About this topic
Ensuring that digital infrastructure serves the public includes questions of governance, security, and the relationship between the public and private sector.
Digital public goods (DPGs) are free-to-use resources—including software, AI models, standards, and content—that support sustainable digital development. They form the building blocks of digital public infrastructure (DPI), distinct from state-run or private platforms due to their openness, collaborative maintenance, and community governance. They are an important and relatively recent addition to the policy tool kit and are playing a key role transforming and powering national systems in banking, health, education, identification, energy, and commerce.
Caribou’s approach to digital public goods and infrastructures centers on seeing them as a movement, a community, and a paradigm shift, rather than as discrete technologies. We are also interested in connecting DPGs and DPI to other policy innovations and to a history of policy approaches to promote more fair and inclusive digital economies—from open source and open data to net neutrality, community networks, and creative commons.
Our work in DPGs has included supporting the UNDP Bureau for Policy and Programme Support to build capacity in DPGs and democratic governance and research demonstrating the importance of DPI for fostering financial inclusion on digital platforms.
