Digital Public Goods Toolkit

The UNICEF Office of Innovation will be working with a research consultancy firm to research and synthesize resources to produce an "Operational Toolkit" including detailed and evidence based recommendations for implementing digital public goods (DPGs) at the country level.

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide country governments and UN-affiliated agencies with country and product specific best practices and frameworks for deploying DPGs, specifically on:

1. Policy: What are the necessary policy environments and structures that are conducive for deploying and scaling DPGs?

2. The value of DPGs: What have other operationally successful or mature DPGs delivered? What evidence exists that we could use to advocate on the policy-level that DPGs have contributed to indicators of economic development or innovation? What are some tools or frameworks that governments and agencies can use to determine the value or cost-effectiveness of certain open-source solutions?

3. The sustainability of DPGs: how could certain government agencies play a role in enabling innovative financial investment in DPGs so they are sustainable?

4. The security of DPGs: how could certain governments align an open-source software with the national legal and policy frameworks especially around cybersecurity, data privacy and ownership?

5. The readiness for nationwide use of DPGs: how could certain governments build internal capacity to utilize, produce, run and maintain open-source software, standards, content and AI models? How might governments encourage maintenance and incentivize quality for open-source solutions and ensure that it is sustainable in a cost-effective way (i.e. requiring security audits)?

6. Procurement and Adoption: What are low- and middle-income government procurement requirements, motivations for procurement, and the perceived risks for government related to adopting open-source technologies? What are some recommendations for structuring a procurement process that is sustainable and equitable? What are open-source projects that have been successfully adopted and what made them successful?

7. Product-Level Government Adoptability of DPGs: What factors can governments use to evaluate the decision to deploy certain DPGs based on product-level criteria i.e. quality, maturity, security and utility?

8. Sector-specific considerations: Are there key differences between sectors (e.g. education, health, identity, finance, etc.) regarding the questions presented above? e.g. is there a sector more conducive to the implementation of DPG? Is there a sector where DPGs are more likely to be sustained?

9. Scalability: What are factors to consider in a DPG for a government to understand its scalability? What other specific operational efforts are needed from the government in order to scale a DPG according to the Principles of Digital Development, including partnerships, engaging citizens, and leveraging existing resources?

Refer to the Resources page for a backlog list of potential resources that may be included in the toolkit, and see the current high-level outline of the toolkit.

Background:

This toolkit is the work of the UNICEF Office of Innovation as a co-champion of the Digital Public Goods Alliance. The Alliance was launched with the aim of accelerating attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals in low- and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods. The Alliance, supported by the UN Secretary's Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, defines digital public goods as: "open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable best practices, do no harm and are of high relevance for attainment of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)."

About the Toolkit:

1. It builds on and refers to existing tools as much as possible (vs creating new elements)

2. It consists of individual modules that could act as stand-alone documents including:

   • A higher-level introduction to DPGs and success cases:
     • The potential benefits that Open-Source technologies will bring citing relevant evidence
     • Case Studies of Successful DPGs implemented in countries and why they were successful
   • A toolkit of resources that guide in the operations of deploying DPGs including:
     • Guides and recommendations for creating a policy environment and structures needed for deploying and scaling open-source solutions, including cybersecurity, data privacy and protection
     • Frameworks and Tools for evaluating the value and costs of digital public goods, including frameworks to estimate the value of a DPG such as "social return on investment", frameworks to evaluate both the development and ongoing costs of a DPG
     • Readiness for a digital public good to be adopted at the country-level
     • Recommendations for structuring a procurement process that is suitable for open-source solutions
     • Options for financing digital public goods as well as the related pros and cons
     • Guidance and frameworks for governments on developing relevant internal capacity within in order to scale DPGs, including the need to maintain quality
     • A "government adoptability" tool for governments to assess the maturity and readiness for a digital public good to be adopted at the country-level

3. It is action oriented and references theory and evidence for further review

4. It is written in an accessible language directed at governments, UN counterparts and other relevant agencies

5. It is formatted in a way such that it could be transformed into modular, interactive online website that will be user-friendly and easy to navigate.

6. It is made open-source and/or published under Creative Commons – Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) where possible and unless otherwise specified

Contributing

Please see the contribution guide for information on how to contribute to this toolkit.

📝 License

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This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license.

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