The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Digital public infrastructure is justified by what it does for people: faster and fairer access to services, lower costs, more inclusion, new markets and better use of public money. These benefits are often assumed rather than measured, and costs and harms fall on some groups. This page sets out how public value from digital infrastructure is defined and assessed, and what evidence serves the governments, funders and citizens who judge it.
Digital public value · Data exchange · Quarter 4
| Benefit eligibility | 6231 | 89 | 44 |
| Credit scoring | 2960 | 69 | 209 |
| Health record share | 1488 | 67 | 53 |
Fig.Consent and inclusion board. Design wireframe with placeholder names and illustrative values, not a record or a live system.
The public value of digital infrastructure is the benefit it delivers for people and society, net of costs and harms. Value depends on use, costs may shift to citizens or excluded groups, openness enables reuse, and exclusion, surveillance and errors must be counted alongside speed, savings and inclusion.
For digital public value, 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.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For digital public value, 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.
Layers and dates
Accountability, public benefit and safeguards. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Infrastructure creates value only when services built on it are used by people who benefit. Coverage without use delivers little.
Savings for government may shift costs to citizens, intermediaries or excluded groups unless they are tracked.
Open standards and digital public goods let other countries and firms reuse components, spreading benefits and lowering costs.
Exclusion, surveillance, errors and data breaches are part of the account, and they fall unevenly.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Public value | The value an organization contributes to society, as judged by citizens and their representatives. |
| Leakage | Public funds or benefits that do not reach intended recipients. |
| Redress | The means by which people can challenge decisions and obtain remedy. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to receive a service | days | per assessment | Service records | OBSERVED |
| Cost per transaction | currency units | annual | Agency accounts | ESTIMATED |
| User satisfaction | percent satisfied | per survey | User surveys | REPORTED |
| Leakage in transfers | percent of value not reaching intended recipients | per assessment | Audit and evaluation | ESTIMATED |
| Digital public goods adopted | count of deployments | annual | Digital Public Goods Alliance registry | REPORTED |
| Complaints and redress cases | count | annual | Ombudsman and agency records | OFFICIAL |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Public Goods Alliance registry | Recognised digital public goods and their use | Public, DPGA terms |
| UNDP and partners DPI impact studies | Evidence on outcomes of digital public infrastructure | Public, terms per publisher |
| Rigorous evaluations of digital transfers and services | Effects on leakage, speed and welfare | Licence per publication |
| Ombudsman and audit office reports | Complaints and audits of digital services | Public records, licence per office |
| Government service performance data | Speed, cost and satisfaction | Open data where published |
Digital Public Infrastructure prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Governments | Whether DPI investments deliver public value and for whom | Assessment frameworks; distributional reviews |
| Funders and development partners | Which DPI programmes to support | Evaluation evidence |
| Parliaments and auditors | How to hold DPI programmes accountable | Complaints and audit evidence |
DPI is often justified by efficiency and inclusion, but its benefits are not automatic. Systems can be built for administrative convenience rather than people's needs, can embed bias, or can expand state or corporate surveillance. Public value requires clear purposes, measurable outcomes, independent oversight and ways for people to challenge decisions. Without them, trust erodes and the infrastructure loses legitimacy.
Public value depends on purpose, distribution and accountability.
Systems with defined public purposes can be evaluated against them; vague purposes invite function creep.
Benefits often reach the connected first; costs of errors often fall on the least able to challenge them.
Independent oversight, audit, transparency reporting and accessible complaint routes.
Evaluation of DPI often measures what is easy to count, such as enrolments and transactions, rather than what matters to people, such as whether they received benefits on time, could correct errors or felt safe sharing their data. Including outcome measures, error costs and the experience of excluded groups gives a truer picture of public value.
Studies of outcomes such as time saved, leakage reduced and access gained. Causal attribution is difficult at national scale.
Structured assessment of effects on privacy, equality and other rights before and after deployment.
Lifecycle costs including maintenance, vendor fees and the cost of exclusion, which is often omitted.
Involving affected communities in design and review, to reveal problems that metrics miss.
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.