoing mechanisms for feedback and adaptation produce DPI initiatives that are better designed, more resilient, and more widely used. Inclusion, in this sense, is not only a normative commitment, but one of the primary determinants of whether DPI achieves societal value. More than a “nice to have,” inclusion is the social infrastructure that serves as the foundation for successful, high-impact DPI to deliver value at scale.

Who is this guide for?

This guide is written primarily for government officials and policymakers responsible for designing, implementing, or overseeing DPI initiatives. It is intended to make the case to decision-makers to support engagement with civil society, industry, and the private sector, and as a starting point for creating follow-on resources. It is intended to be practical: a resource that can be drawn on at different points in a DPI initiative’s life cycle, depending on the specific governance challenges a government is facing. It complements the separate practitioner’s guide. 10 These two guides provide resources to support overcoming challenges might include how to structure an initial stakeholder engagement process during conception and scoping; how to design participation mechanisms that go beyond tokenism during strategy and design; how to build feedback loops that support adaptation during development; or how to maintain accountability and public trust during ongoing operations.

It will also be of use to civil society organizations, development partners, technical implementers, and funders who support DPI initiatives, particularly those looking to actively shape how digital systems are designed and deployed, alongside governments.

The guide does not assume a single model of government capacity or a single political context. Its core ambition is to surface principles and practices that can be adapted across a range of circumstances, drawing on the experience of fields that have grappled with similar governance challenges.

1.3. How to use this guide

This guide is organized around two frameworks. Together, they provide a structure that practitioners can navigate according to their specific context and the challenges they are facing.

1. The DPI life cycle, which grounds the guidance in the practical stages through which DPI initiatives develop (stages which are common to most digitalization initiatives)
2. The Common Good principles, which are articulated in terms of the outcomes associated with each principle and which set out the normative principles guiding multistakeholder governance of DPI

The guide draws on a review of literature from adjacent fields, combined with interviews with practitioners experienced in DPI governance. The evidence and insights from this research are presented in section 2. The accompanying brief, A Practitioner’s Guide for Building Trust and Unlocking Adoption, translates these into actionable guidance, including checklists and guiding questions for practitioners. Each substantive section is anchored with an illustrative case study and draws on examples from across the case study base.

It’s important to emphasize that these frameworks and the structuring of guidance around them are offered as suggestions, not rigid prescription. Much of the guidance may have utility across different elements of the framework. Users know best their own contexts, programs, and needs, and are best placed to when to apply which insights and guidance. In addition, the digitalization life cycle is an ongoing, cyclical process, not a singular process with a start and end. That means that many of these processes are ongoing, and so multistakeholder collaboration should be approached as an ongoing part of a broader approach, not simply a singular process of engagement and participation.

The digitalization life cycle

Digitalization programs, including DPI initiatives, commonly pass through a series of distinct phases: Conception and Scoping, Strategy and Design, Development, Deployment, and Operations and Maintenance. Each stage presents different governance challenges and opportunities. The guidance in this document is organized according to these life-cycle stages, helping practitioners identify the most relevant insights for where they currently are in an initiative’s development. This organizing scheme is a suggestion that users can adapt and deploy to best meet the needs and circumstances of their own contexts.

Box 2 shows where the Common Good Framework’s principles are most relevant to each life-cycle stage. readers can use this figure to navigate directly to the sections most pertinent to their situation.

The Common Good principles

Public policy thinkers have recently developed the Common Good Framework, structured around five interconnected principles. 12 The framework supports a shift from DPI that is built, owned, and provided “in the public interest” by a small set of actors, to DPI that is co-created, operated, and governed through genuinely multistakeholder processes, enabling the trust and inclusion that drive widespread adoption and use.

