Digital systems are increasingly shaping how people access essential services such as healthcare, education, and financial inclusion, making it critical that these technologies are designed to be safe, inclusive, and rights-respecting from the outset. The recent Annual Members Meeting of the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) in Brazil highlighted how countries are leveraging open, interoperable digital building blocks to strengthen their digital infrastructure, with digital public goods (DPGs) playing a central role in this transformation.
The DPG Standard provides a global benchmark for identifying technologies that can be safely adopted, adapted, and scaled to advance sustainable development goals. Recent updates to the Standard emphasize safety-by-design principles, requiring robust privacy, security, and responsible AI safeguards. Key practices include data minimization, informed consent, transparent data use, secure access controls, and governance frameworks that prevent misuse, ensuring DPGs are built with user protection and accountability at their core. Complementing these requirements, the DPGA has introduced a Best Practices Annex for privacy and data security, offering practical guidance on governance, technical measures, and adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies.
The Universal Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Safeguards Framework, first released in 2024 and updated in 2025, provides a rights-based, lifecycle approach for responsible DPI implementation. Structured around 18 principles covering safety, inclusion, and structural vulnerabilities, the Framework aligns closely with the DPG Standard. Together, they embed protections such as “Do No Harm,” transparency, accountability, and institutional responsibility, ensuring that both individual technologies and broader digital systems operate ethically and inclusively.
AI systems recognized as DPGs are subject to rigorous criteria to mitigate unique risks, including transparency around training data, bias assessment, explainable decision-making, and continuous monitoring. These requirements reinforce fairness, inclusiveness, and purpose limitation, echoing the lifecycle-focused approach of the Universal DPI Safeguards Framework. Open-source solutions such as Mojaloop and MOSIP exemplify how DPGs can integrate these safeguards, demonstrating practical alignment with both the Standard and the Framework in real-world deployments.
To accelerate adoption, initiatives like the DPI Safeguards Accelerator connect global coordination with local action, providing technical assistance, training, and tools to embed safeguards by default. By linking the DPG Standard’s product-level safeguards with the DPI Safeguards Framework’s system-level protections, these frameworks together foster a digital ecosystem that is safe, trustworthy, and centered on people. Stakeholders across governments, civil society, and technology communities are encouraged to engage with these frameworks, either by applying to the DPG Registry or joining the DPI Safeguards Implementors Collective, contributing to a safer and more inclusive digital future.
