Community

The DPI Measurement CoP brings together the diverse stakeholder community around DPI to develop a common language and shared practices for effective measurement. At its core, the CoP seeks to:

• Strengthen collective expertise in DPI measurement through regular knowledge sharing
• Address key research questions relevant to building measurement frameworks for DPI assessment and evaluation
• Contribute to ongoing governance and research initiatives (including the Universal DPI Safeguards Working Group, G20 DEWG outputs, DPI Map)

Previous Sessions

Session 7 - Data Exchange Systems as Digital Public Infrastructure

Key Takeaways

1. Defining DPI-like DES remains a work in progress, but the map is converging on a clearer threshold. Of the three DPI pillars, data exchange systems are the least conceptually mature and the hardest to measure. The session tested a proposed revised definition — a national-level federated data system, operating with three or more entities, backed by a legal mandate — with session participants. The definition held, but the discussion surfaced important refinements which are still needed.
2. The DPI map is a baseline, not a verdict. The DPI Map presents a point-in-time snapshot of the DPI-like attributes of DES across countries, not their potential or maturity. Over time, systems can evolve to become DPI-like. Additionally, while there are many important attributes (see our methodology) related to DPI measurement, some of them are not measurable. In such cases, the DPI map becomes a tool to surface data for researchers and practitioners to investigate further.
3. Political economy shapes both interoperability and privacy — and remains unmeasured. Whether entities actually share data depends less on legal mandates than on who holds power and which actors control what data. The same dynamic applies to privacy: data protection laws set the rules on paper, but ownership structures and institutional incentives determine whether those rules are enforced in practice. Both dimensions suffer from the same gap; the map can track formal frameworks but cannot yet capture the political and economic realities underneath them.

See the session notes for more detail.

Session 6 - Governance Challenges in Digital Public Infrastructure: Evidence from Financial Services Integration

• Regulatory Silos Fail to Capture DPI Complexity: Traditional sectoral boundaries prove inadequate for governing interconnected identity, payment, and data systems. Effective oversight requires coordination across financial regulators, identity authorities, and data protection agencies that existing frameworks struggle to facilitate.
• Comprehensive DPI Correlates with Inclusion: CCAF research reveals substantial improvements in credit access, government transfer effectiveness, and emergency fund availability in jurisdictions with mature three-component DPI systems. However, these benefits remain contingent on addressing persistent digital divides.
• Natural Monopoly Dynamics Create Governance Tensions: DPI’s network effects and interoperability requirements generate market concentration concerns, with participants highlighting conflicts of interest when central banks serve simultaneously as infrastructure operators and regulators.
• Technological Evolution Poses New Regulatory Challenges: AI integration, blockchain adoption, and digital wallet expansion introduce governance uncertainties that existing DPI frameworks cannot adequately address, risking fragmentation of global interoperability.
• Digital Sovereignty Shapes Infrastructure Choices: Countries increasingly view DPI ownership through national security lenses, affecting vendor selection and cross-border data flows in ways that could fragment technical standards and limit international cooperation.

See the session notes for more detail.

Session 5 - Measuring “Just” DPI

• Measurement Shapes Reality: The metrics we choose don’t just describe DPI impacts, they actively shape funding priorities, design decisions, and ultimately determine who benefits from digital infrastructure.
• From Upward to Outward Accountability: Effective DPI measurement must shift from metrics designed for government reporting to frameworks that capture lived experiences and developmental outcomes for citizens.
• Justice as Measurement Framework: Adopting data justice principles such as representation, rights, and redress, provides more meaningful evaluation criteria than technical indicators alone.
• Qualitative Evidence Matters: The supremacy of quantitative metrics in policy spaces obscures critical insights about exclusion that only emerge through ethnographic and experiential research methods.
• Measuring What’s Missing: The most important DPI impacts may be those we’re not measuring because they’re harder to fund, including dignity, agency, and the hidden labour of navigating digital systems.

See the session notes for more detail.

Session 4 - Addressing Safety and Security in Digital Public Infrastructure

• Safety and Security Measurement Requires New Frameworks: Current DPI measurement approaches inadequately capture security and resilience needs. Effectively addressing this challenge will require new frameworks that account for the full life cycle of public infrastructure.
• Governance Challenges Exceed Technical Solutions: Real-world implementation reveals that regulatory frameworks, institutional mandates, and cross-agency coordination present greater barriers than technical security controls.
• Operational Principles Must Bridge High-Level Values: Translating broadly agreed principles like “security by design” into measurable, operational frameworks remains a critical gap requiring evidence-based approaches and real-world case studies.
• Capacity Building Enables Informed Risk Decisions: Creating “intelligent customers” who can make informed security decisions is essential for sustainable DPI deployment, requiring frameworks that translate technical concepts into actionable governance choices.

See the session notes for more detail.

Session 3 - Towards Robust Metrics for Trust in DPI

How do you measure success when the metrics themselves might be part of the problem?

The session showcased research that addresses critical gaps in how we understand and measure the ongoing effectiveness of DPI projects. APTI Institute’s Asta Kapoor and Kunal Raj Banua demonstrated how India’s celebrated adoption numbers mask a more complex reality of limited sustained usage and trust deficits. Data Privacy Brazil’s Rafael Zanatta approached similar questions with evidence from Brazil’s gov.br platform, where record-breaking user statistics obscure systematic exclusions, from undocumented citizens to transgender individuals, while inadvertently enabling widespread fraud.

See the session notes for more detail.

Session 2 - Measuring Interoperability

Measuring What Matters: Insights on DPI Interoperability from Global Experts

• Standards-Interoperability Relationship is Contextual: As systems mature and ecosystems need to connect, explicit standards become essential for maintaining interoperability at scale. Effective DPI measurement approaches must work to assess different maturity stages and prioritise real-world outcomes over rigid compliance metrics.
• Testing as Research: Creating empirical tests that directly measure system compatibility provides more usable metrics than theoretical assessments. Real-world compatibility tests offer a way to transform abstract interoperability standards into measurable outcomes that reflect actual user experiences.
• Compliance with Purpose: Interoperability should be measured against its ability to deliver tangible value rather than technical compliance. Measurement frameworks should prioritize service continuity, reduced transaction costs, and cross-border functionality over standards adherence.
• Interoperability is Multidimensional: Effective measurement must consider technical, syntactic, semantic, and legal dimensions of interoperability. Each dimension presents unique challenges and requires different assessment approaches to capture both capabilities and limitations.

See the session notes for more detail.

Session 1 - Inclusion

There is an increasing need to make transparent how DPI embodies the normative values it claims to represent. Inclusion stands at the heart of this challenge, offering a litmus test for whether DPI can achieve population-scale outcomes while preserving public values.

The session brought together researchers, policymakers, technical providers, and civil society representatives to explore a critical question: how can we effectively measure whether DPI systems are genuinely inclusive in both design and impact?

Project spotlight: Inclusivity Pulse for DPI (Co-Develop, Dalberg)

Blog: Deconstructing inclusion in DPI: Lessons from measuring real-world DPI deployments (IIPP)

See the session notes for more detail.

Session 0 - Launch

The introductory session highlighted the importance of measuring Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) effectiveness, inclusivity, and impact through both individual and collective goals within the Community of Practice (CoP) for DPI Measurement⁠⁠.

Framework: A framework for conceptualising and measuring DPI (IIPP)

See the session notes for more detail.

How to participate?

1. Review the published resources on DPI measurement
2. Use this 2-minute form to submit a session proposal. Describe a topic you want to discuss, elaborating on why it’s relevant to the goals of this community.
3. Register for the DPI Map newsletter to receive updates on upcoming sessions.