The Common Good principles can each support particular outcomes:

• Achieving buy-in and trust through collective goals.These outcomes can be supported through the Common Good principles of purpose and directionality by, for example: setting an ambitious direction towards which policies may be designed, public-private partnerships formed, and citizens engaged.
• Meaningful engagement.This can be achieved through the Common Good principle of co-creation and participation, including defining the rules and mechanisms for co-investment collaboration and coordination involving a diverse group of societal actors.
• Adaptive capacity. This outcome can be supported through the Common Good principle of collective learning and knowledge governance, such as rethinking institutional practices that support collective learning and build long-term capabilities and capacities.
• Maintaining trust. This outcome can be achieved through the Common Good principle of access for all and reward-sharing, such as ensuring that greater inclusion leads to the equitable distribution of public value to strengthen legitimacy and trust.
• Transparency and accountability.The Common Good principle of accountability can contribute to the winning and retaining citizens’ trust by, for example, tracking progress through practices that demonstrate commitment to transparency and accountability.

This paper, and the guide to action that accompanies it, integrate the digitalization life cycle and the Common Good Principles. The life cycle is a descriptive lens reflecting a digital transformation cycle, while the principles are an explicitly normative lens and should be adopted if these are intended goals. The integration of the digitalization life cycle, which describes specific stages, and the principles, which link activities to the outcomes, provides an organizing frame for practitioners to draw on the perspectives, values, and strengths of a diversity of state, civil-society, and private-sector stakeholders. This approach challenges the assumption that the public or private sectors alone can deliver these systems by following established best practice. In its place, it positions entrepreneurial governments as the enablers of multistakeholder governance models that are adapted to specific social, economic, and political realities.

Case studies: Insights and lessons from related and adjacent fields

The ambition of multistakeholder governance for the common good is currently hindered by a scarcity of clear guidance for governments engaging in ambitious DPI projects. This is partly because societal scale approaches to digitalization are relatively new, and partly because the literature is focused on the impressive outcomes they enable rather than how they work.
Nonetheless, related and adjacent fields have long held multistakeholder governance to be vital to the success of complex initiatives with transformational potential. Throughout the guide, insights are grounded in evidence from these fields, which share with DPI the challenge of coordinating diverse actors around complex, politically contested initiatives with far-reaching societal consequences:

• Open government and open data initiatives provide detailed evidence of how governments can structure meaningful participation across a wide range of political and institutional contexts.
• Development projects that use “adaptive management” and “adaptive governance” approaches offer models for building iterative learning and community feedback into large-scale initiatives.
• The extractive industries’ pursuit of a “social license to operate” illustrates how transparency, accountability, and community engagement shape public acceptance of contested projects.
• Large-scale public-private partnerships surface lessons on balancing private sector capability with public accountability and equitable access.

2. What can multistakeholder governance achieve?

2.1. Achieving buy-in and trust: Set collective goals

The opportunity

The Conception and Scoping stage of the DPI initiative life cycle is an opportunity to collectively agree ambitious societal goals, which can help lay the foundations for trust and successful adoption of DPI systems and services.

For governments, the objective is to secure broad buy-in and trust for DPI initiatives. Clear and collectively agreed societal goals can connect DPI initiatives to the needs, values, and aspirations of wider society. This will encourage adoption by users and for follow-on innovation by stakeholders beyond those directly building and operating the DPI system. It will also provide the foundations for regulations to guide initiatives’ development and with which stakeholders can hold those governing them to account.

Substantive multistakeholder goal-setting processes should include a diversity of stakeholders representing the interests and needs of the wider public. It’s also important that the agreed goals are made explicit so that other stakeholders are clear about the functions and direction of transformational DPI initiatives. However, societal goals should be revisited as the new innovations or challenges emerge.

The challenge

Governments face a genuine pull in the opposite direction at the goal-setting stage. As the primary funders and often the primary architects of DPI initiatives, they are under pressure—from donors, technology providers, and their own institutions—to move quickly and to arrive at the table with preferred solutions already formed. The temptation to treat consultation as a ratification of decisions already made is real, and the consequences tend to surface later: in systems that fail to attract adoption, in trust that must be rebuilt at considerably greater cost, and in regulatory frameworks that reflect narrow rather than broad societal interests.

