The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Digital public infrastructure is an emerging field that studies society-wide digital systems, such as identity, payments and data exchange, and the governance that lets many services build on them safely. It draws on computer science, standards engineering, public administration, law, economics and development studies. It matters because these systems increasingly decide who can reach public services, markets and rights.
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For field overview, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, population density and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on India; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
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GeographyFor field overview, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, population density and true-colour imagery with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on India; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
The Digital Public Infrastructure field covers public digital systems, interoperable institutions and the social conditions for responsible access. Experts in it study questions such as identity and authentication and digital payments and services, with methods such as digital identity and public digital systems as well as data engineering, interoperability and stewardship. Its counterparts at GRF and GRA look at the same systems through governance and finance.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
DPI is usually described through three properties. Each is a design choice that affects risk.
Identity, payments and data exchange that many services reuse, rather than each building its own.
Standards and application programming interfaces that let different providers connect and compete.
Rules on rights, oversight and redress that keep the infrastructure accountable to the people it serves.
Well-designed DPI can reduce the cost of delivering services, cut leakage in transfers, help small businesses join digital markets and let people prove their identity and eligibility without repeated paperwork. It can also shift power: whoever controls identity, payment rails or data exchange shapes who participates in economic and civic life.
Poorly designed DPI can exclude people who cannot enrol or authenticate, concentrate personal data in ways that enable surveillance, create single points of failure across government and lock states into one vendor. The field asks how to capture the benefits while managing these risks.
How identity and payment systems are designed and governed. See identity and authentication and digital payments and services.
How data move between institutions with consent and accountability. See interoperability and APIs and data spaces and rights.
Who is reached and who is left out. See digital inclusion and digital public value.
How systems stay available and replaceable. See digital service resilience and public cloud and concentration.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Interoperability | The ability of health information systems to exchange data and use it with the same meaning, using standards such as HL7 FHIR. |
| Digital public good | Open-source software, data, models, standards or content that meet the Digital Public Goods Standard. |
| Safeguards | Measures that protect rights, inclusion and accountability across the life cycle of digital systems. |
| Systemic risk | Risk arising from the interactions and dependencies within and between systems, where a shock can propagate and threaten the functioning of the whole. |
DPI depends on the security work of Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience and the computing studied at Data and Compute. Its governance is convened at AI and Digital Governance at The Global Risks Forum (GRF); payment system and fraud risks are studied at Payments and Market Infrastructure and Financial Crime and Fraud Risk at The Global Risks Alliance (GRA). See dependencies and consequences.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.