Neville Lahiru
Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Technology has stated that the government officially joined the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA). In an announcement, the Ministry of Technology further mentioned that the government is looking forward to “contributing to the advancement of DPGs by helping to shorten other countries’ learning and adoption journeys of DPGs.”
What is the Digital Public Goods Alliance?
The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative that aims to help low- and middle-income countries in achieving Sustainable Development Goals via digital public goods. Here, digital public goods refer to anything open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards, and open content, as long as they “adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm by design, and help attain the SDGs,” as per DPGA.
The initiative has set itself four main objectives for its five-year strategy (2021-2026) which include the following,
- Digital public goods with high potential for addressing critical development needs in low and middle-income countries are discoverable, sustainably managed, and accessible for government institutions and other relevant implementing organizations
- UN institutions, multilateral development banks, and other public and private institutions that are of high relevance for the implementation of digital technologies in low- and middle-income countries have the knowledge, capacity, and incentives to effectively promote and support the adoption of DPGs that address critical development needs
- Government institutions in low- and middle-income countries have the information, motivation, and capacity to effectively implement DPGs that address critical development needs, including planning, deploying, maintaining, and evolving their digital public infrastructures
- Low- and middle-income countries have vibrant commercial ecosystems in place to create, maintain, implement, and incubate DPGs locally
To follow through with these objectives, the Digital Public Goods Alliance utilizes a roadmap that acts as the body’s primary coordination and communication tool to “capture the activities of DPGA members.” This covers everything from funding digital public infrastructure and data science capacity building to supporting country capacity in health information systems.
Who is part of the DPGA?
The DPGA is governed by a board that’s essentially an oversight body under the DPGA Secretariat. The current board comprises the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Government of Sierra Leone, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), iSPIRT, UNDP, and UNICEF. Additionally, the DPGA hosts an extensive list of members within the organization, which now includes Sri Lanka as well.
The Digital Public Goods Alliance members:
- Government of Bangladesh
- Six board members
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Data.org
- Digital Impact Alliance
- The eGov Foundation
- Food and Agriculture Organization
- Foundation for Public Code
- GitHub
- UN Global Pulse
- India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
- UN Office of Information and Communications Technology
- International Telecommunications Union
- Omidyar Network
- Open Source Initiative
- Digital Square at PATH
- Republic of Estonia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Rwanda’s Ministry of ICT and Innovation
- The Rockefeller Foundation
- Thoughtworks
- Uganda Ministry of ICT and National Guidance
- Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology
- USAID
- The Government of Sri Lanka
What it means for Sri Lanka’s digital outlook
Sri Lanka becoming a part of DPGA is bound to aid the country’s digitalization efforts moving forward, particularly in terms of getting a stronger support structure from international bodies. In terms of DPGA itself, the organization lists specific activities as part of its roadmap:
- Inclusion of an Open Source and DPGs-first approach in the Sri Lanka Digital Government Policy
- Creating awareness on cross-sectoral use of DHIS2 (open source web-based platform commonly used as a health management information system) for government IT Staff
- Adoption of MOSIP as the foundational identity platform for Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity (SLUDI) Project
- Creating awareness targeting both the domestic and global DPG community about the use of DPGs by the Government of Sri Lanka through case studies, whitepapers, blogs, newspaper articles, and social media
- Adoption and scaling of DHIS2 for education by the Ministry of Education
- Conducting awareness sessions to the local ICT vendor ecosystem to build capacity on DPGs and Open Source
- Building DPG knowledge and capacity at the Ministry of Technology and ICTA, also to the benefit of other DPGA member countries
- Exploration and evaluation of new DPGs for adoption by the Government of Sri Lanka
It’s worth noting that some of these initiatives have already been underway in Sri Lanka in some capacity. For instance, DHIS2 was in use by the Ministry of Health as its primary health information system for a while. In fact, in 2020 Sri Lanka utilized DHIS2 to track immunizations, monitor stocks, and issue vaccine certificates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the government will look to expand DHIS2 usecases beyond the health sector with the DPGA membership.
The Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity project is another initiative on the list that has been in the works for years. Although tenders were supposed to be floated for the Digital ID project since last year, the process is yet to be materialized. Incidentally, Sri Lanka’s Central Bank Governor has also commented on the need to push digitalization efforts like the digital ID project citing the potential economic benefits of linking the digital ID with financial services.
Of course, time will tell how the Digital Public Goods Alliance membership serves Sri Lanka in fast-tracking its digitalization efforts like the SLUDI and DHIS2 initiatives in the country. In any case, Sri Lanka is poised to have an interesting few years ahead.
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