Research’ shows that the growth of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) needed to accelerate digital transformation and achieve the SDGs is hampered by the siloed nature of legacy infrastructure. A common framework is required in order to understand the enabling ecosystem necessary to build, adopt, and implement DPIs, which the G20 must address to support inclusive and sustainable economic growth. This policy brief details how the DPI approach emerged as a focus area from the India G20, which encouraged the G20 to leverage its strategic forum to build a common framework for DPI, particularly the ecosystem needed to support it. When supported by a common framework, DPIs, coupled with Digital Public Goods (DPGs), can help advance equity and inclusion in the digitalization of public services critical to sustainable growth. A public infrastructure approach requires a long-term public financing strategy; clear regulatory, institutional, and digital architecture that allows the ‘regulators to regulate and the innovators to innovate’; and a clear/common understanding of the specific data governance features, institutional capacities, key data assets and conditions that enable data access and use. The authors draw from the use of DPIs and DPGs to advance SDGs 2, 6, and 9 in India, Zambia, and Ethiopia, assessing the critical elements of a data ecosystem maturity framework to understand the preparedness and compatibility of a data ecosystem to adopt a public infrastructure approach to digital transformation. Recommendations include the G20’s explicit recognition and endorsement of a DPI approach to digital transformation; developing workstreams to devise common standards and guidance for DPI/DPGs, building on lessons learned from member states, the private sector, and civil society; and the need to pilot/test guidance and standards within industries, for example in WASH and agriculture.