A second challenge is representational. Broad consultations that do not actively reach out to traditionally marginalized groups will reproduce the exclusions they were intended to address. Securing genuinely diverse participation at the goal-setting stage requires more than an open door.

Overcoming both challenges requires governments to trade speed for intentional deliberation, and to invest proactively in bringing in those whose absence would otherwise go unnoticed.

What works

Multistakeholder processes have been used in other fields to build trust and support programmatic implementation. For example, evidence for how multistakeholder processes can be orchestrated can be found in research on international development projects. It suggests that governments should initially focus on the collective identification of problems DPI initiatives will address. Doing so allows stakeholders to arrive at shared societal goals that include their value systems and are politically feasible.

Termed Problem-Driven Adaptive Iteration (PDIA), this approach to goal setting was developed from research on the low success rates of large World Bank–funded institutional reform initiatives. 14 It found that when recipient institutions began with their preferred models, they would often adopt the recommended visible trappings while ignoring the deeper values needed to ensure change. This occurred because imported solutions sidestep the building of supportive coalitions, ignore informal and cultural rules of the game, and rarely fit local political realities.

Further research shows that when governments begin by convening diverse coalitions of stakeholders to iteratively discuss problems to address, success is more likely. An initial focus on problems rather than solutions is key for surfacing issues and underlying causes that were hidden, thought to be too difficult to address or unconnected to initiatives’ aims. 15 Inclusive early dialogues also increase stakeholder investment in the outcomes of proposed solutions, often enabling champions to emerge and drive them forward.

Research also warns that collaboration has to be oriented towards success, or else it can lead to wasted time and resources, drain participants’ motivation and cause conflicts. 16 In practice, avoiding this means including knowledgeable and well-connected stakeholders, sometimes termed “authorizing agents,” in multistakeholder processes. 17 They often know what is politically feasible, can leverage their influence, and can hold coalitions together through disagreements. In many contexts they include informal powerholders, such as traditional leaders and business elites, that can provide unique perspectives and who may later become spoilers if ignored early (see Box 4).

2.2. Meaningful engagements

The opportunity

The Strategy Design and Development stages of the DPI initiative life cycle can be energized through meaningful engagements with empowered stakeholders. Governments have the resources and legitimacy to shape multistakeholder governance arrangements and the regulations, such as around grievance redress and access to information, that underpin them. How they are orchestrated, the terms on which stakeholders participate, and how decisions are made will determine the potential for co-creation that draws upon the strengths of those involved. Done well, multistakeholder processes can become the engine rooms of DPI initiatives, able to build trust, incubate leaders, and new innovations.

However, DPI initiatives are rarely static, with new stakeholders and opportunities emerging over their life cycles. Multistakeholder processes should be treated as intertwined with DPI development rather than an instance of bringing in feedback from other stakeholders. This will mean that engagement is continuous and default, rather than being single instance efforts. Accordingly, the design of multistakeholder processes and regulations should be periodically revisited to ensure they remain fit for purpose, an approach that benefits from the adaptive capacity outlined in section 2.3.

The challenge

Multistakeholder governance processes are not insulated from the inequalities that structure wider society. Economic barriers to participation (e.g., travel costs, lost working time, the prior knowledge needed to engage meaningfully with complex technical proposals) can be significant and are often most acute in exactly the contexts where DPI promises the greatest transformative impact.

Power imbalances present a related but distinct challenge. The large investments and organizational capacities required for DPI initiatives tend to favor government and private sector participants. Civil society, by contrast, is often fragmented, under-resourced, and unfamiliar with the specific technical and regulatory terrain of DPI. Deliberate design to counteract these asymmetries is needed to ensure that multistakeholder processes don’t replicate the dynamics they are meant to correct.

Addressing these challenges requires dedicated leadership, authority, and resourcing, alongside forum design and support for stakeholders to participate, requirements that governments are uniquely placed to make, but that require sustained commitment rather than one-off effort.

