Analysis
Essays on the hard questions: governance, safeguards, open source, health systems and how to measure impact.
- Digital public goods vs digital public infrastructure: what the DPG label guarantees, and what it does not
The difference between digital public goods and digital public infrastructure, how the Digital Public Goods Alliance standard and registry work, what a DPG listing tells a government, and the questions it leaves open.
- Digital public infrastructure for health: what India's ABDM is building, and what it still needs
An analysis of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), launched in September 2021: health accounts, registries, consent-based health information exchange and the Unified Health Interface, and the open questions on consent, standards adoption and data protection.
- Measuring the impact of digital public infrastructure: beyond transaction counts
How to measure whether digital public infrastructure works: why adoption numbers are not outcomes, what the IMF, BIS and field experiments in India found, and a practical set of indicators covering reliability, inclusion, cost, market structure and trust.
- Open source or proprietary? How governments should choose software for public infrastructure
A balanced analysis of open-source and proprietary software in government technology: what the evidence and policies say (EU, France, Italy, UK, US, Germany), real costs, security, lock-in and skills, and a decision framework for public infrastructure.
- What makes digital public infrastructure good, not just big?
Digital public infrastructure is now a global policy priority, from the G20 to the UN's 50-in-5 campaign. An analysis of five tests that separate good DPI from systems that are merely large: purpose, reach, rights, markets and resilience.
- Who governs digital public infrastructure? Operators, oversight and the UN safeguards push
An analysis of how digital public infrastructure is governed: the main operator models (agency, statutory authority, not-for-profit, central bank, intergovernmental), the accountability mechanisms that matter, and the UN-led Universal DPI Safeguards Framework and 50-in-5 campaign.