What works

Countries participating in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) have demonstrated how governments can proactively shape meaningful participation in multistakeholder governance processes. Launched in 2011, the OGP supports stakeholders to design innovations that leverage digital technologies to make states more open, responsive, and accountable.

Research from the OGP suggests that governments are best placed to provide the resources to enable stakeholders to participate by covering costs such as travel and missed livelihoods. 18 They can also use a variety of contextual appropriate and well-publicized opportunities to increase access. They range from setting up regional or vertically linked multistakeholder forums at different levels of governance (e.g., local, provincial and national), to using online and hybrid meetings, and digital platforms that enable stakeholders to comment upon drafts of emerging plans and to receive replies.

Governments can also provide participating stakeholders with the necessary information to follow and contribute to deliberations. At its simplest, this can mean putting information on plans in easily accessible places, and in widely understood formats and local languages. This includes avoiding gatekeeping through the use of overtly technical information. Elsewhere, it may also mean increasing stakeholders’ specialist knowledge of the issues under consideration through public debates, deliberative polling, and expert advisory panels (see Box 5).

To orient stakeholders and address power inequalities, OGP multistakeholder processes focus on producing national action plans. 21 These plans outline specific commitments to advance transparency, accountability, and citizen participation over a two-year implementation period. They typically contain multiple commitments organized around themes related to OGP’s values and pre-agreed societal goals.

The decision-making process for national action plans varies, ranging from advisory to joint decision-making models. 22 At minimum, they must include joint chairing arrangements between government and civil society, and meet at least every six months. Government representatives are required to discuss their priorities and the political feasibility of different proposals. Once action plans are drafted, stakeholders must also review the final selection together while clearly stating their reasoning.

The OGP’s guidelines for its multistakeholder processes encourage mechanisms that place them in the “collaborate” and “empower” columns of the participation spectrum (see Box 3). The most advanced co-creation processes accord stakeholders joint decision-making authority with government and equal vetoing powers. Decision-making approaches include consensus (requiring unanimous agreement), majority rule (50%+1), qualified majority (two-thirds or three-fifths), and mixed rules that prioritize consensus with voting as a fallback.

Similar plans, voting, and voting approaches could be used to guide multistakeholder governance processes for DPI initiatives. It should be noted, however, that decision-making powers typically also require governments to formalize multistakeholder governance processes through legislation or a presidential discretionary authority. regulations can complement the good will, relationships, and trust that repeated engagements foster, and ensure accountability when they break down (see Box 6).

2.3. Adaptive capacity

The opportunity

The Development and Operations and Maintenance stages of the DPI initiative life cycle, when prototypes are tested and ongoing services refined, are critical moments to establish “adaptive capacity.” This accords with the Common Good Framework’s call for a rethinking of multistakeholder governance processes to support collective learning and build long-term capabilities.

For governments, this principle is about creating the conditions for continuous improvement and innovation rather than one-time implementation. DPI initiatives operate in complex, fast-changing environments where user needs evolve, technologies advance, and unforeseen challenges emerge. Multistakeholder processes that embrace experimentation, reflection, and adaptation can help initiatives remain responsive and effective over time.

Multistakeholder governance processes can enable DPI initiatives to test innovations, learn what works, and adapt based on evidence and
community feedback. However, the foundations for adaptive learning are laid through the trust built in the Conception and Scoping stage.

The challenge

Large-scale infrastructure projects typically reward predictability. Timelines, budgets, and deliverables are set in advance; adaptation is treated as deviation rather than as evidence of learning. DPI initiatives operate in a different kind of environment, one where user needs are not fully knowable at the outset, where unforeseen consequences are likely, and where the innovations that will ultimately be built atop digital infrastructure cannot be fully anticipated. Treating DPI development as a linear technical project is therefore a form of institutional risk, not a mitigation of it.

Creating genuine space for experimentation and course-correction requires governments and implementing institutions to be willing to acknowledge publicly when approaches are not working, a cultural shift in contexts where adaptation is often read as poor planning, and where political incentives favor the appearance of smooth delivery over honest reckoning with complexity. Adaptive capacity also depends on the quality of trust between governments and the communities they serve: stakeholders whose concerns have historically gone unheard are unlikely to raise problems early enough for adjustments to be made.

Building adaptive capacity therefore requires both structural changes to how DPI initiatives are governed: decentralizing decision-making, creating feedback loops, resourcing communities to participate in testing and iteration, and demonstrating commitment to acting on what is heard.

What works

Experience from adaptive governance initiatives in environmental management and international development demonstrates how governments can create structures that enable the community-driven testing of innovations, learning, and adaptations. These approaches offer valuable insights for DPI initiatives seeking to honor complexity by understanding user experiences and adapting systems based on evidence.

The literature shows that adaptive learning requires decentralized decision-making, with stakeholders close to the ground empowered to test innovations. An anti-corruption program in Ghana gave local stakeholders flexibility to invest in experimental interventions with expected high failure rates, a “portfolio approach” that enabled genuine learning. 23 Such approaches ensure innovations are tested in real-world conditions and by intended end-users (see Box 7). For DPI initiatives, this requires empowering regional stakeholders to work with communities to adapt the way DPI is rolled out and innovations tested in their contexts.

Building adaptive capacity also requires dedicated resources for activities that don’t produce immediate visible outputs. They may include convening stakeholders for reflection sessions, conducting studies to understand unintended impacts, piloting alternative approaches in specific contexts, and documenting lessons in accessible formats. Research on testing approaches to climate adaptation highlights mechanisms including community conversations, participatory workshops, experiential activities connecting communities and stakeholders with experts, and working groups linking community representatives with peers elsewhere. 24 These activities included capacity building to ensure participants developed shared technical understanding alongside experiential knowledge.

To ensure a flow of information from communities to DPI initiatives’ multistakeholder governing processes, research on adaptive governance emphasizes the necessity for “bridging organizations.” 25 A study of climate adaptations in Swedish and German municipalities also found that capable leaders experienced in working across government departments were better able to foster the ownership needed for continuous co-creation. 26 For DPI initiatives, governments should identify or establish bridging entities—whether existing digital agencies, multistakeholder forums, or dedicated coordination bodies—and leaders that can facilitate ongoing dialogue between more permanent multistakeholder governance arrangements, innovations’ implementers, and communities.

Effective adaptive learning requires regular structured reflection. Development programs use end-of-phase reviews, midterm assessments, and annual strategy sessions where teams analyze what’s changed, their effectiveness, and needed adjustments. 27 For DPI initiatives, similar rhythms could involve quarterly reviews with end users and regular “pause and reflect” sessions when testing new features.

2.4. Maintaining trust

The opportunity

The Deployment and Operations and Maintenance stages of the digitalization life cycle are opportunities to strengthen trust between communities and governing stakeholders. This is critical for the adoption and continued use of new, DPI-supported innovations. Mechanisms that maintain trust ensure that users feel meaningfully included by proving that their feedback is acknowledged and addressed.

For governments, the importance of maintaining trust is about moving beyond initial buy-in to the sustained legitimacy that underpins continued use. Once operational, DPI begins affecting people’s daily lives in tangible ways, from how they access services to how their data is used. Trust can lead to virtuous cycles of greater cooperation, flows of vital information on operations and innovations, and participation in multistakeholder governance processes. The absence of trust can lead to low levels of adoption or even rejection.

However, the foundations for measuring and maintaining trust should be established during Strategy and Design, and mechanisms for both must evolve as initiatives mature and expand their functions.

The challenge

Traditional approaches to infrastructure often assume that once systems are operational, trust follows naturally from technical performance. DPI initiatives face a more demanding reality: they are constantly evolving, adding new features and use cases; they affect different population groups in different ways; and the legitimacy earned during co-creation processes is not permanent. Trust can erode quickly if communities feel that multistakeholder governance arrangements are tokenistic, or that they are being excluded from the initiative’s benefits.

Power imbalances create particular difficulties here. Government and private sector stakeholders typically have greater resources and technical expertise to monitor DPI performance and advocate for their interests. Without proactive efforts to address these disparities, DPI risks becoming captured by narrow interests over time, even where initial co-creation processes were genuinely inclusive.

Sustaining trust therefore requires ongoing investment in governance, not just in the system itself. Communities need continued opportunities to participate, raise concerns, and see those concerns acted upon, and governments need the mechanisms to identify and respond to emerging challenges before trust erodes.

What works

The extractive industries’ concept of a “social license to operate” (SLO) offers valuable insights for sustaining trust in DPI initiatives. An SLO represents the ongoing acceptance and approval that communities grant to initiatives affecting their lives. Unlike legislative licenses issued by governments, social licenses must be continuously earned through fair processes and demonstrated responsiveness to community concerns.

Research on SLOs often identifies three interconnected pathways to building and maintaining trust that have direct relevance for DPI governance. First, “procedural fairness” focuses on communities feeling that they meaningfully participate in forums where their voices are heard, feedback is delivered, and decisions are made. 35 This idea has roots in social psychology literature demonstrating how voice in decision-making supports cooperation and acceptance of new technologies. For DPI initiatives, this means ensuring community representatives have ongoing seats on multistakeholder governance bodies with genuine decision-making power, not just advisory roles.

Second, “distributional fairness” refers to the equitable distribution of benefits and risks, whether economic, social, or environmental. 36 Communities are more willing to accept disruptive transformational projects when they perceive fair outcomes. For DPI initiatives, this requires continuous assessment of how different population groups experience systems: who benefits from new services, who faces barriers to access, and whether innovations are inadvertently creating new forms of exclusion or exploitation.

Third, “confidence in government” concerns communities’ belief that DPI will be properly regulated and implementing stakeholders held accountable for poor practices. This pathway is particularly important for DPI initiatives where the government plays multiple roles as regulator, funder, and often implementer. Governments can build this confidence through visible regulatory backing, independent oversight bodies, and demonstrated willingness to intervene when problems arise.

The literature emphasizes that the relative importance of these trust-building pathways varies across contexts, and is shaped by sociopolitical histories and past experiences of government–community relations. This is why researchers describe obtaining an SLO as “both an art and a science,” requiring customization to local realities while following evidence-based principles. 37 Nonetheless, SLOs could underpin the legitimacy of DPI initiatives, securing the flow of information between communities and implementers, the adoption of innovations, and meaningful participation in multistakeholder governance processes.

Sustaining trust requires identifying and measuring it. Best practices suggest combining quantitative surveys with qualitative interviews and participant observations to gauge the health of a SLO. 38 For DPI initiatives, this might involve regular surveys of different user groups about their experiences and trust in multistakeholder processes, supplemented by in-depth interviews exploring why certain groups feel excluded or underserved. Such measurement helps governance bodies spot emerging challenges before trust erodes completely, enabling timely adaptations to multistakeholder processes or DPI features themselves.

2.5. Transparency and accountability

The opportunity

The Deployment and E Operations and Maintenance stages of DPI initiatives’ life cycles, when systems are rolled out and ongoing services begin, present opportunities to ensure public value is maximized and commitments are honored. The Common Good Framework’s fifth principle suggests this can be achieved through transparent and accountable multistakeholder governance mechanisms that win and retain citizen trust in DPI initiatives.
For governments, this principle is about ensuring citizens can understand how decisions are made, how the information they provide DPI initiatives is used, and who is accountable when things go wrong. Transparency in decision-making processes, combined with meaningful accountability structures, helps to maintain the trust built during earlier stages of the DPI initiative life cycle.

Decentralized and co-created DPI initiatives can make accountability more complex, with multiple stakeholders involved in implementation and governance. However, when transparency and accountability are embedded in initiatives from the start, they can become sources of legitimacy rather than administrative burdens.

The challenge

Governments have the mandate and responsibility to ensure that citizen engagement is based on meaningful understanding. yet the complexity of DPI systems can make it difficult for citizens to understand how decisions affecting them are made and how information they provide, including their data, is used. When multiple stakeholders are involved in implementation and governance, lines of responsibility can become blurred, leaving citizens uncertain about who to approach when problems arise or when they seek redress.

Governments face challenges that require clear understanding and engagement in order to overcome them. Without clear accountability structures, vulnerable populations face the greatest risks of exclusion with no effective recourse. Technical barriers may prevent some citizens from accessing transparency mechanisms, while power imbalances between different stakeholders can result in accountability processes favoring those with greater resources or technical knowledge. There is also a risk that poorly designed accountability mechanisms become box-ticking exercises that fail to address genuine concerns or effect meaningful change.

Governments must balance the need for robust accountability with the flexibility required to support innovation and adaptation. Overly rigid regulations may stifle the experimentation and rapid iteration that allow DPI initiatives to respond to emerging needs and opportunities. At the same time, insufficient oversight can allow problematic practices to become embedded, eroding the trust necessary for widespread adoption and use of DPI services.

What works

Research on accountability in large-scale multi-stakeholder initiatives suggests that transparency must extend beyond technical systems to encompass governance processes themselves. The government’s role in establishing new Zealand’s Waihi Community Forum to guide a large mining project illustrates this approach. 39 The multistakeholder forum documented all contacts between the community, government, and company, publishing records for citizens to refer to and with which to hold all sides to account for promises made. This created a shared understanding of what had been agreed and by whom, making it clear where responsibility lay when issues arose.

Similar approaches have been adopted in OGP initiatives, where multistakeholder forums are required to publish minutes of their meetings, drafts of emerging plans, and explanations of how stakeholder input influenced final decisions. Brazil’s e-Democracia platform and Greece’s vouliwatch allow citizens to monitor and interact with those responsible for AP commitments, creating ongoing channels for transparency rather than one-off consultations. 40 The key lesson is that governance processes must be proactive, regularly communicating what is happening and why to wider publics.

Research on SLOs suggests that effective accountability requires combining multiple channels for raising concerns. 41 Although increasingly used, digital technologies must not create new barriers. DPI initiatives may leverage them to enable citizens to track how provided information and their data is used; Estonia’s e-health portal is an often-cited example. But research strongly suggests that not all citizens will have the digital literacy to benefit. 42 Governments should therefore ensure accountability mechanisms also include analog options, such as telephone hotlines and in-person assistance.

The literature emphasizes that accountability mechanisms must be capable of effecting change, not merely recording complaints. This requires clear protocols for how issues are investigated, who is responsible for addressing them, and timelines for responses and resolutions. Citizens should be informed about the status of their complaints and the outcomes of investigations, thereby “closing the loop” even when their desired resolution cannot be achieved (see Box 11). research on adaptive governance suggests that regular public reporting on patterns in complaints and how they have led to changes helps build confidence that accountability mechanisms have teeth. 43

Governments can also play roles to ensure multistakeholder processes act once problems are identified. The Waihi Community Forum was given the power to select outsiders to serve on an Independent review Panel designed to act as an “ombudsman” for contentious matters, thereby increasing trust in governance. 44 Such independent bodies can provide impartial assessments when disputes arise between stakeholders over how to respond to raised issues or when they are ignoring them. By establishing these mechanisms early and ensuring they have real authority, governments signal their commitment to accountability.

DPI initiatives operate in fast-changing technological and social contexts, meaning that accountability frameworks and regulations must themselves be adaptive. Multistakeholder governance bodies can play important roles in reviewing and recommending updates to regulations, drawing on their diverse perspectives and frontline knowledge of how systems are functioning in practice. Governments, as the ultimate regulatory authorities, can then choose to take their advice onboard.